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France Telecom try to end â€˜spiralâ€™ of suicides

25 September 2009 02:03 (UTC +04:00)

Didier Lombard outlined measures taken over the past months to prevent staff from taking their own lives, such as setting up a distress line for depressed employees and offering more psychological counselling.
â€œWe need to bring an end to this suicide trend that is shocking to everyone ... we must break this infernal spiral,â€ Lombard said at a news conference with Labour Minister Xavier Darcos following their meeting.
A France Telecom employee tried to kill herself at her workplace on Monday, just days after a worker threw herself from an office window in Paris.
The firm, which is 27% state-owned, employs 100,000 people in France and 23 staff have killed themselves since February 2008.
France Telecom argues the number of suicides is no higher than the national average, which according to the INSERM national health research agency was 16 deaths per 100,000 in 2006.
Lombard said management was talking with union and personnel representatives on managing workplace stress.
He said all personnel transfers had been frozen until October 31 to â€œshelter those peopleâ€ who may be psychologically fragile and upset by the changes.
On Monday, staff at a France Telecom customer service agency in the eastern city of Metz found a 53-year-old senior manager unconscious on the floor.
She had apparently taken an overdose of barbiturates after learning that she was to be posted to another part of the country for the third time in a year, CFDT union official Pierre Dubois said. Source: AFP