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The future's hell. The future's Orange.
September 29, 2009 1:07 PM Subscribe

A 51 year old father of two has just become the 24th suicide in 18 months at France Telecom, also known as Orange. Apparently, it had something to do with conditions at work, but France Telecom's CFO is punting a different theory.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth (86 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite

another man survived stabbing himself in the stomach during a work meeting.

I've been in meetings that made me feel like that.

But Jesus fuck.
posted by dersins at 1:19 PM on September 29 [22 favorites]

if it wasn't so many places, i would think i was reading an Onion article.

however, having worked for a telecom in customer service during a huge merger of several different providers, i can say that this doesn't surprise me.

i could go on, but i won't.
posted by sio42 at 1:19 PM on September 29

"France Telecom employs around 100,000 people in France and insists the number of suicides is in line with the national average."

Sympathique!
posted by oinopaponton at 1:22 PM on September 29 [2 favorites]

I worked at a telecom through several mergers, too. I assumed I had already killed myself, and that working there was my eternal penance.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:27 PM on September 29 [31 favorites]

Being on call 24/7 sucks? Holy shit, this insight changes everything!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:33 PM on September 29

I've definitely been indoctrinated, against my better impulses, by the worst parts of corporate America. Reading the Guardian article, my first couple of emotional responses to this article after the initial sympathetic shock of the headline were "Toughen up."

Then I realized that sometimes, I suck.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:33 PM on September 29 [7 favorites]

Were any of these 24 suicides preceded by a bloody shotgun rampage through the office? Because that would seem, ya know, to accomplish so much more.
posted by BoatMeme at 1:39 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

The CEO... He blames email... which the gentleman that died accessed on his mobile phone... There's mention of overconnectedness in the age of the Blackberry...

... thank god Orange handles iPhone sales in most parts of Europe... wouldn't want people to get caught up in the age of the Blackberry...

I wonder if there's a marketing platform here...
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:40 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

Pigs in Joe's hog house do housekeeping in passing. For the most part, they are not happy with their lot. They are just as happy as Joe can afford to make them, and that is, by definition, as unhappy as they will tolerate without becoming less efficient. - Mark Kramer, Three Farms: Making Milk, Meat and Money from the American Soil
posted by Joe Beese at 1:42 PM on September 29 [4 favorites]

Were any of these 24 suicides preceded by a bloody shotgun rampage through the office? Because that would seem, ya know, to accomplish so much more.

In this comment there's a good question, because you'd think that people driven to such a mad, despairing state would, occasionally, direct their violence outwards. How many times has some dick manager been punched in the face at Orange?

I can imagine workplace stress driving some to suicide. I have difficulty imagining that such a level of stress wouldn't sometimes result in an assault on the obvious source of your stress, the smug executive telling you to move jobs again.
posted by fatbird at 1:42 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Do you work in a punching factory or something? Sheesh.

No, just that the conditions at work as described don't sound that much different than the way things are in a lot of places here. Obviously, on further thought, given the reaction of those living through it, there seems to be something else going on. But the descriptions in the article sound a whole lot like management and staff treatment here in the U.S.A.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:43 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

Indeed, the French suicide rate does seem to be about 25/100,000, as the CEO contends. But it is attracting notice itself for its upward trend.
Link to NY Times article about it today.
posted by SLC Mom at 1:44 PM on September 29

Indeed, the French suicide rate does seem to be about 25/100,000, as the CEO contends. But it is attracting notice itself for its upward trend.
Link to NY Times article about it today.

Did you take your buggy down to the telegraph office to post that, SLC Mom?

"Special Cable to TIME NEW YORK TIMES.
March 29, 1914, Sunday
Section: Editorial FOREIGN NEWS SPORTS WANT ADVERTISEMENTS, Page C3, 177 words"
posted by dersins at 1:50 PM on September 29 [18 favorites]

l2quit
posted by mikhail at 1:50 PM on September 29

In America, most wipe out their families then themselves. I wonder why the difference in America vs France?

I also wonder why these people killed themselves over work. I get the stress, etc. but why give them so much control? Look for another job.
posted by stormpooper at 1:53 PM on September 29

My question is, at what point do you decide death is better than quitting your job? Jesus, I'd live in a fucking tent if I had to, but at least I'd live.
posted by cereselle at 1:55 PM on September 29 [4 favorites]

PARIS, March 28. -- Suicides in France are increasing. Since 1904, when the total was 8,876, there has been a continuous rise in numbers to 9,819 -- 7,476 men and 2,343 women -- in 1910. This is 25 suicides to 100,000 inhabitants, and treble the proportion of seventy years ago. A great number of those killing themselves are widowers.

