
Former top executives of France Télécom on trial for harassing employees - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/europe/france-telecom-trial.html
======
hkai
> But they couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees —
> employees for life — and therefore protected.

It would be interesting to see research that shows whether being an "employee
for life" in an office environment (as opposed to judges) leads to more
productivity or other benefits.

35 out 22,000 employees committing suicide is a very high number. If that
started in 2007 and happened let's say over 5 years, that would be double of
the average Paris suicide rate among adults, or the same as in the worst
regions of France (Normandie and the north of France in general).

~~~
RivieraKid
> But they couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees —
> employees for life — and therefore protected.

Excessive worker protection is what's wrong with France's economy.

~~~
Cynddl
I'm confused. Can you justify your claim? What is wrong with the French
economy and how is it related to worker protection? France is, e.g., behind
Germany in term of employer protection according to the OECD [1].

[1]
[https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_R](https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_R)

~~~
RivieraKid
Here:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36152571](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36152571)

> The view of many, including the OECD and the European Commission, is that
> the labour market is at the heart of the problem, though it's not the only
> factor.

> That reflects a persistent complaint from business: that it's too expensive
> to hire workers and to fire them or lay them off if they need to.

> The OECD says in its assessment of the French economy: "To reduce the
> duality of the labour market, the procedures for laying off employees,
> particularly those on permanent contracts, need to be simplified and
> shortened….

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Isinlor
"But they couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees —
employees for life — and therefore protected."

I hear the first time about a practice like this on that scale... (besides
communism, but that's not France)

I know that academic tenure works like that, some union management people have
this type of protection, data protection officers, maybe some other special
professions that have a conflict of interest with their employer;

But who in their right mind would hire 20 000 employees (or 130 000?) without
a way to fire them?

What if a company simply does not have work for them? Should the company
invent work for them that is economically not rational?

What if the company goes bankrupt and instead of 20 000 people losing their
job, 130 000 will lose their job?

Is France somehow guaranteeing that France Telecom will not go bankrupt no
matter how much looses and dept they generate?

Could someone explain this concept to me? I genuinely don't understand how
this was/is supposed to work.

~~~
lmm
Hiring a person is seen as a big commitment. You're asking that person to
uproot their life for you (e.g. they might well move home to be in the right
place to do your job), they expect a similar commitment from you in return
(one could draw an analogy to e.g. marriage). You don't just drop them at the
first sign of trouble: you can fire for cause if the employee is actually
doing something wrong, but as long as they keep working and you stay in
business you're expected to keep paying them. So yes, that might mean keeping
them on doing work that they're overqualified for, or where another company in
the market might have a better use for their time, or in the worst case
continuing to pay them when there's simply no work for them to do. (Though in
practice you'd probably negotiate e.g. an early retirement package in that
case).

It's a nicer way to live, not having to fear that you might be kicked to the
curb at any given month. No doubt it comes at a cost to economic growth, but
it's important to remember that the economy exists to improve human lives, not
the other way round.

~~~
Isinlor
So what happens if a company goes bankrupt?

It's a big catastrophe to have to fire 20 000 people, but if that means
keeping 110 000 people employed, the decision would seem straightforward to
me.

How do companies avoid bankruptcy in this type of situation?

BTW - My parents and grandparents lived through communism, with not only
guaranteed, but enforced full employment, but they would argue that it was not
a nicer way to live.

~~~
lmm
> So what happens if a company goes bankrupt?

> It's a big catastrophe to have to fire 20 000 people, but if that means
> keeping 110 000 people employed, the decision would seem straightforward to
> me.

The government has a history of intervening to prevent that kind of big
bankruptcy. But ultimately, if the company does go down it goes down together
- better that than for those at the top to keep paying themselves while
claiming they can't afford to pay others.

> BTW - My parents and grandparents lived through communism, with not only
> guaranteed, but enforced full employment, but they would argue that it was
> not a nicer way to live.

Perhaps both extremes are bad. France does well in polls of life satisfaction
and the like, and those results align with my experience. Shrug.

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will4274
France has a suicide rate of 12.1 per 100k (WHO 2016). With 130,000 employees,
we'd expect 15.73 suicides per year without harassment. The number of years is
unclear - the article mentions privatization in 2003, massive debt by 2005,
and suicides in 2007 and 2009. Presumably (because the article does not
mention it) the policies are no longer in place. 35 suicides are part of the
case and the article mentions "workers’ advocates say nearly double that
number" but doesn't go into details about the criteria.

Cab anybody link another source with more information? I'm continually
disappointed by the NYTs inattention to hard numbers.

~~~
willvarfar
Are suicide rates different for different groups of people, e.g. employed
adults vs unemployed adults?

~~~
will4274
Certainly. And for men vs women, old vs young, and others.

