The book December 20, 2019: the Paris Criminal Court renders a historic judgment in the France Telecom case, which has become the symbol of suffering at work. He was particularly interested in the management school of the flagship of telecommunications, a real laboratory, according to the accusation, of a management of terror. The executives learn that the company is “at war”, we exchange “tips” to get the employees to leave: setting unachievable goals, removing chairs from the office …
This disaster is not an isolated case: in May 2019, the SUD Rail union warns of a wave of suicides at SNCF. Another group newly subjected to international competition, La Poste, engaged since 2010 in a process of privatization, is today in the crosshairs of the justice system, some sources mentioning about thirty suicides per year.
Suicide is the most dramatic and extreme expression of professional suffering. But it is often only the visible part “A generalized distress at work that the victims try to hide, to always rise to the occasion and not suffer threats of dismissal, transfer, demotion or even simple annoyance”, says Laurent Izard in In the sweat of your brow.
Increased pressure on employees
Normalien and associate of the university in economics and management, he shows to what extent since the 1980s and the liberalization of trade, the economy is subject to ever more intense pressure, leading to the implementation of harsher management methods. and causing relocations and other plant closures.
The increased pressure on employees is not the only manifestation of the societal upheaval unfolding before our eyes. The employment relationship based on wage employment formalized by a stable employment contract is exploding: the proliferation of short contracts, self-employment and uberization of many economic sectors are inducing a major change in the relationship between man and his work, generator of stress and economic precariousness.
The book warns about “The negative externalities, and often lessened, of an uncontrolled economic and financial globalization which transforms in depth the relation of the man to work and which can generate real situations of alienation. “
The 2020 health crisis has revived debates around our economic model and our work organization principles. Major dysfunctions have been brought to light, proving those who, at the risk of appearing utopian, denounced the risks of uncontrolled globalization. The health crisis has encouraged significant developments that should be supported.
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