70 years ago, that would have been 1840 (or 1844, going by the dateline).
posted by delmoi at 2:00 PM on September 29

In America, most wipe out their families then themselves.

I don't think that's true.
posted by delmoi at 2:01 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

Doesn't sound all that different from a place I used to work, really. Mostly people just quit there, but aren't the expectations about permanency of employment and changing jobs different in France?
posted by dilettante at 2:02 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

In America, most wipe out their families then themselves. I wonder why the difference in America vs France?

Guns.
posted by ymgve at 2:03 PM on September 29 [15 favorites]

My absolute worst customer service experience - an epic, tortuous ordeal that dragged out through several months of surreal and byzantine bureaucratic hassle - was with France Telecom.

I don't know if that has anything to do with the climate this fellow experienced working for the company, but it seems somehow relevant.
posted by darkstar at 2:04 PM on September 29

"I also wonder why these people killed themselves over work. I get the stress, etc. but why give them so much control? Look for another job."

I'm guessing that France has some unique conditions that predispose people to commit workplace suicides. For one thing, it may be harder to fire someone there, which would explain the management by terror policies that seem designed to encourage them to quit. For another, the average age of the employees at French Telecom is 45, which seems fairly high. If the employees there are mostly older people who started working for the company when it was was state owned, then many of them might not feel that they could find other work if that means competing with a field full of young, hungry competitors. After ten or twenty years with a single company the job market may seem like a very frightening place, and particularly so during a recession.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:07 PM on September 29 [2 favorites]

I found that France's mobile operators were the most monopolistic corporations of which I have ever had the miss-fortune needing the services. I'd be unsurprised if there was some gentlemen's agreement to avoid hiring people who quit another French telecom.

Please please please just nationalize those mother fuckers! If you're feeling really traditional, you might consider the guillotine for their executives or their stock options too. But I'd be ecstatic if you merely break each one up into 5ish companies.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:26 PM on September 29

No, just that the conditions at work as described don't sound that much different than the way things are in a lot of places here. Obviously, on further thought, given the reaction of those living through it, there seems to be something else going on. But the descriptions in the article sound a whole lot like management and staff treatment here in the U.S.A.
I must admit, I had the same thought when reading the article. The bullying, the constant stress to perform, the being on-call 24/7, even having to "ask" to go to the restroom like a freakin' grade school kid, reminded me of several jobs I've had. You either suck it up or look for something else. I have a feeling that the French aren't used to this type of corporate culture (just as we Americans weren't used to the Japanese work practices that many US companies attempted to adopt in the early 1980s). Nevertheless, there has to be something else at play here - something about the French culture/mindset/psyche whatever that is prompting so many workers to turn to suicide as the only escape.
posted by Oriole Adams at 2:32 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

I've never killed myself at work, but I have had jobs where every day I died a little inside just by showing up.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:33 PM on September 29 [19 favorites]

The 2005 suicide rates in France were (per 100,000) Total: 17.6; Male: 26.4; Female: 9.2 (those gender disparities have always fascinated me, especially since we so often see the stereotypical face of mental illness as female). OTOH, these individuals all had steady employment, often for many years at Orange, making it a lot less likely they were suffering from unbearable depression or acute schizophrenia. Most suicidal people don't blame their jobs either.

I'm also surprised by the article's assertion that there have been 23 successful suicides and 13 attempts in the last 18 months, since it's far more common to have up to 20 attempts per completion. If those numbers are correct, perhaps that indicates something particularly significant about these cases: they are more than a cry for help.
posted by zachlipton at 2:34 PM on September 29 [2 favorites]

"France Telecom employs around 100,000 people in France and insists the number of suicides is in line with the national average."

The number might not be very surprising, but the reasons given are. As far as I can tell they all claimed to have comitted suicide because of work, whereas statistically you'd expect at least a fair number of them to blame personal circumstances.
posted by Sourisnoire at 2:40 PM on September 29 [2 favorites]

these individuals all had steady employment, often for many years at Orange, making it a lot less likely they were suffering from unbearable depression or acute schizophrenia. Most suicidal people don't blame their jobs either.

I'm also surprised by the article's assertion that there have been 23 successful suicides and 13 attempts in the last 18 months, since it's far more common to have up to 20 attempts per completion. If those numbers are correct, perhaps that indicates something particularly significant about these cases: they are more than a cry for help.

