Management

It was Tuesday, a debate in the National Assembly about France Telecom and the 25 suicides in that group. The minister of labor, Xavier Darcos began by evoking "the dramatic events that have taken place in certain enterprises," before launching into this incredible sentence: "But I would like to state that there is something worse
than stress at work, there is stress when unemployed." And continuing: "The government remains convinced that the foremost of social values is to have work."

Decide between stress and unemployment? This is not mere clumsiness. It’s recidivism. He had come up with the same sentence during a meeting with France Telecom itself. He had earlier declared, before a group of journalists specializing in social information, on the subject of "these enterprises one talks about", and still on the subject of stress, that they are nevertheless "enterprises where employment itself is not endangered. Not at all. Not in the SNCF, not at France Telecom, not in the Pôle emploi" [1]."

What are they complaining about, then, these workers who are the lucky ones because they have jobs? The president and general director of France Telecom, Didier Lombard, had evoked on Friday those wage-earners who, when it is decided to relocate them, get the idea they are no longer loved ... little natures, surely too sensitive. And people who get attached. Cynicism has thus become a method of management.