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24 France Telecom Workers Commit Suicide
24 France Telecom Workers Commit Suicide
Problems Sound Familiar: CEO Says it's A FAD
While the economic crisis is taking its toll on workers everywhere, it seems to have been particularly deadly for one French company. In the past year and a half there have been 24 suicides at France Telecom, and many of the employees who took their lives directly blamed the company in suicide notes.
Many of these were "protected" workers forced into call center jobs to try to force them out. The only good news is that the head of this group was forced to resign.
Judging by the way AT&T treats many of its call center workers and by some of its demands during bargaining, like their original leverage title language (which we did not accept) and their attempt to get rid of our monitoring language (which they did not achieve) it seems like this might be where AT&T is heading too. Thanks to Roy Hegenbart, President of 3250 for sending these articles to us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/05/telecoms-france