Suicide clusters-- possibly driven by media coverage and the Werther effect-- are a known phenomenon. It seems quite possible that this could be a case of that , rather than something inherently bad and evil about France Telecom.
posted by dersins at 2:42 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

In the "conditions at work" link, it says that there were 28 suicides at Orange in 2000 (the year they were bought by French Telecom), and 29 suicides in 2002 - so this looks like an ongoing phenomenon.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:51 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

> those gender disparities have always fascinated me, especially since we so often see the stereotypical face of mental illness as female

Women tend to go for more survivable methods. More attempts, fewer successes.

On the lighter side, if the lights are flickering and there are cold spots at headquarters, maybe they should call in les frères Winchester?
posted by Decimask at 2:52 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

My question is, at what point do you decide death is better than quitting your job?

I'm also interested in the decisions to try to kill themselves at work. "Well since I'm going to do it anyway, and I hate this place, I'm going to absolutely ruin this fucking carpeting..."
posted by quin at 3:01 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

Women tend to go for more survivable methods. More attempts, fewer successes.

Yeah. In the United States the numbers are extremely skewed. Women attempt suicide around three times as often as men. Men actually kill themselves around four times as often as women. That's a staggering difference.

The difference occurs because women tend to take pills which is a spectacularly bad way to off yourself and usually indicates a "cry for help", as they say, while men who want to kill themselves generally do things like shoot themselves in the head. Or hang themselves, or jump off a tall building or bridge.

The suicide rate at this company seems fairly typical of France as a whole, though, so I don't really understand the point.
posted by Justinian at 3:23 PM on September 29

Suicide clusters are indeed an actual phenomenon. Gladwell talks about them in The Tipping Point, and it is interesting, if terrifying, reading.
posted by lazaruslong at 3:37 PM on September 29

.
posted by jdfalk at 3:49 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Indeed, the French suicide rate does seem to be about 25/100,000, as the CEO contends.

Given that obvious non-story shut down, I can't believe this even made the news. Let's see how it would look in print:

BREAKING: Orange Employees Commit Suicide at Exactly the Same Rate as Everyone Else

Yeah, that won't sell advertising.
posted by rokusan at 3:53 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

BREAKING: Orange Employees Commit Suicide at Exactly the Same Rate as Everyone Else

The statistics you are quoting are from 1914. Ever-so-slightly more current statistics (2005) as found by zachlipton show a suicide rate of 17.6 / 100,000. This makes France Telecom's numbers about 50% higher than the norm. This is what I would call statistically significant, but of course I'm not a statistician.
posted by dersins at 4:00 PM on September 29 [6 favorites]

Yup, I was fooled by the NYT 1914 link. Those folks at the Times sure are clever, having a web edition way back then.
posted by rokusan at 4:25 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

This is what I would call statistically significant

But wait, the number "24" from Orange is over eighteen months, per the FPP, not per year. So you're comparing 24-in-18-months with 17-in-12-months.

That looks like 16/100,000/yr to me, which is slightly lower than the 17.6 rate.

So, um, maybe: Working at Orange Reduces Chances of Suicide Slightly.

Math is hard.
posted by rokusan at 4:31 PM on September 29 [2 favorites]

Wait, I was led to believe that Europe was a socialist paradise where everyone drank bottles of wine over their 4 hours lunches and then took naps or possibly availed themselves of socialized medicine in the afternoon.

If working in other countries is just like working here, what's going to happen to my fantasies of moving overseas and doing almost no work in some office with a view of the Eiffel Tower?

I find it ironic that a piece of law that purports itself to be the "Fair Labor Standards Act" has no minimum amount of paid vacation or sick leave, doesn't mandate that federal holidays are even paid and makes the lowest rung of the ladder of the service industry effectively beg their patrons for a decent wage.

I'm sure those in America working for $2.13 an hour plus tips consider it worth it so long as Copronymus can continue to snark at the god damn frogs.
posted by Talez at 4:37 PM on September 29 [7 favorites]

I find it ironic that a piece of law that purports itself to be the "Fair Labor Standards Act" has no minimum amount of paid vacation or sick leave, doesn't mandate that federal holidays are even paid and makes the lowest rung of the ladder of the service industry effectively beg their patrons for a decent wage.

As far as I can tell, a large amount of Americans think that "fair" means that no one poorer than them should receive any kind of government assistance whatsoever, because they didn't deserve it.
posted by meowzilla at 4:43 PM on September 29 [26 favorites]

So, um, maybe: Working at Orange Reduces Chances of Suicide Slightly.

