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At Large
Suicide Countdown
The French are reacting tragically to efforts to introduce “Anglo-Saxon” economic reforms.
One French woman jumped to her death from her office window. A few days later a man leapt off a highway overpass into the path of onrushing cars and was killed. And 22 others from the same company, France Telecom, have also committed suicide in various ways in the past 18 months, all apparently due to mismanagement and unbearable stress in the workplace.
Belatedly, the company has finally agreed that something must be amiss. Top executives last month postponed key elements of their drive for management modernization and promised a “more human” corporate culture by December.
France Telecom is just one example of the efforts under way in the French economy to bring modern management techniques to bear. Coming up in January will be the French Post Office, due to be converted to private company status. Postal workers are fighting it every step of the way, most recently with a nationwide referendum to play up how unpopular the scheme is.
The upheavals and their consequences have dominated the French media in recent weeks. A television debate a few days ago asked the question: “How soon will the suicides spread to the Post Office?”
France is undergoing a slow and painful adaptation to the realities of deregulation, privatization and international competition, exposing companies to the rigors of the free market — sometimes with scant regard for employees’ ability to keep pace.
Yet the two most frequently cited complaints about management innovations are routine in most international companies: rotation to new locations and annual performance reviews. Both are alien practices in France. A psychiatrist wrote in the press recently that his patients from France Telecom have also suffered from “lack of appreciation by their superiors, affronts to their dignity, and an excessive emphasis on productivity and profitability”.
The troubles in the outdated civil service mastodons may be extreme cases but they serve to illustrate the French love of étatisme and the suspicion of metrics-based management methods. Indeed, the Telecom and Post Office cases starkly highlight some of the quirky aspects of French business in general, such as the company as a kind of mother figure that has a duty to protect its children.
Tough-minded management ideas imported from abroad are generally unwelcome. A strain of anti-Americanism runs through the labor movement, and much of the economic reform under way is sneered at as “Anglo-Saxon” in origin, French code words for American cowboy capitalism. A French executive once told me, in his best Franglais, that he believed setting priorities such as “customer first” was “just more Anglo-Saxon bulls—t”.
The Telecom workers have not been not shy about making their displeasure known. Some have complained of a new culture that treats employees “ground meat” rather than people.
France Telecom President Didier Lombard was booed, hissed, and physically threatened recently when he visited a site near Paris where an employee had taken his own life. Lombard is accused by labor unions of refusing to take the stress crisis seriously until a few weeks ago when the death rate became a daily headline in the French media.
Now the “suicide countdown”, as one magazine calls it, will reportedly lead to his replacement by a successor hand-picked by President Nicolas Sarkozy. The French government holds 24 percent of the partially privatized France Telecom, making it the largest shareholder.
For the moment, Lombard is assisted by Louis-Pierre Wenès, former head of the French office of consultancy A. T. Kearney. Together their lack of rapport with employees has made them highly unpopular figures in the company.
French workers have never been known for their flexibility. But the impact of globalization and the lowering of borders within the European Union have meant a gradual erosion of the cocoon inside which they have traditionally found comfort. The threat to their traditions is most dramatic in companies that are part of the huge state economy — notably the old PTT that grouped both the post office and the telecommunications services. A job there was usually a job for life.
Out of this protected environment grew a model of work-life balance that has been touted by some soft-focus business gurus as the way forward. The balance, based on the 35-hour work week, is tilted in favor of the individual, not the company. Global competitors tend to tilt the balance the other way. Now, under pressure instigated by President Sarkozy and his advisers, that is beginning to change.
Media coverage of the tension inside France Telecom has sounded the alarm in a most public way, threatening the company’s reputation and questioning the force-feeding of new work practices. Newspapers, radio, and television are giving voice to employees who consider themselves to have been pushed around unreasonably as they “suffer in silence”, according to one technician who has spoken out. Others, he said, simply “jump out the window”.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (45) | Leave a comment
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Steve| 10.5.09 @ 7:23AM
This is a joke, right? This is satire, right? This cannot possibly be reality in a nation of ostensible adults, can it?
owyheewine| 10.5.09 @ 9:03AM
Meanwhile back at the home of Anglo-Saxon work ethic, we are trudging toward the Franco model. Charles Murray is shuddering, as is the soul of Laurence Peter.
Galen| 10.5.09 @ 10:11AM
Gives new meaning to the prhase,"going postal" N'est Pas?
Appleby| 10.5.09 @ 10:30AM
As someone who has had to deal with France Telecom, I say it's about time.
As Daddy would have said, "Why now drown them all and raise pigs instead?"
In fact, dealing with the French in any form or fashion is like trying to push a string.
Etiquette Man| 10.5.09 @ 10:50AM
There is no such thing as customer service in France.
When I lived in Paris, I quickly learned that I would have to choose between having an aneurysm and simply accepting routinely poor service at the hands of quasi-civil servants at the many ostensibly private service companies (like France Telecom).
I'm sorry that people are taking their lives over this, but am also shocked. If this report is accurate, they're an even weaker people than my personal experience taught me.
I guess they'll still trying to get over Agincourt. Call it "long term, culturally embedded PTSD"
The Frogs should take a hint from Obama. Just as everything wrong here is Dubya's fault, those sensitive souls on the Seine should just blame Henry V, demand reparations from the UK for the pain and suffering caused, and be done with it.
Souris de Kentucky| 10.5.09 @ 11:30AM
After reading this, I think I'll stop envying the French for their 30-day annual paid vacations.
