
Macron’s Plan to Get French Youth onto the Factory Floor - wikibob
https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/macron-s-plan-to-get-french-youth-onto-the-factory-floor
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Yes, I can see the lines of those pampered socialistic darlings now, hand out
for more wages, carrying strike posters. Frawnce has ruined itself, lived off
future potential earnings and surrendered what taxes it caan gather to pay
early, inflated pensions to retired union people. New York times says behind
their paywall [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/europe/france-
telec...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/europe/france-telecom-
trial.html) By Adam Nossiter July 9, 2019

PARIS — In their blue blazers and tight haircuts, the aging men look
uncomfortable in the courtroom dock. And for good reason: they are accused of
harassing employees so relentlessly that workers ended up killing themselves.

The men — all former top executives at France’s giant telecom company — wanted
to downsize the business by thousands of workers a decade ago. But they
couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees — employees for
life — and therefore protected.

So the executives resolved to make life so unbearable that the workers would
leave, prosecutors say. Instead, at least 35 employees — workers’ advocates
say nearly double that number — committed suicide, feeling trapped, betrayed
and despairing of ever finding new work in France’s immobile labor market.

Today the former top executives of France Télécom — once the national phone
company, and now one of the nation’s biggest private enterprises, Orange — are
on trial for “moral harassment.” It is the first time that French bosses,
caught in the vise of France’s strict labor protections, have been prosecuted
for systemic harassment that led to worker deaths.

The trial has riveted a country deeply conflicted about capitalism and
corporate culture, and may help answer a question that haunts the French as
they fitfully modernize their economy: How far can a company go to streamline,
shed debt and make money?

If convicted, the ex-executives face a year in jail and a $16,800 fine. But
even before the trial wraps up on July 12, with a verdict sometime later, it
has become a landmark in the country’s often hostile relations between labor
and management.

As President Emmanuel Macron has sought to make France more business-friendly,
he has run into a buzz saw of strikes and faced a revolt among Yellow Vest
protesters who accuse him of being the president of the rich. While many
workers complain they struggle to make ends meet, employers say a system of
generous social benefits and worker protections makes hiring onerous and
stifles job creation.

Didier Lombard, the former chief executive of France Télécom, center, was
recorded saying in 2007 that he would reach the quota of layoffs “one way or
another, by the window or by the door.”

ImageDidier Lombard, the former chief executive of France Télécom, center, was
recorded saying in 2007 that he would reach the quota of layoffs “one way or
another, by the window or by the door.” Didier Lombard, the former chief
executive of France Télécom, center, was recorded saying in 2007 that he would
reach the quota of layoffs “one way or another, by the window or by the
door.”CreditStephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The trial
has become a searing demonstration of those lingering tensions.

France Télécom was caught flat-footed by the digital revolution, as fixed-line
subscribers dropped away by the thousands. The state ordered the company to go
private in 2003, and by 2005, it was over $50 billion in debt.

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