Moral harassment.

Byline: Zeenat Hisam

THE recent verdict by a French court on 'moral harassment' of employees has set a major precedent in an era of turbulent global economic liberalisation. While the criminal trial against the French telecom exposes tactics of corporate culture - merciless downsizing leading to workers' suicides - the verdict reveals the strength and role of trade unions in holding corporations accountable.

Cynics might ask what a First World dispute between managerial staff and employers has to do with Pakistan, a country where managerial cadre is deprived of the basic right to form a union, where trade unionism is no more than a weak whimper and labour disputes take years to decide. Well, it gives us hope - an increasingly rare commodity these days - that the verdict might make corporations across the globe rethink 'corporate social responsibility'.

Suicides due to workplace stress have increased sharply in developed countries such as the US, Japan and Australia in the last two decades. Earlier this year, 189 cases of attempted suicides and other stress-related health issues of Amazon warehouse employees came to light. In Japan, such suicides have a specific term - karojisatsu, or suicide from overwork. Workplaces are getting cruel and unjust day by day, and this phenomenon cut across class: highly skilled, educated and professional workforces are also facing the consequences of unbridled corporate greed.

The court established that the company's culture led to workers' suicides.

France Telecom, once a state monopoly, got rid of 22,000 workers in three years when it was privatised, restructured and rebranded as Orange in 2006. Between 2008- 09, 19 employees took their own lives, 12 attempted suicide, and eight were diagnosed with severe depression. The employees' suicides and the follow-ups kept France and the global corporate sector on tenterhooks for a decade.

The trial, which began in May 2019, lasted just two months. However, the process leading to the trial took 10 years and involved the probing of harassment claims at France Telecom SA in 2010 by the prosecutor's office, the labour inspectorate's inquiries into cases, a stress-monitoring survey of the employees, a judicial investigation into the restructuring programme of the company, and filing of the cases by trade unions on behalf of the victims' families.

As public servants, the employees at France Telecom could not be fired so the management adopted a strategy to 'encourage'...