Pingback| 10.5.09 @ 11:35AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Suicide Countdown [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Son Of Sam | 10.5.09 @ 11:52AM
Historically, France has been considered a great nation. Right up until World War Two, it was one of the "Great Powers". The French people have recorded magnificient feats of arms, have been at the forefront of exploration and discovery and, have been a nation which has produced and supported great works of art. Maybe the people living there nowadays should ask themselves how this was all accomplished. Was it done on a 35 hour workweek? Was it done by having a crybaby hissyfit when the real world made demands upon them? Or was it done by faith, hard work and sacrifice?
Geez, you'd think people besides the dreaded "Anglo Saxons" could answer that question for them
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
L. Ross| 10.5.09 @ 12:34PM
I have stayed for many months in France, and by and large it is a beautiful country. Frankly, in Provence, the people are friendly and polite as well. However, as a nation, they are just not very motivated. They enjoy life more than we do here in the U.S. The month of August off is not a joke. Going out for a meal is a three hour affair. Work days start late and end early. I have no doubt that the idea of a 40 hour work week would drive them to distraction, much less the increasingly common 50-60 hour work week we have here in America. They love to denigrate our suburban lifestyle and our fast food, but honestly, these are things that have grown here out of necessity. You can't have a meal take 3 hours here. We just don't have the time. If they can't keep up with our work ethic and labor laws, God help them compete with the Chinese and Indians.
KyMouse| 10.5.09 @ 4:06PM
Mark Steyn often writes about this European malaise, with much attention paid to the French, at his Web site, www.steynonline.com. I encourage y'all to read his observations for yourselves. They're eye-opening.
KyMouse| 10.5.09 @ 4:11PM
If you haven't read Mark Steyn's April 2009 remarks at Hillsdale College, "Live Free or Die!," please look it up. You can find it at the college's site or on his site.
BritWit| 10.5.09 @ 10:07PM
Mark Steyn... mmm mmm good!
james wilson| 10.5.09 @ 12:45PM
Tocqueville--
I have met men in New England prepared to abandon their homeland, where they might have gained a comfortable living, to seek their fortune in the wilderness. Nearby I saw the French Canadians crowded in an area too narrow tor them when the same wilderness lay close at hand; the Canadian paid as high a price for land as he would have done in France, whereas the United States immigrant obtained a whole estate for the price of a few days work.
Thus, nature, in presenting Europeans with the empty lands of the New World, offers them something they do not always know how to use. I see other peoples of America enjoying the same physical conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans but without their laws and customs, and these nations are miserable.
It is impossible to pretend that the English have not won a huge dominance over all the other European races in the new World. They are much superior in civilization, industry, and power. Anglo-American laws and customs represent, therefore, the particular and predominant reason, which I have been seeking, for their greatness.
fundamentalist| 10.5.09 @ 1:19PM
I think everyone is being to hard on French workers. In the US, we have the option of jumping ship for a different job most of the time, though not in a depression. That option keeps a lid on supervisor abuse, which can get pretty bad here. At my current job, turnover was very high because the supervisor was an SOB. His boss gave him a year to get the turnover down to reasonable levels. He ignored her and she finally fired him. The quality of life is much better now that he is gone.
French workers don't have that luxury. They have a choice between SOB management and no work at all because decades of socialism prevents job growth. I would hate to think how bad American managers would become if they didn't have to worry about turnover. It would be hell! Of course, I wouldn't kill myself; I'd kill the SOB managers.
Ranchera| 10.5.09 @ 7:07PM
Great article! Finally, I have been trying to find an article in the U.S.that deals with this issue. How ironic? Obama is trying to nationalize our HealthCare and Sarkozy is privatizing the Post. There is a lot more behind this story.( I read Figaro and LeMonde). The next country to look at closely is Greece after electing PASOK. How can France and Germany be heading towards more conservative governments and the Greece, Spain and Portugal becaming more "progresive"?
Frank| 10.5.09 @ 7:12PM
Don't get too teary eyed about the suicides. The French have to complete a year of military service. I remember being told by one of my French acquaintances that if one of the company of inductees committed suicide then everyone else got sent home. Therefore the trick was to identify the weakest member of the group and make his life so intolerable that he would in fact kill himself.
A naton that would abandon 30,000 of their elders to die in Paris without prompt burial, as they did in the summer heatwave of 2005, rather than discomode themselves by returning early from their month long vacances, is hardly going to care overly about a few weaker citoyens going postal on themselves. "Vive l'indifference!"
JanineC| 10.5.09 @ 7:36PM
I am not surprised...these are the people who invented gawd-awful mayonnaise...(oil and raw egg whites) and who invented perfume instead of bathing.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for them. My customer service ethic would drive their whole nation to suicide! We are not just customer focused...but we are proactively customer focused!!!
Mark| 10.5.09 @ 9:23PM
May the muslim invasion of France hurry up. These people are too pathetically weak to survive as a nation any longer.
Ken| 10.5.09 @ 10:51PM
Obviously our Franco in Chief wants the same for us. Of course he's succeeded with his 'community organizing' so we've got a head start. What with his flitting about and date nights I'm guessing he puts in a solid 35 hour week, sometimes.
Christopher Holland| 10.5.09 @ 11:20PM
Jesus Christ, what a bunch of snivelling wankers! These bed wetters are afraid to sleep with the lights out, they give surrender monkeys are bad name. The next time the Germans invade, let them have them.
passer| 10.6.09 @ 1:30AM
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steve| 10.6.09 @ 9:28AM
The French are soft. This comes from many years of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
JamesJ| 10.6.09 @ 11:03AM
No wonder they're called "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"
Coco| 10.6.09 @ 1:30PM
How bizarre. Just get a different job!
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