Critical hours in the trial for suicides in …

From Paris

Prosecutors Françoise Benezech and Brigitte Pesquié accuse the leaders of the multinational France Telecom, responsible for a crime as commonplace as invisible: six hours later, a charge of rhetoric on steel The trade unionists of the company , the lawyers and relatives of the 35 people who committed suicide in the heart of the French telephone giant listen to the arguments in an emotional silence. The two prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence for the defendants: one year in prison, a fine of 15,000 euros and 75,000 euros more for France Telecom. The three leaders, Didier Lombard (former general president), Louis-Pierre Wenès (number two) and Olivier Barberot (director of human resources) do not yet understand what this accusation consists of. It is, however, a clbadic of the management methods adopted by the major groups which, in the 1990s, began to be partially or totally privatized or to import from the private world the mythology of management within public companies. Persecution of staff, dictatorial performance, extreme rationalization of tasks, measure of efficiency, vigilance, authoritarianism, threats, changes of position and pressures of all kinds so that, failing to be dismissed, employees leave alone. Some had worked all their lives as specialized technicians on poles to repair lines or connections. Overnight, a mutation occurred and they found themselves selling phones in a Parisian shop.

France Telecom has become the first listed company to be judged for moral harbadment, that is, responsible for the consequences of this policy for its employees. Attorney Brigitte Pesquié spoke of "harbadment erected in strategy within one of the largest companies in the country". The most macabre details of what is judged in France appear impeccably documented in several books published in Argentina on the impact of privatizations: one of the most exhaustive authors is Damián Pierbattisti, both for his book Privatization of organisms (Prometheus books) or works such as Management, subjectivity and political culture: the new spirit of capitalism twenty years after the privatization of ENTEL. In Paris, the lawyers of the trade unions denounced "the voluntary blindness" of the directors of the companies, or what the Jean-Paul Teissonnière described with an extraordinary precision like "the biggest accident of the work organized by the" 39; employer ". What is at stake in the process is not only the working conditions to which employees were subjected during the privatization phase, but also the deception involved in social plans to "lose weight" for society some 22,000 men. To achieve this goal, a total war against the staff is triggered. Only 1,600 of them agreed to voluntarily leave the company by various means (agreed departures, early retirement). These are two projects, Next and Act, whose objective was to transform the company France Telecom (Orange since 2013) in three years with the condition of redeploying 10,000 people within the company and the departure of 22,000 people. the 120,000 employees of the early 2000s. The destabilization of employees was one of the most used weapons during this decade. Either they go for good or they go through bad. 35 of them committed suicide (the unions claim that the figure reaches 76). Before doing so, they left quivering letters in which they recounted the daily torture they were undergoing at work. Michel Deparis committed suicide on July 14, 2009. In his letter, he wrote: "I committed suicide because of France Telecom, which is the only cause."

The trial comes at a time of questioning the practices and limits of liberalism and the role of business in private life. The question that underlies the debate is: to what degree of demand can we achieve in the name of productivity? Is it possible, as was the case with France Telecom, to destroy a life, to humiliate a person, to devastate his professional identity and human dignity simply to satisfy stock market indices? The denunciations of these exuberations of subjugation were in the streets of France when the movement of yellow vests broke out in November 2018. Didier Lombard, CEO of France Telecom, told his leaders that he wanted to facilitate the task people leaving "by the window or by the door". However, according to the defendants, the proposals are false. Today, they admit that "the adaptation and reorganization were going to be difficult for the employees", but they question the argument of the prosecutors, namely the moral harbadment. However, for more than 10 years, France Telecom has been the emblem of what is known as "suffering at work". In the name of management, the media economy, planetary ambitions and the conquest of markets, a petty, authoritarian and degrading interpretation of the human condition has been made. Submit at all costs, without compbadion or consideration, by degradation. "You killed my father, and all that, why?", Is interviewed Noémie Louvradoux in the Paris Criminal Court. His father, Rémy Louvradoux, was immolated on April 26, 2011 in Gironde. His case was, for the Court, the common thread that explains all the disorders: "reorganizations, mobility, health at work, qualifications, lower wages". The official Rémy Louvradoux saw his life transformed in 2006. His position was removed and, between 2006 and 2009, he was given four different functions within the group. In 2009, he wrote a letter to the management of the company: "This situation is rampant because no one is responsible for it, suicide is the solution." Nobody listened to it. Only 10 years later, justice seeks to repair the expected slow death in their workplace.