I think that would only be true if the demographics of Orange/France Telecom employees exactly matched the demographics of France as a whole.

zachlipton's statistics show two suicide peaks by age: one in the 45-54 zone (which probably covers a lot of Orange workers) and another, much taller peak in the 75+ zone (which I don't think would cover any). In fact, suicides in the 75+ age range account for around 17% of total French suicides according to those statistics. Also, the set of France Telecom employees, by definition, has a 0% unemployment rate, while France's overall unemployment rate is somewhere around 9%. Unemployed people are much more likely to commit suicide.
posted by stammer at 5:09 PM on September 29 [5 favorites]

I'm sure those in America working for $2.13 an hour plus tips...

Is this legal somewhere in America?
posted by rokusan at 5:13 PM on September 29

Is this legal somewhere in America?

There are exceptions to the minimum wage laws, including the waitresses at your favorite eatery, who are assumed to make up for it in tips. This is why I will not eat out anymore - I can't afford to pay for the meal as well as enough of a tip to help the server out. I'm conflicted about it, but there it is. Link.

More general Google search link on the subject.
posted by metagnathous at 5:26 PM on September 29

Is this legal somewhere in America?

Yes. A place known as the "United States." (PDF. See "Tip Credit" section).
posted by dersins at 5:28 PM on September 29

I should flag half the comments here as offensive, but, you know, i'm a lazy frenchman. Instead, next time a shooting rampage is discussed here, i'll just mention that every fuckin' victim deserved it and should have, you know, worked harder to avoid their fate.
posted by vivelame at 5:28 PM on September 29 [6 favorites]

Is $2.13/hour legal in the US? Yes. In almost every state.
posted by shownomercy at 5:29 PM on September 29

"I'm sure those in America working for $2.13 an hour plus tips...

Is this legal somewhere in America?"
posted by rokusan

What is the minimum wage for workers who receive tips?

An employer may pay a tipped employee not less than $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equal at least the federal minimum wage, the employee retains all tips and the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.

Some states have minimum wage laws specific to tipped employees. When an employee is subject to both the federal and state wage laws, the employee is entitled to the provisions of each law which provide the greater benefits.
posted by not_on_display at 5:30 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Hmmm. My bad.
I'll never trust the New York Times again.
posted by SLC Mom at 5:40 PM on September 29

A number of years ago, when I was still foolish and idealistic, I was an aspiring screenwriter. My first completed feature screenplay was about a teenage girl who attempts suicide following a gang rape (and numerous other, less cinematically visceral, troubles) but is saved by a serial killer famously at large at the time, who convinces her that if she is willing to end her own life, she should be willing to do anything, including taking full revenge on those who violated her.

The end employed what I was too inexperienced to recognize as a cliche as old as "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge," where the whole thing is revealed to be what she wished she would have done as she lay there dying.

What I believed in writing then, and which I still believe now, is that for all the logic of my fictional serial killer's proposal, one doesn't kill themselves if they are in a rational place. Moreover, we don't read about all of those people who think about suicide, and then determine a better course of action, because of course those never make the news. A suicidal state-of-mine is a crushingly emotional one, where one feels powerless to effect change on anything other than themself, and even if they did, most people don't have it in themselves to willfully harm others in the way that they may feel the right to do so to themselves.

Maybe the CEO is right about this being on par with the national average. I don't know. It still seems like a corporate environment that needs a hell of a lot of overhaul in order to fix the problem. Also, Joe Beese is dead-on about the CEO trying to pin this specifically on a competing device. And that is horrifyingly callous, but given what we're learning about Orange (how I wish this place weren't named after my favorite color) also makes it unsurprising.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:12 PM on September 29 [3 favorites]

One man had stabbed himself in the stomach during a staff meeting while a woman threw herself out a window.

DAMN, that must've been a shitty meeting.
posted by swell at 6:29 PM on September 29 [4 favorites]

Telecom - tomorrow's technology with last century's labour practices.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:32 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Are the Orange suicides distributed evenly across all sectors/areas of responsibility of the 100,000 employees in the telecom? Or is it just tech support members leaving customers hanging on the line?

OK, that was totally tasteless, but the question is a serious one. If the guys laying cable are committing suicide as often as the sales managers, then yeah, it's the age range thing and not actually anything significant. If it's concentrated in one sector, and that sector's suicides doesn't align with norms (say, much higher suicide rates for 40-50s given the income level), you have a story.

More info needed (I did look for listes and noms, but nothing turned up in the first few pages--and I need to go to bed).
posted by Decimask at 7:19 PM on September 29

Large companies, especially privatized companies have the mandate to increase profits, in a market they already dominate. The result is chaos. We are dependent on monopolies that are irreplaceable and whose only avenue is to squeeze themselves as much as possible.
posted by niccolo at 7:21 PM on September 29

One man had stabbed himself in the stomach during a staff meeting while a woman threw herself out a window.

