Daily Lessons from Life 05 October 2009

"France Telecom number two resigns over staff suicides
He faced calls to resign after 24 workers killed themselves in 20 months. -Mon, Oct 05, 2009 AFP

PARIS - France Telecom deputy chief executive Louis-Pierre Wenes, architect of a modernisation drive at the former state monopoly that is blamed for a wave of staff suicides, resigned on Monday.


Stephane Richard, an ex-aide to the French finance minister who is to take over as CEO in 2011, will step up early to replace Wenes, the company said.

Wenes and current chief executive Didier Lombard had faced calls to resign after 24 workers killed themselves in 20 months, but Lombard retained the support of the French state, which still owns 27 percent of the firm.


France Telecom said instead that Wenes - who has been attacked by unions as the engineer of cost-cutting measures launched in 2005 blamed for causing widespread stress - had tendered his resignation.

"Louis-Pierre Wenes, the current deputy CEO in charge of operations in France, has asked Didier Lombard, chairman and CEO of France Telecom, to relieve him of his responsibilities," France Telecom said in a statement.


"Didier Lombard has accepted this request," the group said, announcing his replacement by Richard, a former chief of staff to Finance Minister Christine Lagarde who joined France Telecom on September 1.

A former state monopoly which employs 100,000 people in France and trades internationally as Orange, the telecoms giant has undergone major restructuring, which unions say have left workers stressed and demoralised.


Several unions had called for Wenes' scalp.

"Wenes is a symbol, he is the one who brought in the management of terror, he has to go," Pierre Morville of the CFE-CGC union, which represents executive-level staff, alleged recently.


Wenes, 60, joined France Telecom in 2002 and from 2005, he oversaw a programme called "Next" to modernise the firm, in which many employees still have protected civil servant status.

In 2006 he became responsible for operations in France and for changes throughout the group. Since February he has been deputy managing director.


Wenes linked his decision to resign to the wave of suicides at the firm, in a statement to France Telecom staff, obtained by AFP.

"Despite the hard edge of the technological and economic fight, especially in our business, nothing can justify men and women putting an end to their lives. Today, like before, I cannot accept it," he said.


While the suicide rate among France Telecom staff is lower than for the general population, many of the victims killed themselves at work or have left letters blaming work conditions for their despair.

Last week a 51-year-old father of two jumped to his death from a highway overpass after leaving a note blaming pressures at work, becoming the 24th suicide at the group.


A 32-year-old woman killed herself by leaping from the fifth-floor window of a France Telecom building in Paris on September 15. Two days earlier, a male worker stabbed himself in the stomach during a meeting. He survived.

Lombard last month vowed to end the "spiral of death" at the firm by setting up a distress line, offering more psychological counseling and putting a freeze on all staff transfers until October 31.


Trade unions said Monday the company had told them it was extending the freeze until the end of the year."

This is an extraordinary story for a commercial, ex-state enterprise, undertaking! Staffs driven to commit suicide by stress at work!!

Lessons for me are:

1. why the stress? Losing your job and the income that comes with it can caused someone to kill himself or herself! We need to understand WHY? Can something be done to prevent these meaningless sacrifices? e.g. financial independence compromised? shame of not able to bring in a stable income for the dependents at home? careless over-spending? etc;

2. can one man be blamed for making changes that wrecked many lives? It will be valuable to learn how this man DROVE some of the staffs to commit suicide! So, that we all can AVOID doing the same thing to our people when push come to shove! e.g. being disrespectful or down-right humiliating to the staffs?;

3. is there a need for the WHOLE society to examine how they are going to earn their keeps and adjust the desired standard of living with the big macro environment changes around us? The French workers and their unions obviously have resisted the need to respond to the global challenges for quite a while now. Will the resistance and refusal to admit the reality help them to avoid the ultimate fate of being unemployed and broke unless they want the country to bank-rolled them for free?

It is an intriguing story. One that is very scary if you are the company who have no choice but to cut people and you are the workers who have no way to compete in the competitive commercial world!