France Telecom Suicides: Toxic Management Goes on Trial

L’affaire France Télécom, which a decade ago shocked the entire nation and transformed one of France’s biggest employers into a symbol of workplace depression, is currently before the courts. The case has taken France into uncharted territory and its conclusion on July 12th promises to be a watershed moment for French society. Former boss Didier Lombard and six of his fellow directors at the time, as well as the company itself as a ‘moral person’, stand accused of ‘moral harassment,’ defined in French labor law as ‘repeated acts having as their object or effect a deterioration of an employee’s working conditions,’ in ways that are likely to encroach on a worker’s rights or dignity, impact their physical or mental health, or effect their promotion prospects. Over the next eight weeks the former directors will respond to the accusations and give details of the effects of NExT, the restructuring program implemented by the group’s management fourteen years ago. Designed to profoundly transform the company, this program may well have provoked the suicides of 35 staff members in 2008 and 2009.

Managerial autism

Founder of Technologia, a firm specializing in the prevention of psychosocial risk, Jean-Claude Delgènes still has the affair fresh in his mind. For him the scandal was a watershed moment in the history of employee-management relations in France. With good reason. In July 2009, when France Telecom registered its 17th suicide of the year and the story exploded into the public consciousness, the company brought in Technologia to carry out an external audit. During a period of six months Delgènes and his team were embedded at France Telecom. They heard stories of staff being ‘mothballed or forcibly relocated’ and of management and HR turning a deaf ear when staff complained about the treatment they were receiving.

Already called to provide testimony at the trial, he described a culture of suffering and silence. “In the three years prior to 2009 there were numerous complaints, several coming from workers’ representatives, others from in-house medical staff. Every one of them fell on deaf ears. There was a kind of managerial autism and, thus, no follow up because management were determined to push through their restructuring plan at any cost,” explains David Mahé, head of Stimulus, a mental health organization. For Mahé, the problem resided not in the ambition of the plan, but in the way it was executed. “No one is disputing the fact that France Telecom needed to be restructured. What people have an issue with is the way that restructuring was achieved.”

Transformation by hook or by crook

A contributing factor was that France Telecom staff had only just come out of a first wave of restructuring. Orchestrated by then chairman Thierry Breton between 2002 and 2005 to bring the group’s spiraling debt under control, the program led to the departure of some 27,000 staff who, nonetheless, were given reasonably good redundancy packages. When Didier Lombard succeeded Breton in early 2005, he decided to maintain the pressure on staff to leave. The ambition was clear: obtain another 22,000 departures and a further 14,000 changes of position – ‘by the door or by the window’, he is alleged to have said. The tone was set. But there was a problem, the pool of those willing to accept voluntary redundancy had been used up and, as Jean Claude Delgènes states, although France Telecom had recently privatized, staff were still on civil-servant contracts which essentially made them impossible to fire. To get around this problem, Lombard orchestrated what David Mahé calls a ‘forced transformation’ which was rapid and brutal. “Founded on techniques designed to thwart staff-members’ freedom of choice, this strategy, labelled ‘time-to-move’, forced middle-managers to continually relocate and let be relocated staff underneath them or face being relocated themselves,” according to Delgènes. In an organization such as France Telecom, which had always had a culture of carrying out projects, the result was disastrous.

Institutionalized harassment

“Teams at France Telecom were used to mobilizing to carry out major projects, now these same teams were being mobilized to get rid of as many staff as possible as quickly as possible,” explains Delgènes. France Telecom’s grand projects had always been a source of professional pride for staff but by relentlessly chipping away at staff moral, management had transformed 'the project' into a source of profound anxiety. To compound matters, as staff suffered, the bonuses directors collected went up 40% between 2005 and 2009. “It is precisely this tactical choice that France Telecom and its directors at the time are answering for now, this form of institutionalized harassment which was built into the management system.”

It is this, not to mention the number of civil cases being brought in a sort of class-action à la française, that makes this such a groundbreaking case. “In this case, the courts are not examining the actions of one person, but the decision of a company to organize work in a toxic way,” explains Mahé. For the first time, a company is in the dock, not for failing to clamp down on moral harassment, but for actively encouraging it. “Not for having let it happen, but for having created a system of management that put staff at risk.”

The impact of this case will have far-reaching consequences, and not just for the directors whose case is now being heard in Paris. “Whatever happens,” estimates Jean-Claude Delgènes “the outcome of this case will set the tone for the way workers are – and can be – treated by management in this country.” Not only in terms of the legal precedent, but also what is socially acceptable.   

Caroline Castets