24 suicides rock Telecom
By Pulkit Sharma

It was just a question of time before the UPA Government started the process of privatizing state owned Telecom Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). One of the first proposals sent by the BSNL Board of Directors to their Minister was to begin with offering 10 percent of the Telecom via an IPO.  Many believe Governments should not be in the business of competing with private sector flexibility and finances. Many in the private sector feel that Ministers and Government servants do things which are detrimental to the long term public interest.

BSNL has about 300 thousand employees and for many privatization will be a painful exercise.

France, unlike most European Union countries, was isolated from the worst shocks of the global recession.  Its strict banking policies coupled with proactive State intervention have kept it away from worst excesses of capitalism. The French economy is in relatively good shape and the Government has funds to pay a living allowance to its unemployed citizens.

But despite all this financial security, the privatization of heavily in debt France Telecom (which bought Orange in 2000) has resulted in many broken lives.  More than 24 staff committed suicide in 20 months.  Yesterday, France Telecom’s Deputy CEO was forced to hand in his resignation.

Apparently, what triggered many of the suicides was because of an unofficial policy to drive people to resignation rather than pay them out. The Telegraph, UK is reporting

“
France Telecom's deputy chief executive Louis-Pierre Wenes, architect of a drive to modernise the former state monopoly that has been blamed for 24 staff suicides in 20 months, has resigned.

Union leaders blame the suicides on a brutal, target-obsessed company culture in which, they say, formerly well-qualified and adjusted employees – most in their 40s and 50s – are pushed around like pawns with the unofficial aim of "breaking" them so they will leave.

Some 22,000 have left in the last four years
“

In many poor countries, tragically poverty drives many honest farmers to suicide. What would be the humiliation and suffering forced on an European Telecom employee to ‘voluntarily leave’ that forces him to give up on family and life?