I really hope "while" doesn't mean "at the same time as" here...
posted by bakerybob at 7:36 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

So, um, maybe: Working at Orange Reduces Chances of Suicide Slightly.

Unemployed people are much more likely to commit suicide.

I think the real headline here is: Working for Orange Just as Damaging to Your Psyche as Being Unemployed.

One would hope that this would encourage employees to put down the knife or the pills and just quit. Of course, it's difficult to think like this when you feel like you're trapped in a shitty situation.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:36 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Women attempt suicide around three times as often as men. Men actually kill themselves around four times as often as women. That's a staggering difference.

And they say men are afraid of commitment.
posted by chambers at 8:39 PM on September 29 [4 favorites]

I hate that I'm laughing inappropriately at the fact that a man stabbed himself at a meeting. Ahem. That said, these are really sad stories. I'm wondering, as most are here, why they didn't find some way to quit. I'm aware the global economy is in the dumps to a decent degree, but that has to be a better option.
posted by cmgonzalez at 8:51 PM on September 29

I'm wondering, as most are here, why they didn't find some way to quit. I'm aware the global economy is in the dumps to a decent degree, but that has to be a better option.

I think you should read the suicides as a form of workplace protest. All suicides are partly aggressive; I would say these are politicised.
posted by stammer at 9:11 PM on September 29

I think that, while it's very tempting, it's probably a dead end to compare this difficult situation in France with the work situation in the US or elsewhere. It's easy to say 'ah, but it's harder on US workers!' but clearly it isn't always - this is hardly a defense of US employers, either. It's only the very real and very human fact that work can be difficult for all kinds of different reasons in all kinds of different places. Personally I'll continue agitating to see labor organization and unionization at every level of the workforce as (in a very civilized measure) France has seen over the last forty years - but that still doesn't mean that France is a paradise, and it doesn't mean that employers are always better there. On the other side, it's easy for those bitter and unhappy to take a stab outward and remark cuttingly that US workers have it much worse, and they must kill themselves in droves; but again, that cheapens and detracts from the very real problems in this case.

The circumstances make it clear, I think, that these are not routine suicides (if such a thing exists) but part of a connected whole, and as such they tend to be worrisome.

There are certain casual remarks in the statements which Orange has made which make it difficult not to be a bit angry at the company. For me, the punchline was the last line of the Guardian article linked above:

[A company spokesman] said Michel had been promoted and seen his salary rise as part of technological changes and his colleagues had not realised how difficult he had found this change.

Ah yes - happens all the time. He got promoted, he got a raise, and he didn't know what to do with all that money. It can be so difficult, can't it? But how could his co-workers not have seen the warning signs? After all, everybody knows - the more money you have, the more depressed you become.

Methinks that's not exactly what happened. Moreover, it's handy to mention that you'd just given him a raise, but it's a bit crass; it's a hell of a lot more probable, I think, that Michel got a tiny increase in salary and was told that this meant that his soul belonged to the company from here on out.
posted by koeselitz at 9:31 PM on September 29 [5 favorites]

rokusan: Is this legal somewhere in America?

Technically - in a certain way. But not really. As quoted above (putting it in simpler terms): the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. So long as you take home $7.25 per hour every night, your employer is allowed to contribute as little as $2.15 per hour of that (so long as the rest is made up for in tips). But it is illegal for someone to work for less than $7.25 an hour.
posted by koeselitz at 9:38 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Sounds to me like Orange has implemented a new outplacement procedure, one designed to avoid paying out benefits to ex employees.

It really is disappointing- like others, I had a naive view of the conditions for workers in Europe. This is really kind of disheartening.
posted by happyroach at 9:41 PM on September 29

Is $2.13/hour legal in the US? Yes. In almost every state.

Wow, I had no idea there was a special category for that. I thought even waiter/esses were paid minimum wage plus tips. Yoikes.
posted by rokusan at 9:54 PM on September 29

I'm sure those in America working for $2.13 an hour plus tips consider it worth it so long as Copronymus can continue to snark at the god damn frogs.

I'm sorry, but you seemed to have missed my point, which was not about how lazy and stupid the French are, but was instead about the stereotypes Americans overwhelmingly have about European lifestyles and how incongruous those stereotypes are with this news story. I don't literally think that Frenchmen take 4 hour lunches, I don't harbor dreams of working in France, I almost certainly don't have whatever opinion about American wage and labor laws you've kindly put in my mouth, and I have not done any snarking at the god damn frogs unless you count poking some roadkill with a stick when I was 7.
posted by Copronymus at 10:10 PM on September 29

Well I'm glad you took a paragraph to tell me I missed your point, refute your own statements then proceed to not actually state your eventual point.

