Multiple suicides lead to charges against Telecoms company

umop episdn

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/former-orange-executives-to-stand-trial-after-wave-of-employee-suicides-claims-over-30-lives-37017414.html

Orange, Didier Lombard & other officials have been charged with engaging or assisting in psychological harassment leading to the suicide of 30 employees..it carries a 2 year jail term and a possible fine if proven...
Lombard decided to go on a cost cutting mission and forced people into new jobs and enforced targets that were impossible to meet....
In a 10 day period...5 people took their own lives.... just let that sink in....
why was this situation allowed to evolve....are the big multinational companies so oblivious to people's basic human needs and wants that they will push...and push until the individual feels there is no escape?
What kind of mental torture did these people endure?....
Could this happen here?.... I think not.., our system is flawed, but I think we have become more enlightened over the last 10 or so years in respect to mental health issues, bullying in the workplace...I'm not saying it doesn't happen.... but we have the systems in place to stop a tragedy on this scale don't we?

jon1981

I was aware of this a number of years ago and was extremely annoyed over the lack of media attention around this. This mechanism to sack people is a pure criminal act! Would be considered constructive dismissal here right?

Also given the employee rights French workers enjoy i was amazed that they could get away with this at the time.

_Dara_

Christ, I’ve never heard of this. :eek:

A lad from my hometown committed suicide because of workplace bullying twenty years ago. The bullying was of a more physical nature but it still saddens me to this day to think about it.

seenitall

The first I've heard of this, given that I have a good friend working in that company in Paris

He's a very, very tough cookie though - mentally bulletproof kind of tough. When I ask how it's going at work, the most dramatic answer I would get would be in the region of "oh, it's been fairly busy the last few months" ! :pac:

TheValeyard

Thats some scary stuff


I wonder what other companies are up to similar tricks.

Wanderer78

Murray TheDemonic TalkingSkull wrote:

I wonder what other companies are up to similar tricks.

eishtec are known to be truly dreadful employers, probably not as bad as this crowd though, but I've met many that have experienced the true awfulness of them

PopePalpatine

Fucking hell, and here's me thinking them deleting Super Hans's twins was bad.

meeeeh

jon1981 wrote: »

Also given the employee rights French workers enjoy i was amazed that they could get away with this at the time.

Probably because of that. If it's too hard to let people go other methods will be used. It's absolutely despicable though.

Your Face

No way it will be proven.

Stigura

Your Face wrote: »

No way it will be proven.

Look at the British governments standard issue response:

" Suicide is a complex issue ..... "

JustAThought

Appalling though not unsurprising - but all those people. That is utterly horrific. Why was this not front page news - or is quiet because it is before the courts.

I know someone who went into a team meeting where he was told he would not be paid for the work he was doing that was requested and needed nor getting even minimum wage for it - he walked out of the meeting,went home,had a smoke and hung himself.

People seem to become utter psychopaths in their dealings with /management of others in work - you have to wonder what kind of homes they were brought up in to lose their humanity or morals when they step inside an office.

I hear in Ireland we have our own problem with people jumping off the top floor of a prominent internet company and killing themselves at a rate that is frightening. Of course you will never find that in a search engine search.

God help them all.

Seth Brundle

JustAThought wrote: »

I hear in Ireland we have our own problem with people jumping off the top floor of a prominent internet company and killing themselves at a rate that is frightening. Of course you will never find that in a search engine search.

What's this?

Blazer

About goddamn time. This was all over the news back in 2010.
Scandalous that its taken 8 years to bring those bastards to court.
To make it even worse they had another spate of suicides in 2014 which just goes to show that they took no steps afterwards to prevent any recurrences.