Former executives at French telecoms giant imprisoned over spate of employee suicides
FRANCE Telecom’s former chief executive and two fellow senior managers have been sentenced to four months in prison for workplace harassment blamed for a wave of suicides.
Didier Lombard was found guilty along with Louis-pierre Wenes, his former deputy, and Olivier Barberot, the company’s human resources director.
They were each given a one-year sentence for “moral harassment”, with eight months suspended, and a fine of €15,000 (£12,800). The former stateowned company, now rebranded as Orange, was itself handed the maximum fine of €75,000.
Yesterday’s landmark ruling could pave the way for other similar collective procedures in France.
The trial focused on the cases of 39 employees, 19 of whom killed themselves, 12 who tried to and eight who suffered from acute depression or were signed off sick as a result of it.
It covered the period between 2007 and 2008, in which the telecoms giant was in the midst of a restructuring plan.
Management were accused of sacri- ficing the well-being of staff in an effort to fulfil their “obsession” with cuts of 22,000 employees within three years and the relocation of 10,000 more.
Lombard denied responsibility for the deaths, despite having told managers in 2006 that he would “get people to leave one way or another, either through the window or the door”.
“The transformations a business has to go through aren’t pleasant, that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing I could have done,” he had told the court.
Four other executives charged with “complicity in moral harassment” were given four-month suspended sentences and €5,000 fines.
The defendants were also ordered to pay a combined €3million to the plaintiffs as well as victims’ families. Sebastien Crozier of the CFE-CGC union called the ruling “a major victory”.
Victims’ relatives also welcomed the decision.
Lombard’s lawyer, Jean Veil, said he would appeal against the sentence.