> First - the rate of suicides at Orange during this time were pretty much on par with suicide rates in France overall. Orange has 100K employees, and there are going to be suicides every year.
One could argue with this characterization that Lombard himself made all the time. But at any rate, they weren't prosecuted for the suicides, only for institutional harassment.
> An 'easier' route would have been for Orange to simply have done a big layoff.
This is indeed what Orange did in every other country but France. You can look up what happened in Poland to TPSA for example, and it took place everywhere else.
Orange was not able to do layoffs in France because of statutory employment guarantees provided to much of the civil servant workforce.
One can certainly disagree with such a policy — it is nuts to guarantee jobs for life in an industry where the jobs 10 years from now are completely different from the jobs to do now — but it is another thing to use a disagreement with this policy in order to justify rolling out harassment techniques as a way to downsize. It's like faulting the employees for taking a good deal decades ago — the government didn't have to offer the deal back then.
There have to be limits to management's ability to instill a climate of fear, as the consequences are real (not talking specifically about the suicides here, as the policy had many other negative outcomes).
> One can certainly disagree with such a policy — it is nuts to guarantee jobs for life in an industry where the jobs 10 years from now are completely different from the jobs to do now — but it is another thing to use a disagreement with this policy in order to justify rolling out harassment techniques as a way to downsize. It's like faulting the employees for taking a good deal decades ago — the government didn't have to offer the deal back then.
Because you can't blame employers for the personal actions of employees.
It's political because there was a narrative created in France that 'Orange is an evil place that drove this to happen' and people wanted to see supposed 'accountability'.
The trial is red meat to appease the plebes.
The unemployment rate in France is 8.5%, whereas in the US and Canada, it's less than 1/2 that, in Germany it's 3.1% (!).
The laws there to supposedly protect French workers form layoffs are clearly not working and are probably having the opposite effect.
You keep bringing up something I agree with, regarding the counterproductive effect of labor protection laws. I just don't see how that excuses the lawlessness of management's actions.
> Because you can't blame employers for the personal actions of employees.
I'm unsure what you're referring to, but that's untrue, thankfully. If managers direct their employees to perform illegal actions, they too can be held liable. Nothing so brazen here, but willfully turning a blind eye to, or rewarding middle managers applying severely distressing psychological pressure (meaningless assignments, etc) is something that they chose to do way past the warning signs. I also don't think the sanction is disproportionate, nobody goes to jail, and the fine is modest. But I wouldn't put the square quotes around accountability.
How so? It seems to have been an orderly trial.
> First - the rate of suicides at Orange during this time were pretty much on par with suicide rates in France overall. Orange has 100K employees, and there are going to be suicides every year.
One could argue with this characterization that Lombard himself made all the time. But at any rate, they weren't prosecuted for the suicides, only for institutional harassment.
> An 'easier' route would have been for Orange to simply have done a big layoff.
This is indeed what Orange did in every other country but France. You can look up what happened in Poland to TPSA for example, and it took place everywhere else.
Orange was not able to do layoffs in France because of statutory employment guarantees provided to much of the civil servant workforce.
One can certainly disagree with such a policy — it is nuts to guarantee jobs for life in an industry where the jobs 10 years from now are completely different from the jobs to do now — but it is another thing to use a disagreement with this policy in order to justify rolling out harassment techniques as a way to downsize. It's like faulting the employees for taking a good deal decades ago — the government didn't have to offer the deal back then.
There have to be limits to management's ability to instill a climate of fear, as the consequences are real (not talking specifically about the suicides here, as the policy had many other negative outcomes).