Suicides in France Put Focus on Workplace

Justin Pierson
Soc. 313
Post #2

In France a company called Telecom has been reevaluating and reorganizing its business strategy in order to become more efficient thus more profitable in these hard economic times, this has had an unfortunate effect on their workforce. Since February 2008 there have been twenty four suicides at Telecom and France's government is beginning to think that this is not merely a coincidence. Workers are forced to work long hours and with many jobs being cut the workers that are left at Telecom are being pushed beyond their limits. Due to the pace of economic change there is a desire among many businesses to become more efficient at a lower cost. Many jobs have already been cut and many more cuts will still be made this seems to be putting pressure on workers to perform and many due to the high pressure at work and their job insecurity are unable to cope with the change. France has recorded the second highest suicide rate, next to Japan, among large European countries. Telecom is attempting to deal with this problem by adding anonymous help lines, strengthening their human resources department and offering psychological support for those who need it.

This situation seems to illustrate Taylorism and shows how it may create more efficient businesses while causing the workforce to become extremely stressed and uncertain about their employment future, leading some to take their own lives. While businesses are trying to find ways to become more effecient are they really concerned with the effect of this rapid change of their workers? The desire to maximize profits in these difficult economic times is causing some companies, like Telecom, to not consider the well being of their working population. The business seems to be so concerned with becoming efficient that worker comfort is not being considered, you would think that the more comfortable each worker is with their working conditions the more efficient each worker may become. This article shows how the desire to continually rationalize the workplace may have extremely negative effects on the workers themselves and in looking to control the cost and the rate of production businesses are causing workers to kill themselves.
This article was found in the New York Times and can be accessed through this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/global/30employ.html?_r=2&sq=suicide%20business&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1254420264-KufYRdVjJ5mI0k+bdZT8EQ