You point, from what I could see was a snarky little "oh ho ho ho so it sucks just as much to be a French worker as a US worker" comment when Western European labour standards are so far ahead of US standards you'd be unable to see them even with a telescope because they'd be over the horizon already.

Here I was thinking a timely reminder on how shitty labour standards actually are in the US compared to the minimum standards in Western Europe and would bring you back down to Earth.
posted by Talez at 10:27 PM on September 29

Bah @ missing words in reply.

My comments regarding the snarky tone of your reply still stand.
posted by Talez at 10:29 PM on September 29

Regarding the perceived need for French workers to "toughen up."

It's not that American workers are tougher, stronger, more committed, more determined, or more manly than the French.

It's that American workers are more degraded & subhuman.

You had me until subhuman. Working long hours and being available to your boss 24/7 is not a moral virtue and people shouldn't wear the amount of crap and pressure that they take from their boss as a badge of toughness. It sounds as if Orange has instituted some fairly oppressive and stress inducing working conditions. But I agree with those who say that being unemployed is better than being dead.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:39 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

Also, the set of France Telecom employees, by definition, has a 0% unemployment rate, while France's overall unemployment rate is somewhere around 9%. Unemployed people are much more likely to commit suicide.

Aha, but so far as I can find online the employees at France Telecom skew heavily male, with over 2/3 of employees being guys. And since guys are hugely more likely to kill themselves, that would raise the expected suicide rate at France Telecom a great deal.

The more I look at the numbers the more I think this whole story is a bunch of bullshit.
posted by Justinian at 10:45 PM on September 29

I'm sure those in America working for $2.13 an hour plus tips consider it worth it so long as Copronymus can continue to snark at the god damn frogs.

I'm sorry, but you seemed to have missed my point, which was not about how lazy and stupid the French are, but was instead about the stereotypes Americans overwhelmingly have about European lifestyles and how incongruous those stereotypes are with this news story. I don't literally think that Frenchmen take 4 hour lunches, I don't harbor dreams of working in France, I almost certainly don't have whatever opinion about American wage and labor laws you've kindly put in my mouth, and I have not done any snarking at the god damn frogs unless you count poking some roadkill with a stick when I was 7.
posted by Copronymus at 2:10 PM on September 30 [+] [!]

Well I'm glad you took a paragraph to tell me I missed your point, refute your own statements then proceed to not actually state your eventual point.

You point, from what I could see was a snarky little "oh ho ho ho so it sucks just as much to be a French worker as a US worker" comment when Western European labour standards are so far ahead of US standards you'd be unable to see them even with a telescope because they'd be over the horizon already.

Here I was thinking a timely reminder on how shitty labour standards actually are in the US compared to the minimum standards in Western Europe and would bring you back down to Earth.
posted by Talez at 2:27 PM on September 30 [+] [!]

He's making fun of himself and his surprise at finding out that maybe, just maybe, corporate life sucks as much in the Europe we Americans have been told time and time again cares more for its workers as it does in America. Or at least almost as much. And, in some cases like this, far more. You're just looking for a fight, is all.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:28 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

A feature of very job I've ever had- starting with delivering papers very early in the morning at age 12- is co-workers who will do anything they are told. Anything. Bosses will ruthlessly take advantage of these people, no worries.

The last two jobs I worked I was very conscious that quite a few of my co-workers were actually broken. Like they'd been shattered by the experience of working for years and years for money and no respect whatsoever. You could say these people made their choice, but if you're not prepared to resist your boss- what choice do you have?

The idea that people who've been abused like this should have the gumption to just grab another job is laughable. It's easy to bully workers into a state of shame. The health of a society needs to come before the health of it's economy, or suicides like this will roll on.
posted by Gamien Boffenburg at 11:31 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

So, this year we don't so much get the summer of the shark as the fall of the French Orange Telecom worker.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:46 PM on September 29

Hi. I'm American. I live in France, and... am not anonymous enough to say outright what my relationship to the company in question is (yes, that's meant as a big hint).

I can say that all of us who know this company, are sadly not surprised. One thing I haven't yet seen mentioned in the comments here (and I'm sorry I don't have time to look up cites in English, though there are several in French that are easy to find on Google News), is that Orange recently put many engineers, especially older ones, into support positions, without consulting with them beforehand. A commenter mentioned "I'm guessing that France has some unique conditions that predispose people to commit workplace suicides. For one thing, it may be harder to fire someone there, which would explain the management by terror policies that seem designed to encourage them to quit." While technically it's not hard to fire someone, the more bottom-line-oriented among them try to "cut costs" by forcing people to quit, since this saves them unemployment money.

