France Telecom, leader on the French market and previously a company state reinvented itself in a very “fast and efficient” manner into a 21st century Telecom company. Today the company is under the spotlights for other reasons. Two desperate acts: two employees have chosen to end their lives for reasons specifically linked to their work. It has to be added to the 6 suicides of this summer and the 22 since February 2008 for about 100 000 employees.
Are we all insane? I say « we » because we are all France Telecom employees: sad, even suffering, in mourning of a colleague, under too much pressure in an environment where the pilot seems to have gone. But at the same time, haven’t we at least once acted as a coward? It is to start with so hard to protect just ourselves.
Christophe Dejours, psychoanalyst and author of “Suicide au travail: Que faire”, PUF 2009 (suicides on the workplace: what shall we do) explains in the 16th September issue of Le Monde that 30 years ago suicides on the workplace did not exist. This phenomena appeared in France 12 years ago and has suddenly increased in 2007 with several revealed cases within Renault and Peugeot.
Christophe Dejours analyses this increasing issue by a change in the work organisation. Work used to be collective, defence strategies were set up in case of failure. Solidarity meant something! It was unthinkable to let a co-worker collapse for a work related issue.
So let’s aside analysis and company evaluation criteria for now. Today we are all facing together the mourning of the France Telecom’s employees.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité …. Have not we simply forgotten the fraternity ?
