The trial of former France Télécom CEO Didier Lombard and six of the company’s top executives on charges of moral harassment – when their brutal programme of cost cutting and job culls was accompanied by a wave of suicides and attempted suicides among staff – drew to a close on Thursday after two-and-a-half months of hearings in a Paris court.
The verdicts will be announced in December.
The trial is regarded as a landmark case for corporate culture in France, and the proper recognition of moral harassment, and its legal consequences, by businesses that have until now been largely immune to prosecution.
The executives of France Télécom – now renamed Orange – were responsible for introducing a restructuring plan at the company in 2006 during its privatisation process, and which involved a four-year plan to axe 22,000 jobs out of a total of around 130,000. Many of the workforce had the status of public employee, which theoretically gave them job security, and many of those earmarked by management to lose their posts who did not take voluntary redundancy were suddenly given inappropriate new tasks, often with impossible goals to meet, and moved to regions far from their homes.
The minutes of a meeting on October 20th 2006, record then CEO Didier Lombard telling a meeting of senior executives: “I’ll get them out one way or another, through the window or the door.”
During the cost-cutting and job-culling programme, divided into two plans called NExT and ACT, more than 30 staff committed suicide, many at the workplace, including by immolation, hanging and defenestration. At least 13 others attempted suicide, while more were diagnosed with depression. In one of the cases cited in court, a woman who took her life by jumping out of a fifth-floor office window, while another was a man who nearly fatally stabbed himself during a staff meeting.
During the trial, which opened on May 6th, former CEO Didier Lombard told the court: “That the transformations imposed on the company were not agreeable, that’s how it is, I can’t help that,” adding: “If I hadn’t been there, it would have been the same, perhaps worse even.”
Mediapart turned to a lawyer specialised in pursuing cases of infringement of labour law, Rachel Saada, who notably represented the families of employees of carmaker Renault who committed suicide in a wave of incidents in 2006-2007, for her analysis of the trial which ended on Thursday, beginning with its likely consequences in France for employees subjected to moral harassment at the workplace.
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Mediapart: The France Télécom trial ended on Thursday. If the former executives who stood trial are found guilty of the charges brought against them, will that have a consequence on other similar cases?
Rachel Saada: That is a certainty. Just as the defence and the civil parties have repeated throughout the trial, there is still no clear legal decision in criminal cases concerning the existence of strategic and managerial harassment by a company. It exists in civil cases, [where] it is very swiftly tried, but it doesn’t yet exist in criminal law procedures. It is important – very important.
Mediapart: How are those cases brought by you and your colleagues dealt with at present?
R.S.: Concerning moral harassment, there is absolutely no policy concerning criminal cases, it unfortunately depends upon the goodwill of some public prosecutors who will take up the cases. If [only] as much energy employed in punishing offences committed in [rundown] suburban neighbourhoods was applied to offences committed by corporations. Concerning undeclared employment, the justice system goes all out, because it involves foreigners and prevents the Urssaf [the agency that collects employer and employee social welfare payments] from receiving contributions. Those things are prosecuted. But when it involves punishing discrimination, violation of the right to strike, moral harassment or impeding the functioning of personnel representation bodies, there’s nobody around.
Mediapart: You followed some of the hearings during the two months of the France Télécom case. What is your opinion about the tone of the trial?
R.S.: In her summing up on July 5th, the [chief] public prosecutor [editor’s note: Brigitte Pesquié]spoke of the exceptional character of these hearings, and notably the behaviour of the defendants, and their numerous responses to what was said by the civil parties and the witnesses – taking back the stand, the ripostes to replies and so on. There was no limit. The prosecutor told presiding magistrate Cécile Louis-Loyant that, in her shoes, she would have interrupted these interventions [by the defendants], have done more to direct the debates. Then she recognised that it was clearly the presiding magistrate’s manner of doing things which was the best.
But that’s very rare, I had never seen that.
Mediapart: How do you explain that?
R.S.: It is certainly because of the exceptional character of the trial, but also due to the competence of the magistrates who led the debating. A hearing is really about what the magistrates do. There can be absolutely extraordinary trials, court hearings with captivating cases, but if the presiding magistrate doesn’t properly lead the debates it all ends in a let-down. In this trial, the presiding magistrate led the debates very well.
The prosecution services were exceptional also. They were quite quiet during the hearings, but extremely attentive., and we saw that they had a perfect grasp of the case. When someone had a hesitation about a date, the deputy prosecutor gave the right date and the right reference to the document in the case file.
The [chief] public prosecutor ended her summing up by saying that this trial was an exemplary one, and on two counts: the court will have to render a decision [the verdicts will be pronounced on December 20th] which will serve as an example, but she also pointed out to the defendants that they were lucky to have had the trial they did.
Mediapart: Is this a privilege reserved for an economic elite?
R.S.: Was this exemplary character [of the trial] linked to the fact that the defendants were bosses, who come from the dominating class? It’s true that the justice system doesn’t address itself to everyone in the same way. But I am certain that this presiding magistrate would, faced with defendants from socially deprived neighbourhoods, would be just as respectful. Her respect was not linked to fear or deference, but to her rectitude.
Mediapart: Did the defendants make wise use of the quality of the exchanges during the trial?
R.S.: Not at all, in my opinion. I am a little flabbergasted, I must say. Their defence appeared to me to be counter-productive. Firstly, because all the defendants had the same, and that they therefore appeared like a congruent group. They support each other, they complete one another, one comes to the aide of the other, and so on. Which proves that they did indeed lead company policy all together, and that, before the court, they remained together. It’s fine to remain together, but with that they should have collectively assumed their actions. And they didn’t.
The public prosecutor said so, that it is incredible [that] a boss does never recognise moral harassment. There are all kinds of offences that people will recognise, but never moral harassment.
The comparison was made with “reckless road traffic offenders”. That is very evocative, but they are not just reckless drivers, they are dominant reckless drivers. The perception they have of themselves must be taken into account. The prosecutor raised this in describing their position – “I am somebody good, I saved the company and you know nothing about the economy”.
They have this profound conviction, and I am not at all certain that these two and a half months has led them to a personal revolution. Moreover, I think that if some of them were to undergo that revolution and admit what they have done, they would collapse.
Mediapart: The prosecution services have asked for the maximum possible sentences: a one-year jail term and a fine of 15,000 euros for the three principal excecutives, and eight months in prison and a fine of 10,000 euros for their deputies.
R.S.: I am not at all surprised by these demands, I could feel the call for maximum sentences coming. Because since the events were committed, the text of the law has changed and the sentences have been hardened [in 2012, but only for offences thereafter], but also with regard to the behaviour of the defendants, who admit to absolutely nothing.
What is striking is that the prosecutor called for the maximum jail sentencing without mentioning the possibility of a suspended sentence. Often the prosecutor calls for a jail sentence and then says they leave it to the court to decide whether this should be [in part or whole] suspended. Not this time.
Mediapart: And so a non-suspended prison sentence could be pronounced?
R.S.: Personally, I have never seen a prison sentence pronounced in a case of moral harassment at the workplace, even when a suicide is involved. In any case, in France bosses are not sent to jail, above all not for offences against the labour rights law.
But the prosecutor also wants to make the verdict very public, with the demand that the sentence be published in the press. I systematically put in such a request for publication when I represent civil parties. I never obtain it.
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- This interview was originally conducted in French, available here.
English version by Graham Tearse