- Tweeter
republish
After two months of hearing, the trial for harassment of the former leaders of France Telecom entered this Thursday, July 4 in its last phase with the pleadings of the civil parties.
At France Telecom, throughout the country, in each center of this company of 120,000 employees the sufferings were the same. Nineteen employees killed themselves. And these are not accidents, insists Sylvie Topaloff. The lawyer of the civil parties insists: these suicides sign a general policy of enterprise.
" What was important to show is that we were not dealing with a kind of slippage on the margins of field managers who misunderstood directives and caused disasters; all the people who committed suicide did so in identical contexts: poorly managed reorganizations, things that were not explained, downsizing that completely disrupted people's work, changes that were imposed on them, and for which they had no recourse. This policy of 22,000 departures, which is in reality a huge job destruction operation, has been deployed for three years in this company and has caused incredible suffering , "denounced Sylvie Topaloff.
France Telecom, today called Orange, is the first company in the CAC 40 to be judged for moral harassment. On the bench defendants, the former CEO Didier Lombard. For many weeks there have been stories of employees often detailing the same problems.
This historic process has already changed things, says Sebastien Crozier, trade unionist in the company. For two months, his phone keeps ringing. " What we have seen since the opening of the trial is that a number of our staff representatives in large companies, the major French institutions, call us so that we can exchange because they often the feeling of living the same as what happened ten years ago to France Telecom: social violence, the destruction of the meaning of work, management methods intended to make them leave, "he reports .
The requisitions of the prosecution are expected this Friday. For institutional harassment, France Telecom could be fined 75,000 euros, while its former CEO Didier Lombard incurs a year of imprisonment and 15,000 euros fine.