France Seeks To Combat Workplace Suicides

GREG KELLER

PARIS (AP) — France Telecom SA was mobilizing all 20,000 of its managers Monday in an effort to respond to a string of 23 employee suicides that unions blame partly on layoffs and restructuring at the telecommunications giant.

The latest suicide, and the one to spark top-level concern, was that of a 32-year-old woman who threw herself out a fourth-floor window of her office building in northwest Paris on Friday. The woman worked in the debt-collection service of the company's Orange subsidiary, and had been involved in discussions on restructuring.

Not all the France Telecom suicides were job-related and it wasn't immediately clear if the total of 23 over 18 months was more than would be expected normally in a population of 100,000, the size of the company's French work force. The French suicide rate was 15 per 100,000 people in the entire French population in 2004, the latest available year of data.

France Telecom has nonetheless announced a raft of measures in response to the suicides, including suspending around 500 employee transfers that are a part of an ongoing reorganization.

Management has asked employees to watch out for signs of depression and suicidal tendencies among colleagues.