35 Employees Committed Suicide. Will Their Bosses Go to Jail?

[Zorro]

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/europe/france-telecom-trial.html

[dalton99a]

1. "If convicted, the ex-executives face a year in jail and a $16,800 fine."

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.” Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

[CrispyQ]

2. All men.

And yet how many times in my career did I hear people, men & women, say, "I hate working for a woman." I have had really good bosses of both sexes, but my worst bosses were all men.

[Blue_Tires]

3. Didn't Corporate Japan use to do something like this, too?

I remember how they used to get real crazy with the pettiness when they wanted someone to quit...

Hell, this 'treatment' had happened to me on my job before (university employee) but nowhere near this extreme.

[3Hotdogs]

4. I taught in a N.J. public high school.

When teachers reached the (then) Social Security age of 64, their evaluations suddenly turned south, followed by threats of tenure charges.

That stopped when one of the teachers taped his supervisor making contradictory recommendations for improvement and then criticizing
him for following the "silly" recommendations.

When he produced the tape, he was offered a buy-out of over $100k.

[Marie Marie]

5. Here in America, these bosses would be offered a job in the Trump Administration.

Good for France - hope they lock these guys up.