
A Decade Ago, Suicides Rocked a French Telecom Firm – Now Its Execs Stand Trial - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/23/724476109/a-decade-ago-suicides-rocked-a-french-telecom-firm-now-its-execs-stand-trial
======
Darkstryder
The suicide spike at Orange / France Telecom took place from 2007 to 2009. I
happened to work there fresh out of school from 2010 until 2012, just in the
aftermath of the suicide wave, which we discussed a lot with colleagues at the
time.

For this reason, I follow this trial with a particular interest and would like
to clear a few things :

\- Upper management is _not_ directly accused of provoking the suicides. They
are accused of a company-wide harassement policy aimed at pushing 22000
persons out without firing them (because they couldn’t - them being public
servants), by making them decide to leave on their own. The suicides are the
most spectacular side-effect of this harassement policy but they are not the
center of the trial.

\- France Telecom / Orange was a strange place at the time. It was divided
between two generations : the older one signed up as public servants in a
public service, and were deeply attached to France Telecom as a public
service. A lot of them considered the recent privatization as a betrayal of
their values. On top of that they had to go through a lot of technical
evolutions, from phones lines to broadband to fiber. The younger generation
were not public servants, were mostly fully on board with Orange being a
private company and had skills more suited to current times. It was the older
generation that was being pushed out.

\- Even given the explosive context, everybody in the trial tries to make it
as dispassionate as possible. Accusation is pointing out that the plan was
illegal, not immoral. Defense is arguing how Orange was facing an existential
crisis at the time.

It will be interesting to know how it all plays out.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"The suicides are the most spectacular side-effect of this harassement policy"

The burden of proof required here is extreme.

~~~
roenxi
If corporate policy is so bad it provokes a wave of suicides then there will
be a lot of evidence available. That level of pressure is not subtle.

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's plain wrong to claim that some angry manager 'caused' someone to kill
themselves.

Also, it's questionable if there was in fact a 'rash of suicides':

France has a rate of suicide of 12.9 / 100K / year. [1]

France Telecom has 95 000 employees In France alone. [2]

Here's the title of the Telegraph article: "Why have 24 France Telecom workers
killed themselves in the past 19 months?" [3]

Well, it would be expected that about 20.5 FT employees will commit suicide
every 19 months or so, sadly.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A).

[3]
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechno...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/6259384/Why-
have-24-France-Telecom-workers-killed-themselves-in-the-past-19-months.html)

~~~
roenxi
As another commenter has mentioned; it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going
to reflect the general population for suicides so that isn't a very powerful
argument.

But that isn't what jumps out at me - to me the real issue is that if
management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be lots
of evidence for it. Presumably the reason people are talking about it in
newspaper articles is because they have seen evidence and are asking
questions.

The stats you have quoted suggest the number of suicides is already above
average. That, combined with evidence of a problem, is very likely what has
triggered the conversation at all.

I've seen some angry workers, but generally all they want is more pay or to
work with better conditions going forward. I'm not sure how many of them would
bother trying to get managers imprisoned without good cause. I'd guess it
would be about as rare as management policies being bad enough to cause
suicides. The media might have wiped out a whole heap of nuance - so it isn't
worth getting worked up over the case - but if lawsuits are flying then it is
more likely than not that something went very visibly wrong.

~~~
sonnyblarney
" it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going to reflect the general population
for suicides so that isn't a very powerful argument."

Actually, the data frames the argument quite well, moreover, there's nary any
way one is going to get better sampling.

" if management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be
lots of evidence for it"

It's incredulous to suggest that 'management is provoking suicides'. It is
completely absurd.

When, in modern history do you suggest that this has ever happened? Ever?

Wouldn't people _quit_ their jobs? Or get different jobs before resorting to
'death'?

We could all easily demonstrated working conditions elsewhere in the Western
world where conditions are 'just as bad' \- ergo, the logic of 'they were
provoked into suicide' makes no sense whatsoever.

And FYI my data demonstrated that the number of suicides is well within
normalized range. An variation of 20% in one year is going to be normal.

------
marvin
My fiancée got into one of most prestigious business schools in Paris many
years ago, after getting through the brutally competitive application system
(it might have been Institut supérieur du commerce de Paris, but I can't
remember the name at the moment).

She ended up quitting and getting into the sciences instead, because she
couldn't stand the class warfare techniques that the school taught. I think
this is telling of a part of French society that isn't well-known outside of
France.

This is an elite school, which teaches the brightest French youths (in terms
of grades and competitive intellectual ability), and also the children of
politicians, business leaders and powerful families.

The curriculum has your usual suspects of business administration topics, but
also focuses on forming contacts in the elites and politics, plus explicit
instruction in techniques for manipulating and dominating others. Examples
being rhetoric, lying with a straight face, defending and justifying an
indefensible or immoral case, or spreading rumors and damaging others'
reputation.

France, in spite of all the beheadings, never really lost its aristocracy.
There is a level of first-world corruption that's insane by central European
standards. The politicial class consists exclusively of people who have gone
to elite schools like the one I described, and never held a job, catering
mostly to the requirements of big businesses.

As an external observer, it seems insane to me that the French are unable to
vote in politicians that are not cronies to this system. But the news story is
really no surprise, based on my third-hand knowledge of how French executives
are trained.

Would love to hear some viewpoints from French or French-affiliated hackers on
this.