Putting a skilled, experienced IT/telecoms engineer (in France, to be an IT engineer, you have to have a 5-year degree) onto a support position does two things: first, in French culture, which is halfway between US culture and Japanese culture regarding the importance of "face", it's roughly equivalent to getting backhanded by your boss in public and being told you deserved it. That's what it's meant to do, to bring about the second effect: encourage the person to quit. Everyone in France who has a modicum of work experience knows this tactic.

If you quit your job, in France, you do not get unemployment (chômage). (This site, in French, gives an overview of the various conditions: Les conditions pour avoir droit au chômage.) As for quitting, when you quit, you're required by law to give three months' notice. On top of that, we all know how the economy is — while France has levelled out, these same profit-hungry corporations — IT and telecoms practically all are — are playing the atmosphere for all its worth and proposing salaries lower than they would have before, while telling prospective hires that their trial period may well not end in their permanent contract continuing.
posted by fraula at 1:22 AM on September 30 [15 favorites]

fraula pretty much nails it. A few additional points:

a) There's a reason why trade unions are so "bolshy" in France, and it's that French corporate life is extremely hierarchical. This is all the more true of ex-state companies such as France Telecom, which are run on almost Napoleonic lines. If your boss tells you to jump, you jump. Traditionally, this was tempered by the employees' knowledge that they were virtually unfireable. However, recent "reforms" have shattered that safety. As a result, employees get the worst of both worlds: the cutthroat atmosphere of "Anglo-Saxon" companies, and the rigid chain of command and self-complacent mandarins of the "Socialist" world. A recipe for a dysfunctional workplace.

b) As this is a telecom, it's nerds we are talking about, and dedicated nerds with that. As fraula pointed out, getting an engineer's degree in France isn't easy. Quitting a job or merely slacking off is not something that will come naturally to these people.
posted by Skeptic at 2:00 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]

Another issue I just remembered: France does have a system in place to help workers with moral harassment, but one that was recently amputated of much of its effect. Called médecine du travail, "workplace health", every employee in France must be seen at least once a year to have a general health checkup by a médecin du travail (workplace health doctor). Before, in addition to the physical checkup (eyes for computer work, ears if you're on the telephone, etc.), these doctors also asked about the work atmosphere. If a worker indicated that things weren't going well, they could fill out a questionnaire to determine if any harassment was occuring, and if so, to what degree. The worker could make appointments with the doctor to discuss strategies to help improve the situation; doctors could intervene, on patient permission, with their management to help; if things were very bad, the doctor could make appointments on their own authority to ensure that the person got proper care. (Time spent with a médecin du travail was not taken from time worked; in other words, you were still paid and didn't have to use vacation time for it.) If the situation worsened and the worker became at risk for a nervous breakdown, the doctor could put them on an arrêt de travail, in short, time off to recover. This could be anywhere from a week, to a month, to any amount of time renewable for up to a total of two years. (I've known people with 3 months, 6 months, and indeed, one who had to take two years all told.) As a doctor-requested arrêt, it was reimbursed by social security, so the person didn't lose their salary while recovering. This sort of arrêt could not be used as a reason to fire the person.

However, that changed two years ago. The workplace health system was put under a new director, one with no medical training, and only corporate experience. He quickly set new rules: workplace health doctors were no longer allowed to ask about "subjective" experiences at work, had to tell their patients this outright (I heard it from mine), and could not even inform their patients that they could come to them about "subjective" (harassment) issues — I only found this out because I asked my doctor what on earth was going on that things had changed. By French law, these doctors can and do still provide care, support, and third-party advice for these issues, but obviously, if you don't know you can ask for it, you're not going to know it's there.

also, in that last sentence of my previous comment, "all its worth" arrrgh, missing apostrophe! it's!)
posted by fraula at 2:15 AM on September 30 [6 favorites]

And, here is a link to news of suicides at Peugeot And Renault, from two years ago. (Touched on by the Guardian article)
posted by Kiwi at 2:16 AM on September 30

the absolute best thing I have ever witnessed was a whole department quitting on the very same day because of a certain boss. you should have seen the reaction that got. this basically had the company suddenly unable to keep deadlines with a couple major clients and the whole golf-cart private jet league of title-bearers decended to find out right now why everyone suddenly had had enough. of course they knew why everyone had left: the pressure to cut costs and up profits had resulted in a junior crew of unerpaid and overworked employees but they were still hoping they could rope everyone back into recinding their resignations and keep on working through their weekends. this department was relatively small - 12 people - but they stuck together and walked. the next two months were pure joy to watch and then I left myself.
posted by krautland at 2:52 AM on September 30 [6 favorites]

my point being: there are better responses than suicide if you don't like management decisions.
posted by krautland at 2:53 AM on September 30 [3 favorites]

Considering WHO' time series statistic, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect anywhere between 15-20 suicides per 100,000 (or 100.000 depending if you use period for thousands) per year.
But that's a national average on a 5-75 years old range, so we should restrict the range to the working age and take 25-65 as I doubt most of employees are under 25. If we restrict the range to 25-65, the average of the suicide rate is roughly 22 per 100,000 per year. Unfortunately the WHO' data cannot be used to calculate a median, which could have been very informative.

