France Telecom meets over wave of staff suicides

FRANCE’S national phone company held a mass emergency meeting yesterday to discuss a wave of staff suicides blamed on redundancies and cuts.

France Telecom’s head of human resources Olivier Barberot held a conference call with all 20,000 managers in response to the latest suicide on Friday, the 23rd since February last year. Afterwards the company had a moment of silence in remembrance.

“There will be a clear message to all the managers to quickly organise local team meetings to explain what happened and what’s being done, and to make sure that if there are problems they can be discussed,” said a company spokesman.