~~~
sonnyblarney
" defending and justifying an indefensible or immoral case, or spreading
rumors and damaging others' reputation." I actually doubt this, maybe there
was something missed in the communication?

Also the 'aristocracy' is definitely gone. Entrance to the 'Grande Ecoles' is
competitive, not based on nobility.

But yes, once you're in, you're 'set' and they do protect each other, it's
similar to Oxbridge and Ivy League to some degree.

~~~
marvin
I don't think I missed anything in communication -- we're both reasonably
articulate and know each other very well. Paraphrasing, there was an
assignment that stretched over a few weeks, where students were supposed to
try to start rumors about each other, and report back any such rumors that
took root.

There were also assignments given to each student in turn, of the type "this
is the position you are going to defend -- you have two hours to prepare, then
you must front a debate in front of the class where you defend this viewpoint,
regardless of whether you agree with it or not".

It doesn't require abnormally critical skills to imagine what sort of societal
power structures such an education is meant to support.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I'm basically incredulous to the point where I simply don't believe this is
true.

If this was an exercise in 'how to start false rumours to ruin someone' \-
then it's not just 'questionable', it's shocking.

I can see this as part of an exercise to demonstrate how these things are
'powerful' \- but as a training exercise .... it's so abrupt I just don't
believe it.

If this is part of the curriculum it should be posted somewhere, no?

Edit:

Here is a paper from Paris School of Economics [1] a 'Grande Ecole' where
profs have basically studied how information flows through social networks.

I can easily see a professor teaching this course asking students to 'start
some kind of rumouor' to see how the information propagates through social
networks.

I don't for a second believe that this would be taught in a manner such that
students are being 'instructed on how to use rumours to advance their careers'
or some kind of nefarious thing.

I believe it's totally misrepresentative to indicate that schools would be
doing such nefarious things, and I think that for whatever reason the OP has
possibly misunderstood the nature of this kind of activity.

A quick glance at the paper reveals that this is just regular, kind of
interesting social science.

[1] [https://halshs.archives-
ouvertes.fr/halshs-00966234/document](https://halshs.archives-
ouvertes.fr/halshs-00966234/document)

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
Once science has determined something, and the steps are reproducible and the
papers are published, it's hard to stop it from being weaponized, even if it
takes time.

For instance, some explosives that were developed for the mining industry are
now used in military applications- similarly, there's nothing really stopping
someone from weaponizing almost any scientific discovery.

~~~
sonnyblarney
These tactics were weaponized more than 2 000 years ago, we're just actually
studying them now.

But the issue is not that they exist, it's that people are somehow thinking
these Machiavellian tools are literally being taught as part of a curriculum
as craft at France's highest institutions - this I find very hard to believe.
I think that the kids are learning this in high school outside of class if
anything.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I'm French, and I find it pretty easy to believe. I even have another example:
some elite schools teach _oenology_. Now what could possibly be the point of
formally educating people on the finer details of wine making and tasting?
It's simply how the aristocracy recognise themselves. There are other class
recognition examples: for instance, rich kids tend to play tennis more than
they play soccer.

I know third hand of someone who paid attention to his _watch_ and
_smartphone_ to get a job (or a promotion, I don't recall). It was in finance.
The idea is, if you belong to the right social class, you are allowed to go
up. If they spot you for a commoner, you're not. Simple as that.

Think this is a stretch? I'v read an article (American article) about how
someone was denied a job because of how she dressed. Oh she was dressed all
right, neat and all, but she also had a dark skin (okay, she was black), and
here is what the boss said once the interview was over: _" my, you don't wear
a tank top under your shirt, you wear a silk shell!"_.

Such a little detail, but that was nevertheless a sign that this applicant was
perhaps not as rich as she should have been.

