Comment by Darkstryder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Darkstryder | Hacker News Reader

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The suicide spike at Orange / France Telecom took place from 2007 to 2009. I happened to work there fresh out of school from 2010 until 2012, just in the aftermath of the suicide wave, which we discussed a lot with colleagues at the time.

For this reason, I follow this trial with a particular interest and would like to clear a few things :

- Upper management is not directly accused of provoking the suicides. They are accused of a company-wide harassement policy aimed at pushing 22000 persons out without firing them (because they couldn’t - them being public servants), by making them decide to leave on their own. The suicides are the most spectacular side-effect of this harassement policy but they are not the center of the trial.

- France Telecom / Orange was a strange place at the time. It was divided between two generations : the older one signed up as public servants in a public service, and were deeply attached to France Telecom as a public service. A lot of them considered the recent privatization as a betrayal of their values. On top of that they had to go through a lot of technical evolutions, from phones lines to broadband to fiber. The younger generation were not public servants, were mostly fully on board with Orange being a private company and had skills more suited to current times. It was the older generation that was being pushed out.

- Even given the explosive context, everybody in the trial tries to make it as dispassionate as possible. Accusation is pointing out that the plan was illegal, not immoral. Defense is arguing how Orange was facing an existential crisis at the time.

It will be interesting to know how it all plays out.

So strange to finally see these practices in a trial (but also great!!). It was talked about a lot directly after it happened.

One thing that has stuck with me is that the officials of the company have always insisted that the suicide rate at Orange/TF was not higher than the general population one. A grim statistic, but one that they were the only one exploring.

All the articles I have read so far failed to establish whether this is factual or not (and that would need a rigorous statistical analysis.. not just comparing the %).

And just to be clear, even if these rates where indeed "normal" or even lower, it would not lower the responsibilities of these execs in these deaths and the harassment policies.

"The suicides are the most spectacular side-effect of this harassement policy"

The burden of proof required here is extreme.

If corporate policy is so bad it provokes a wave of suicides then there will be a lot of evidence available. That level of pressure is not subtle.

It's plain wrong to claim that some angry manager 'caused' someone to kill themselves.

Also, it's questionable if there was in fact a 'rash of suicides':

France has a rate of suicide of 12.9 / 100K / year. [1]

France Telecom has 95 000 employees In France alone. [2]

Here's the title of the Telegraph article: "Why have 24 France Telecom workers killed themselves in the past 19 months?" [3]

Well, it would be expected that about 20.5 FT employees will commit suicide every 19 months or so, sadly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A.

[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechno...

As another commenter has mentioned; it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going to reflect the general population for suicides so that isn't a very powerful argument.

But that isn't what jumps out at me - to me the real issue is that if management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be lots of evidence for it. Presumably the reason people are talking about it in newspaper articles is because they have seen evidence and are asking questions.

The stats you have quoted suggest the number of suicides is already above average. That, combined with evidence of a problem, is very likely what has triggered the conversation at all.

I've seen some angry workers, but generally all they want is more pay or to work with better conditions going forward. I'm not sure how many of them would bother trying to get managers imprisoned without good cause. I'd guess it would be about as rare as management policies being bad enough to cause suicides. The media might have wiped out a whole heap of nuance - so it isn't worth getting worked up over the case - but if lawsuits are flying then it is more likely than not that something went very visibly wrong.

" it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going to reflect the general population for suicides so that isn't a very powerful argument."

Actually, the data frames the argument quite well, moreover, there's nary any way one is going to get better sampling.

" if management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be lots of evidence for it"

It's incredulous to suggest that 'management is provoking suicides'. It is completely absurd.

When, in modern history do you suggest that this has ever happened? Ever?

Wouldn't people quit their jobs? Or get different jobs before resorting to 'death'?

We could all easily demonstrated working conditions elsewhere in the Western world where conditions are 'just as bad' - ergo, the logic of 'they were provoked into suicide' makes no sense whatsoever.

And FYI my data demonstrated that the number of suicides is well within normalized range. An variation of 20% in one year is going to be normal.

That's a common explanation, however it's necessary to refine the statistics, because FT employees may not match the general population.

Would be fairly easy: compare suicides in FT across years, and with another telecom company going through similar changes.

I would expect that this should be rather easy to confirm (or disprove) by breaking down the suicides across the age/profession/social status.

As I said, the trial is not about these suicides, but about a company-wide harassement policy.

I meant it as "alleged side-effect".

I think this is routine statistics.

I don't even think it will be close to 'routine'.

Where are you going to get the comparable data?

How on earth does one show 'causation' for any of this?

There are tons of Chinese factories, and others all over the world with considerably worse conditions wherein nobody is committing suicide. People living in ghettos don't even commit suicide at alarming rates.

'Suicide' is actually a contagious behaviour, when a child in a school commits suicide, often there are others. This we have some data for.

Layoffs and crappy work conditions are basically normative in a lot of the world, and not uncommon in the Western world, but I don't recall any cases of this kind of thing happening.

While I think there's no doubt difficult work conditions are surely going to help to create 'conditions' for negative outcomes, I think 'causation' is going to be impossible to prove directly.

The other thing here is that people make choices in life, it's another stretch of responsibility for someone to assert that the company made or induced them into making these choices.

If Orange was skimping on safety gear, and we saw a spike in related accidents - then I think this is the 'statistical case' and we can show causation and direct responsibility. But suicide, although tragic, is a different scenario altogether.

>I don't even think it will be close to 'routine'.

>Where are you going to get the comparable data?

>How on earth does one show 'causation' for any of this?

Is called epidemiology

>Layoffs and crappy work conditions are basically normative in a lot of the world, and not uncommon in the Western world, but I don't recall any cases of this kind of thing happening.

Do you know many farmers?

I come from a community of farmers in rural Ontario, and I don't know of, or have even heard of a single suicide.

Suicide takes more lives than war and violent crime combined and farmers regularly top the bill for the highest suicide rate of any profession, so you are uncommonly lucky.

edit - Apologies, the raised suicide rate reported for farmers in North America looks as though it may not be true in Canada - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10557200

Lots of farmer suicides in NZ. Maybe Ontario has better support for farmers/rural populations. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/99964077/farmer-sui...

That fact itself may be the most crucial. As far as I can tell, awareness of other people (especially people you would consider to be in a similar situation to yourself) committing suicide is widely considered a causal factor.

Even this fairly level headed conversation, and the legal case, are likely to somewhat contribute to suicidal ideation through mere awareness.

Having spent some time in rural Ontario, I can say it imbues one with a sense that life is worth living. ;- )

Why they didn't just shut down old shop - i.e. forming a 'bad company' based on it's liabilities but without it's assets and let it bankrupt voiding it's responsibilities - and open a new one just using the old one's licenses? Sounds like a logical solution here.

If that wasn't possible, makes me only wonder what the buyers were thinking during privatization.

Because.. that's not how any of this works?

You can't just transfer the assets of one company into a new one and let the old one go into administration with it's liabilities. The administrator will undo any such transfers and you will go to prison.

Wasn't this how banks, automakers, etc. were liquidated at about the same time in ~2009? Say General Motors simply offloaded all stuff it didn't need into Motors Liquidation Co and that one was bankrupted, all good stuff moved in new General Motors.

Don't vbe so sure. Yoy can't do it as simply as you described but there are many ingenious ways to arrive to the same destination and not being on any hook whatsoever.Remington case is a very good example of how it's being done.

Probably that they could force old generation of workers out one way or the other?

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