Paris (AFP)

This is a highly anticipated judgment in the business world: the court must say on Friday morning whether France Telecom and its ex-managers were guilty of "moral harassment" in the late 2000s, a period marked by several employee suicides.

At the heart of the trial, which was held from May 6 to July 11, an institutional harassment that would have spread from the top to the entire company without there being a direct link between the perpetrators and the victims . This is a first for a CAC 40 company.

Have the defendants, including Didier Lombard, CEO from 2005 to 2010, implemented "a company policy aimed at destabilizing employees and creating an anxiety-provoking professional climate"? This is one of the questions that the court must answer.

The unions of France Telecom hope "a maximum condemnation, so that business leaders tempted by these management methods now know that they can not act with impunity". They also expect "substantial damages" to compensate "for the immense losses" suffered by the employees and officials of the company, which became Orange in 2013. More than 150 people joined the lawsuit at trial.

The case goes back ten years: France Telecom made the headlines because of suicides among its employees.

In July 2009, Michel Deparis, a Marseille technician put an end to his life by criticizing in a letter "management by terror". "I commit suicide because of France Telecom. It is the only cause," he wrote. Two months later, a first complaint was lodged by the South union, followed by others, and a damning report from the labor inspectorate.

- "Light sentences" -

The court examined in detail the cases of thirty-nine employees: nineteen committed suicide, twelve attempted it, and eight suffered from depression or from work stoppage.

At the helm, testimonies have followed one another, giving a precise idea of ​​the work that causes employees to sink into depression. We were talking about forced functional or geographic transfers, reductions in pay, repeated emails encouraging people to leave, etc. Civil party lawyer Jean-Paul Teissonnière spoke of an "immense industrial accident organized by the employer".

At the center of the trial, the 2007-2010 period, and the NExT and Act plans which aimed to transform France Telecom in three years, with in particular the objective of 22,000 departures and 10,000 mobility. The company had more than 100,000 employees, around a hundred different trades, spread over nearly 23,000 sites.

For the defendants, it had to be "voluntary", "natural" departures, but on the contrary, for the civil parties, the ex-leaders put pressure on the employees to push them to leave. Most of them were civil servants and therefore could not be dismissed. In 2006, Didier Lombard told executives that departures had to be "through the window or through the door".

But is there anything on file to demonstrate moral harassment? This offense is defined in the penal code as "repeated acts having as their object or effect a deterioration of working conditions".

"You are aware that your methods will worsen working conditions" and "you are looking for this destabilization," said the prosecutor during the requisitions. The prosecution asked for the maximum penalties incurred: a 75,000 euro fine for the company; a year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros for Didier Lombard, the former number 2 Louis-Pierre Wenès and the former HRD Olivier Barberot.

For four other officials, tried for "complicity in moral harassment", the prosecution requested eight months of imprisonment and 10,000 euros fine.

"The penalties incurred are light in relation to the acts," regretted AFP Patrick Ackermann of the SUD union. "We hope that the prison will be closed, even if it will be symbolic given the arrangements for sentences."

The judgment must fall at 10:00 am.

© 2019 AFP