------
denzil_correa
Why?

> Lombard wanted to cut 20% of staff — about 22,000 employees — to reduce debt
> and make the company more competitive. But many workers retained the
> protections they had enjoyed as civil servants.

What?

> Between 2008 and 2009, there were 19 suicides of employees, who left notes
> blaming the company or who killed themselves at work. Twelve others
> attempted suicide during that period.

How?

> Engineers were demoted to call center jobs. Employees say they were
> micromanaged, isolated and assigned jobs without training. Families were
> moved across the country multiple times in short periods of time.

What happens if they are found guilty?

> The defendants face up to a year in prison and fines of 15,000 euros (about
> $16,750).

~~~
chrisseaton
Did you understand from the article why the workers felt trapped in these
jobs? Was the economy or sector extremely bad at the time?

~~~
pilooch
It was a public service company, France Telecom, and employees were looking at
their job as being civil servants in a way. Management decided to force many
changes on employees in the hope they would resign. Many committed suicide or
got sick, depressed etc...

~~~
chrisseaton
Yes the article says all that. It doesn’t say what is was that trapped them in
these jobs though. How did it get so bad? Why did people kill themselves
rather than resign?

~~~
wolco
You would never resign. Those jobs are for life and have benefits and
pensions.

It's like a startup who offers high stock options vested over a period for
early employees. They grow too quickly and try to push the early employees out
without triggering a clause that allows them to take back the options if they
quit. They try to place them in jobs they are over qualified or not suited
for.

Would you quit and leave money on the table.

------
lapnitnelav
I haven't worked at Orange / FT but I think I wouldn't be wrong emphasising
how strongly top-down corporate structures in France can be, as opposed to the
US.

Put simply, your boss is "expected" to know more than you, you're not really
supposed to question that. Easy to see how that can degenerate when going
through such a change.

~~~
TomMarius
This was a public company (or some sort of weird in between, in this case).
This matches my experience with my local public companies - contrary to
private corporate environment which is definitely not good, but much
preferable.

~~~
chrisseaton
Not sure what you're saying - do you think public companies aren't
corporations?

~~~
alehul
I believe the above poster meant “public service” as mentioned by the top-
level comment, or “government-owned.”

Edit: to be more clear, as in contrary to “private, corporate” mentioned
above.

Hence why one refers to work in the private sector, which could mean a
privately-owned or publicly-traded company, but not something government-
owned/operated.

~~~
chrisseaton
But public services and government owned are also corporations. Corporation
doesn't mean 'for-profit public company'. It just means a group with a legal
identity.

For example British Broadcasting Corporation.

~~~
TomMarius
For example in my country corporations are strictly for profit. It is also not
just a "corporation", but a "business corporation" (there is no "corporation"
by itself). Public companies are either publicly traded private companies and
the state holds stock, or "publicly-owned enterprise" or another special
category.

The point was that I think there is value in distinguishing public companies
and private companies because it's completely different from employee's and
career viewpoint.

------
praptak
1\. Not every action to increase the share price is justified.

2\. It's not an amorphous corporation that does wrong, it's particular people.

This should happen more often.

~~~
Scoundreller
It’s not just share prices. Telecom competition in France is next level.

I’m on holiday in France. SIM card was mailed to me for free. Activated an
unlimited call/SMS and 4gb data for 10 EUR, or about US$12, and that includes
their sales taxes.

And this isn’t the oft-mentioned Free, just a random MVNO that mainly targets
immigrants.

(Ok, it actually cost me 15 EUR because bloody iMessage sent a short code SMS
to send tell Apple HQ what my new number is and ate some credit before I could
sign up for the plan)

~~~
xvf22
Ugh, I wish Canada had anywhere near these prices. It's about $40+ for 4GB of
data and unlimited text but that's with a more limited coverage area. For
national carriers it's $10-$15 more per month.

~~~
Scoundreller
The French can get 100gb for less than that, and that includes 25gb of
roaming, including to Canada.

I would have signed up with that company, but I didn’t want to have to go to a
boutique to signup ;)

------
Jonnax
I've met many people that romanticise the role of executives as those
burdening an incredible responsibility and therefore are compensated as such.

