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Comment by pilooch | Hacker News Reader

It was a public service company, France Telecom, and employees were looking at their job as being civil servants in a way. Management decided to force many changes on employees in the hope they would resign. Many committed suicide or got sick, depressed etc...

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They didn’t look at it as being civil servants, they were civil servants. The last civil service entrance exam in FT was in 1995. The vast majority of employees hired before 1995 were in fact civil servants. When FT was privatized, part of the deal was that the new company would keep the existing civil servant workforce. (Source : worked at FT/Orange from 2004 to 2017)

Yes the article says all that. It doesn’t say what is was that trapped them in these jobs though. How did it get so bad? Why did people kill themselves rather than resign?

I have very little context besides being french and knowing people who worked there. Being "fonctionaire" is usually a very stable job where you will never get fired. If you go this route you will usually stay forever in the same position.

You would never resign. Those jobs are for life and have benefits and pensions.

It's like a startup who offers high stock options vested over a period for early employees. They grow too quickly and try to push the early employees out without triggering a clause that allows them to take back the options if they quit. They try to place them in jobs they are over qualified or not suited for.

Would you quit and leave money on the table.

It's France, there isn't the culture of switching jobs all the time.

As consequence very few people hire for these positions as well.

the article says that civil service employees don't receive the same unemployment benefits that private sector employees receive

Employees in the private sector can receive significant severance pay, which provides a financial cushion while they look for a new job. Civil service contracts don't have that perk, so France Télécom employees were reluctant to quit.

It is actually extremely difficult to resign when you are haressed even when you know you are being harassed. It hit your sense of worth really hard. Feeling worthless prevents you for properly assessing what you could do on the job market. It also doesn't stop at work and generally strongly impacts your personal life for the same reason.

A large majority of these employees were above 50 and had worked most of their life on the telephone infrastructure (network, last-mile, etc.). In 2004 France’s telephone network was fully mature, there simply wasn’t any more work for them to do. Sure, they could reskill and try their luck with a competing telco (which would have far less infrastructure, as they all piggy-backed on the incumbent). But would a competing telco hire a 50-something ex-civil servant, or someone out of school with more up-to-date skills and no idea of what a union is?

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