Additionally, not everyone in the 25-65 range is necessarily employed, and if we assume that all of the people who committed sucide were employed and that having an income could reduce in some measure the odds of commiting sucide (as opposed to not having one, which could be stress inducing), then we need a sucide rate for 100,000 employed people to make a more reliable back of the envelope estimation.

Anyhow, the registered suicide rate being close to expectation doesn't prove nor disprove that there's nothing unusual going on. It would be interesting to examine a time series of the company suicide rates.
posted by elpapacito at 4:09 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

France Telecom did a pretty effective job of turning Orange, the UK/Hong Kong backed mobile operator they bought in 2002, into a mess. Orange was perhaps the most dynamic of the UK's mobile operators at that point, with smart branding, cutting edge tech and good customer service. Now it has none of those things.
posted by johnny novak at 7:35 AM on September 30

I've worked at telecoms through two mergers. MCI/WCOM and BellSouth/ATT. I understand the stress. Totally and completely. I find that sarcasm and a good buy-out are good release mechanisms. But that's just me.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:16 AM on September 30

Justinian: The more I look at the numbers the more I think this whole story is a bunch of bullshit.

Really? A guy stabbing himself in the stomach during a business meeting is a typical suicide? I have a hard time believing that. Maybe there aren't a disproportionate number of suicides - maybe there are just as many suicides at this company as there are in the population at large. But doesn't the fact that workers are killing themseves and blaming it on the company deserve at least some attention?

I agree that it's a bit hasty to look at this story and read it as: 'this company is causing people to kill themselves!' However - and I'd really like to see statistics on this, although I imagine they're hard to gather - when most people kill themselves, their list of reasons, the standard litany that goes into most suicide notes, isn't usually topped by 'my workplace is impossible for me to live with.' The fact that this subset of people, though it might not be an unusually large one, is overwhelmingly upset with their working life seems to me to be a fact worth thinking over a bit.
posted by koeselitz at 11:48 AM on September 30

I've never killed myself at work, but I have had jobs where every day I died a little inside just by showing up.

Exactly! That's why I quit my job thinking that if I become homeless and then freeze or starve to death, it would be better than working that particular job. But I didn't kill myself and here I am, 2 years later, and quite a bit happier.

We're paid to submit and to surrender our autonomy for at least 10 hours per day (including getting ready for work, driving to work, thinking about work even when we're with family and friends). For many of us, we've come to believe our work is who we are. I suppose it is, if we give them ourselves.
posted by Mike Buechel at 1:40 PM on September 30

I can say that all of us who know this company, are sadly not surprised. One thing I haven't yet seen mentioned in the comments here (and I'm sorry I don't have time to look up cites in English, though there are several in French that are easy to find on Google News), is that Orange recently put many engineers, especially older ones, into support positions, without consulting with them beforehand. A commenter mentioned "I'm guessing that France has some unique conditions that predispose people to commit workplace suicides. For one thing, it may be harder to fire someone there, which would explain the management by terror policies that seem designed to encourage them to quit." While technically it's not hard to fire someone, the more bottom-line-oriented among them try to "cut costs" by forcing people to quit, since this saves them unemployment money.

-Fraula

This problem is easily fixable. Start trolling your employer until they fire you. I'm not sure the best way to do this working for a telecom giant but I'd start by showing up a half-hour late every day until you get fired. Maybe stop wearing your uniform and take sudden days off with little or no notice to sweeten the pot.
posted by Pseudology at 6:36 PM on September 30

Just so i get it right: up to 2 years ago, if i took arrêt de travail, i could do nothing whatsoever for 2 years, be paid my full salary, and my employer wouldn't be able to fire me?
Also, after I showed up, spent a week or two complaining about the shock of having to suffer again, could I get another 2 years of well-deserved rest?
What a shame they canceled it.
posted by bokononito at 2:45 AM on October 3

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The future's hell. The future's Orange. September 29, 2009 1:07 PM Subscribe

The future's hell. The future's Orange.
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