But this is one of the first times where I see there's some potential
consequence to negative or destruction actions conducted.

~~~
marvin
Well, they made a lot of money by reducing the personnel costs in spite of the
law making it very difficult to do so. So they definitely earned their
salaries. The system works for optimizing profit under the contraints that
exists. Notably, there are no moral constraints defined, and the morality of
these actions are not a subject in this trial.

I think this is a sad state of affairs. It could work if the law perfectly
reflected the ethics.

------
Scoundreller
Text only article:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=724476109](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=724476109)

------
laurentl
I worked at France Telecom/Orange from 2004 to 2017. Let me give a bit more
context to the situation.

1) as mentioned in the article and comments elsewhere, the majority of
employees in FT at that time were civil servants. This meant (as per the
privatization deal that was defined by the French govt at the time) that they
could not be fired. Ever.

2) the population was pretty old (the average employee age when I joined in
2004 was 48 years old). A _lot_ of people were hired in 1976-1980 by the
then-“ministry of posts and telegraphs” to bring copper to every home in
France. Those linemen and women were around 50 in 2004. Needless to say, every
home in France had long since been plugged to the telephone network so their
original work no longer existed. It’s not fun being a 50 year-old civil
servant whose skill set is obsolete and no-linger needed.

3) FT was in pretty bad financial shape after purchasing Orange at the height
of the dot-com bubble. I remember endless cost-reduction plans at that time,
initiated by Lombard’s predecessor (Thierry Breton, who is now C.E.O. of
Atos). As an example, the 2003-2005 objective was 15B€ in savings, IIRC.

4) Competition in the French telco space was already fierce at that time. FT,
as the incumbent, was under obligation to provide its infrastructures and bulk
service at cost+ to all the newcomers. Suddenly it could no longer charge what
it pleased, and had to learn about marketing and sales and customer service.
At the same time it also had to become a competitive internet provider and
mobile operator.

5) Of course the obvious answer was to transition the historic workforce to
new jobs required by the change in context and technology: telemarketing,
customer service, IT infrastructure (my first job was web developer, and the
ops team for our production infrastructure was party made up of ex-linemen.
Needless to say, not all of them were comfortable with system administration,
and I spent a lot of hours on the phone with them spelling out bash commands).
Besides the skills gap, it’s also a very large mindset shift to go from
proudly contributing to the modernization and wellbeing of your country, to
trying to upsell your customers on a faster Internet offer. (Think going from
Bell in its glory days to current-day Comcast)

6) for a very long time, FT’s top leadership (and I mean like the top 4-5
management layers, including all the excom and the CEO - basically anyone at
VP level or above) came almost exclusively from a small group of engineers,
the “Corps des Télécoms”. These people are extremely bright but not always
gifted on the emotional intelligence scale. And they’re very loyal to the
company. Plus, there was a huge amount of groupthink — they basically all
reason the same way. This only started to change with Lombard’s successor,
Stéphane Richard. I mean, he’s also from the Grandes École elite circle, but
he went to a business school rather than an engineering one, so, you know.
(/s)

Now, I absolutely do NOT condone what happened in FT at that time. But its
management had to deal with massive debt, eroding revenues and margins,
intense competition, and a large, ageing workforce who needed to be reskilled
and had trouble transitioning from public service to competitive market. And
who could not be let go.

It was a pretty shitty context, and arguably a textbook example that too much
worker protection can actually be a bad thing for the workers themselves. I
mean, if a mass layoff (with healthy compensation packages and re-training and
so forth) had been possible, FT’s management would most definitely have gone
for it, rather than bullying people until they left of their own accord (or
took their own life).

~~~
brmgb
> 6) for a very long time, FT’s top leadership (and I mean like the top 4-5
> management layers, including all the excom and the CEO - basically anyone at
> VP level or above) came almost exclusively from a small group of engineers,
> the “Corps des Télécoms”

There will be plenty to write about the incredible damage done to France by
polytechnicians in the last fifty years.

I used to work for another state owned company and they were still catapulting
freshly graduated polytechnician to important management position when I left
a couple years ago. It was beyond funny because all the good elements who had
already proved they were good at the actual job were getting deprived of
promotion and just weren't listened to when it came time to take decision.
They then either became jaded and stopped contributing or just left.

Top management (themselves former polytechnicians) would keep communicating
about how the rank and file was so ineffective and expensive while all their
improvement plans kept failing.

Meanwhile, Polytechnique keeps using its clout to sabotage any effort to
reform the French higher education system.

~~~
mcguire
Here in the US, we sent most of those people to the RAND corporation and
outsourced "national security" to them.

We managed to live through it. 8-)

------
dorfsmay
Not defending the horrible pressure techniques, but how was a company which
had now lost its protected market and facing competition for the first time
while unable to let go employees supposed to be competitive and make a profit?

~~~
conanbatt
Normally by getting a subsidy to not fire people. This is what happens when
the state heavily limits firing and companies go under because of it.

~~~
dorfsmay
Was it the case here?

