Workplace safety

The chairman and CEO of France Telecom, Didier Lombard, has pledged to take measures aimed at stopping what he called "the infernal spiral of suicides" at the company by the end of the year.

Plans include giving support to his executive staff and listening to the concerns of salaried employees.

"We really must stop this movement," said Lombard, as he prepared to meet with French Labor Minister Xavier Darcos to discuss the wave of suicides that has hit the company.

23 deaths since 2008

Twenty-three employees have killed themselves since the beginning of 2008. The latest was Friday, Sept. 11, when a 32-year-old woman jumped out of the window of her fourth-floor office in Paris.

Two days earlier, another employee stabbed himself in the stomach during a meeting. The incidents prompted Labor Minister Darcos to call a meeting with CEO Lombard to discuss working conditions at Telecom.

Union officials blame the company, saying restructuring, including the fact that some 22,000 jobs have been cut over the past several years, was at least partly responsible for the suicides. They accuse management of failing to take measures to head off the problem.

"The crisis at France Telecom is now a national problem," said unions Force Ouvriere and CFTC in a joint statement. "Full light must be shed on the causes of these tragedies and on the growing malaise within the company."

Looking for reasons

President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, told RTL radio: "It is the duty and obligation of the company and of the government, which is a powerful shareholder, to examine this issue."

"Suicide is a very serious, very personal affair and we cannot reduce this phenomenon at France Telecom to an organizational problem at the company," Gueant told RTL.

However, the Sarkozy administration has said that, in many of the cases, the suicides were based on personal reasons, and said Telecom was not fully to blame for the deaths.

Moreover, it was not clear if the total was more than could be expected in a population of 100,000 - the size of the company's French workforce. The 23 deaths in nearly two years compare with an overall French suicide rate of about 15 per 100,000 people per year.

Still, Telecom has begun taking steps to deal with the festering problem. They have suspended 500 employee transfers that are a part of an ongoing reorganization, and have put out a call for employees to watch their colleagues for signs of depression.

“There will be a clear message to all the managers to quickly organize local team meetings to explain what happened and what's being done, and to make sure that, if there are problems, they can be discussed,'' spokesman Sebastien Audra told reporters.

Fighting the problem

There area also plans to give workers the chance to talk to psychologists outside the company if they feel they are facing unsurmountable problems. A committee will be set up to take an inventory of the situation, and the number of workplace physicians will be increased.

"By the end of the year we should be able to start from a new basis," Lombard told reporters. "France Telecom in December will not be the same company as it is today."

jen/Reuters/AFP/dpa

Editor: Susan Houlton