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.<\/span>
<\/span>The men \u2014 all former top executives at France\u2019s giant telecom company \u2014 wanted to downsize the business by thousands of workers a decade ago. But they couldn\u2019t fire most of them. The workers were state employees \u2014 employees for life \u2014 and therefore protected.<\/span>
<\/span>So the executives resolved to make life so unbearable that the workers would leave, prosecutors say. Instead, at least 35 employees \u2014 workers\u2019 advocates say nearly double that number \u2014 committed suicide, feeling trapped, betrayed and despairing of ever finding new work in France\u2019s immobile labor market.<\/span>
<\/span>Today the former top executives of France T\u00e9l\u00e9com \u2014 once the national phone company, and now one of the nation\u2019s biggest private enterprises, Orange \u2014 are on trial for \u201cmoral harassment.\u201d It is the first time that French bosses, caught in the vise of France\u2019s strict labor protections, have been prosecuted for systemic harassment that led to worker deaths.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span><\/span>
\u201cThe company was going under and it didn\u2019t even know it,\u201d Mr. Lombard, the ex-chief executive, testified. \u201cWe could have gone about it much more gently if we hadn\u2019t had the competition banging on our door.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>Unfortunately for Mr. Lombard, he was recorded saying in 2007 that he would reach the quota of layoffs \u201cone way or another, by the window or by the door.\u201d The window is what a number of the employees chose.<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cThis isn\u2019t going to be lacework here,\u201d Mr. Barberot said in 2007. \u201cWe\u2019re going to put people in front of life\u2019s realities.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>To the mounting signs of distress management turned a deaf ear, testimony at the trial suggested.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIn the United States, those executives would have gotten a glowing profile in Entrepreneur<\/i> magazine, and the workers would have ended up going postal.<\/p>\n
Here is hoping that those bastards burn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s not for the food, and it’s not for the theater, and it’s not for the existentialism. It’s for the work environment. In the US bullied workers shoot their coworkers, while in france bosses are facing criminal charges over conditions that led to employee suicides: In their blue blazers and tight haircuts, the aging men …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[450,371,364,407],"class_list":["post-177681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-employment","tag-europe","tag-evil","tag-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}