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oracle2025
16K $ is quite a mild punishment for a top executive, but I guess the families
of those dead, und other harrassment victims will sue for damages after the
criminal trial.

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fmajid
I worked for FT 1996-2000, so before these events. One point worth keeping in
mind is they had a surge of hiring in the 70s when the French government
invested massively in digitizing the phone network after decades of neglect.
Trying to retrain them into the new jobs required for the Internet era was
always going to be a struggle.

------
Invictus0
This is a very sad case, but it's easy to see why the French labor market is
in a shambles. Which is worse, firing 20k employees or losing all 130k jobs if
the company goes underwater? Firing employees needs to be done: how can you
build a business without this ability?

Edit: I'm not justifying the harassment: I am speaking only about the larger
labor market.

~~~
rurounijones
If the major company needed to fire 20k people and was legally unable to do so
due to grandfathered in formerly-government-employees then they should have
raised this, brought it up with the government, made it a national
conversation, be the squeaky wheel.

Not harass and screw with the employees to the point of suicide.

Sometimes a work-around to the problem is not better than an actual solution,
no matter how painful the solution may be.

The "Via the window or the door" comment just shows how much they didn't give
a damn about their employees as actual human beings.

~~~
will4274
> If the major company needed to fire 20k people and was legally unable to do
> so due to grandfathered in formerly-government-employees then they should
> have raised this, brought it up with the government, made it a national
> conversation, be the squeaky wheel.

Because the press and people in France are know to be very sympathetic to
tear-jerk stories from major Telecom companies?

The disregard for human beings isn't ok, but the alternative here is the
company going bankrupt, firing all 130k employees, and prompting the sale of
French Telecom infrastructure to foreign corporations at a discount via
liquidation. I'm for that compared to harassment to suicide, but let's not
pretend there's a happy alternative where everybody gets together and saves
the company.

~~~
rurounijones
You seem to be thinking in only the extremes "Drive people to suicide or go
bankcrupt" and "Save the company, rainbows and unicorns".

Get laws changed to allow for the firing and since it would be done publicly
you can make sure the populace would pressure the government to give aid to
those fired.

According to other posts it is apparently not as hard to fire state employees
as is made out in the article but it costs extra money, so company paids the
one-time redundency costs, shit happens, company eats the cost (and maybe the
gov loans / bails them out to cover this one time cost)

There is an entire range of possible options, presenting it as a black and
white "Necessary evil to prevent $ABSOLUTE_WORST_CASE_SCENARIO" is justifying
the worst behaviour.

------
cm2187
The only form of harassment mentioned in the article is allocating employees
to positions they don't like. And from the description of the positions, none
seems particularly terrible. It's not like if they were asked to clean up a
septic tank. And as others mentioned here, it doesn't seem to be a
particularly high suicide rate for France either.

~~~
maeln
This article doesn't go much in detail. A lot of French article describe
better what happen. France Telecom became a case study in a lot of management
classes of what not to do.

They even not really secretive about it, upper management even made classes
for the middle management to teach them how to make someone quit. Giving
bullshit/meaningless task, putting people in position were they had nothing to
do but sit on a chair all day, enforcing dumb rules very strictly and having
in general a very aggressive communication.

A lot of people don't realize how hard these things can be. Having nothing to
do or only meaningless tasks makes you depressed really quickly. Having
suffered it for 2 years, I think most people don't understand how difficult it
can be.

~~~
sgift
> A lot of people don't realize how hard these things can be. Having nothing
> to do or only meaningless tasks makes you depressed really quickly. Having
> suffered it for 2 years, I think most people don't understand how difficult
> it can be.

Yeah. Most people think "what's so bad about free time at work" \- Sure, a few
days of nothing to do sounds great .. but then the days become weeks, then
month and every time you ask "Nope. Nothing to do." and at some point the
realization sinks in that this is what you will do a good part of your waking
day until the end of your life if you do not get out there. But you have
liabilities. People depend on you. You cannot just quit, right? You have to
suck it up? And so on. It's easy to say "quit being dramatic" if you haven't
been affected by it.

~~~
cm2187
Or, you'd rather hang to this sweet "job for life no matter what" contract
nevertheless.

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raverbashing
Goes to show that sometimes a "privilege" can become a burden.

That being said, quitting is better than more extreme actions. But I guess
they were too attached to the idea of "employee for life" (not blaming them)
that they couldn't see a different way out of it.

~~~
kabwj
I don’t understand why the child comment is dead. Being forced to stay in a
shitty job because there are no other jobs is definitely a thing, especially
in Europe.

~~~
raverbashing
While the job market can be complicated sometimes, "no other jobs" is a
stretch, especially for qualified workers.

Service provider companies (common in France) might be tempted to hire people
who know FT's internals for management and contact building.

