Condemned French telecommunications company - French telecommunications company convicted of 'moral harassment' after employee suicides.

The former CEO of a French telecommunications company was sentenced to prison in connection with a series of employee suicide, with a worker who was killed after describing "management by terror" in the company.

The court ruling passed in a Paris court on Friday limits for the first time in France that a major company has been tried for "collective moral harassment," and sentenced to four months in prison and a fine of over $ 16,000 by Didier Lombard. , former CEO of the French telephone and Internet service provider now known as Orange.

The company itself must pay a fine of $ 75,000, or more than $ 83,000, along with further damages. Jail time and fines were also enforced by two senior executives, former Lombard MP Louis-Pierre Wenes and human resources director Olivier Barberot, while a handful of other managers also received verdicts from guilt.

Condemned French telecommunications company

The roots of the case go back about two decades, to a period when the company, then known as France Télécom, was still part of the Government Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Once a state monopoly, the company sold most of its shares, and underwent a privatization process in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

This process left its employees in an awkward situation: they still enjoyed the strong labor protections of public officials, but worked for a newly limited administrative structure in the market, and sought to reduce the costs of competing. As reporter Jake Cigainero reported on NPR earlier this year, Didier wanted to reduce company staffing by about 20,000, to around 22,000, but most selected employees resisted the idea of ​​resigning.

So Didier and his fellow executives and managers embarked on a campaign to get them to do it anyway, a kind of "terror management," in the words of an employee's suicide note. Think: degradation, degrading work, micromanagement, repeated reassignment, or absolute isolation. Or, as Lombard once said, simply getting workers to go "out the window or through the door."

The court examined 39 cases by the end of the 2000s, including 19 employees who took their lives off the job or with suicide notes blaming the company, and 12 others who sought to do so.

"I am committing suicide because of my job at France Telecom," said a suicide note, which appeared to appear in court. "It's the only cause."

Lombard and his associates have always denied wrongdoing. Speaking with reporters in 2009, he said "pressure is needed because we have to compete in the world market." A massive restructuring was necessary for the company's economic survival, he said before acknowledging: "There is a way to be more humane in doing so."

Wenes apologized and Lombard admitted to making a "mistake", but executives have ruled out the idea that they played a significant role in a series of suicides from people he didn't know personally. In 2010, Lombard left the company, which has since undergone a change in brand.

Lombard is expected to appeal the verdict on Friday, which imposed Wenes and Barberot on a one-year prison sentence, with a suspended eight months.

The historical case and its decision have drawn attention in the courtrooms and courts of France. Reuters reports that while individual managers have been convicted of moral harassment in France before, this is the first time a company has been operating.

"In financial terms, the sentence is slight," said a white-collar crime attorney specializing in cable service, "but this is the first time a French company has received a criminal conviction for moral harassment and this is very bad in terms of reputation. "