- Join the France 24 community here
- Log in
Latest update: 29/09/2009
- France - suicide - telecommunication
Suicide count rises to 24 at France Telecom
On Monday morning, another employee of France Telecom killed himself, bringing the number of suicides at France's biggest telecom company to 24 in just over 18 months. The company recently began talks with unions to deal with the problem.
An employee at France Telecom jumped off a bridge on Monday morning, bringing the number of suicides at the French group since February 2008 to 24, the company’s management confirmed.
A letter from the employee, who died in the Haute Savoie region, on the French border with Switzerland, laid the blame directly at the door of France Telecom.
This latest death comes just over a fortnight after a suicide on September 11, after which the company, which employs around 100,000 people in France, bowed to governmental pressure, and agreed to adopt more humane methods of management.
The action plan included delaying any relocation plans until October 31 and an internal inquiry into the suicides which have shocked France.
Unions in France are demanding an end to site closures, redundancies and forced relocations, but the company’s chief executive, Didier Lombard, has said that the company's big “restructuring” programme - brought on by the economic crisis - will continue.
Once entirely state-owned, France Telecom is now semi-privatised, though the state is the group’s majority shareholder.
Related Content
‘Darth Vader’ demands free land from Ukrainian government
Browse all editions
FRANCE 24 PARTNERS
Comments (1)
Suicides the tip of an iceberg
France Telecom has adopted a form of 'lean and mean', authoritarian management in which employees are treated as movable parts of a big machine. The consequences of this form of mismanagement are a demoralised workforce, and this in turn is not only the backdrop to the suicides, but guarantees a deteriorating service to the public.