Maximum sentences sought for bosses
French prosecutors on Friday urged a Paris court to find the former bosses of France Telecom guilty of “moral harassment” and hand down maximum sentences over a wave of employee suicides that rocked the company and country a decade ago.
Between 2008 to 2009, 35 employees of the former state-owned telecom giant, now known as Orange, took their own lives in the midst of a restructuring plan during which bosses set out to cut over a fifth of the workforce.
Some of the victims, one of whom jumped out of a fifth-floor window in front of her colleagues, left notes expressing deep unhappiness at work. One man directly accused France Telecom, saying the company was “the sole cause” of his desperate act.
The suicides caused much soul-searching about workplace culture, at a time when many big French companies were coming under pressure to be more competitive.
Seven former France Telecom bosses, including former CEO Didier Lombard and the former head of human resources Olivier Barberot, are accused of putting in place a system of “institutional harassment” aimed at forcing workers to resign.
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