~~~
conanbatt
Doesn't look like it, but this kind of situation is known in argentina where
it's unconstitutional to fire a public employee. Voluntary retirements are
somewhat effective, but also expensive which is usually the crisis that pushes
states to privatize.

------
poutrathor
Disclaimer : I don't agree with harassment methods used in France (more
below).

France Telecom's bit :

Please note that the numbers of suicides at France Telecom was not even
statistically so high :

[https://www.atlantico.fr/decryptage/85841/suicides-a-
france-...](https://www.atlantico.fr/decryptage/85841/suicides-a-france-
telecom--realite-des-statistiques-contre-force-de-l-emotion) (yeah google
translate)

> Analysons en effet avec objectivité les chiffres concernant ce sujet grave.
> Le nombre annuel de suicides parmi les employés du groupe France Telecom sur
> le territoire français a été de 28 en 2000, 23 en 2001, 23 en 2002, 22 en
> 2003, 13 en 2008, 19 en 2009, 25 en 2010.

> le « taux de suicide théorique » atteint alors près de 16,9 pour 100 000.
> Ainsi, le taux de suicide constaté chez France Télécom à 19 pour 100 000

Taking into account the age, male/female repartition and the industry average,
these are the 2 numbers : 17/100000 vs 19/100000\. You can check other
countries suicides rates for these population to notice it's not abnormal -
people got sick.

So what has happened : some people squarely laid the blame on the employer for
their suicide in notes or letters (one such letter being written 2 years
before the act - 2 years to react). The cases were hugely publicized.

I am pretty sure work(place) issues are a major cause of suicide, being the
bread winning activity & so consuming so many hours and human interaction.
Lack of work is a bigger factor too when you look at suicide frequency between
active / inactive adults.

Hope this give a more open view than "bad management - no donut".

France bit :

It was really hard to fire people in France. The employee needs to messed up
pretty big. It's next to impossible to fire public servants. The absolute
opposite is the USA, where managers can fire their subordinates almost
instantly (which brings in a bigger lot of issues and abuse).

So how do a team get rid of someone screwing up, not working, not team-
playing, even actively hindering the team ? You don't. At best, you can put
this employee to a new team or assign it a useless project (or more exactly, a
project that the company accepts will never get finished). If the under
performing employee does not want to be trained for new jobs, no consequences
for him/her. Public service in France is ridden with such people, and
government is paying twice for their work : once in their salary, once in the
salary of someone actually doing it or a private contractor. I have work
with&for such people and it's horrible.

So French management have these horrible & convoluted ways to make people
leave the company. Giving them useless assignments, always poor performances
reviews, etc.

French employees are very very well protected (thanks to decades of unions
fighting) and it's much much better to be employed by French corporations than
USA or British ones.

Nowadays, we might have reached a point where the downsides of this protection
on economic performance are doubled by necessary hypocrisy in management. The
social contract "work for the company, get paid for your work" is not holding.
You can get paid without working. And you can work without getting paid enough
(but I dare say it's the rarer of both in France).

It's changing under Macron's reforms which disgruntled privileged workers and
which worried unprivileged ones. Now, there is a upper bound cost for firing
someone & companies can plan on it. Remember, when fired, we got unemployment
benefits + company's compensation. You also got the state's benefits when both
you and the company agrees on you leaving the company.

Americans have no idea how amazing our social welfare is. And Frenches have no
idea either.

------
purplezooey
"Employees ... can receive significant severance pay, which provides a
financial cushion while they look for a new job."

Imagine that. Laws that help people.

------
Aeolun
Ah privatization. The success story that knows no end.

~~~
wazoox
Like when they privatized energy because "competition will lower prices". In
France, since the "opening to competition", electricity prices went up 44
percent. What's not to love?

~~~
sokoloff
So, in the last 12 years, electricity went up 44% (or 3% per year)? That does
not seem extraordinary to me.

~~~
wazoox
That's much higher than the inflation rate (which never was over 2% and often
around 0).

------
adfhaethsfthg
"Defense is arguing how Orange was facing an existential crisis at the time."

This sounds like something out of a bad movie. Corporations are people, too!

~~~
dang
Could you please stop creating accounts for every comment you post? We ban
accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some
identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames
and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit
uses for throwaways, just not routinely.

Lots more explanation:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
skookumchuck
The unanticipated downside of a policy of nobody can be fired.

~~~
walshemj
Presumably they meant made redundant - I suspect you could be fired for cause.

