Sentences of one year imprisonment, including six months suspended, with a fine of 15,000 euros, were requested against ex-CEO Didier Lombard and the ex-number two Louis-Pierre Wenès, before the Paris Court of Appeal. The maximum incurred is one year.
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In applicant, Friday June 24 before the Paris Court of Appeal, confirmation of the conviction of the six defendants at the France Telecom trial, the two accusation representatives wished to send a clear message: the concept of “harassment Institutional moral “, which entered the case law on the occasion of the judgment rendered by the Paris Criminal Court in December 2019, is neither an accident in history, nor the fruit of a hazardous interpretation, fed by ’emotion and sociological considerations of the first judges. It must be recognized as a legal fortress. “The law is quite clear. A business strategy can constitute moral harassment,” said Advocate General Yves Micolet.
This is indeed the issue of this appeal trial for the accusation, faced with a defense which argues that we would have “twisted criminal law” to keep prosecution against France Telecom – become Orange -, His ex-CEO Didier Lombard, the ex-numéro two Louis-Pierre Wenès and four former executives of the company, after suicides of nineteen employees between 2007 and 2010.
In their indictment, the lawyers general wanted to respond in advance to the arguments of the defendants’ lawyers. No, they said, moral harassment does not require direct contact between the one who is accused of committing it and the one who undergoes it. It can be made up even when there is an interposition of people, in this case, between the base and the top of a business. No, they still say, it is not a “statistical offense”, in the sense that it would necessarily be necessary that a majority of employees say they are victims – and constitute a civil party – so that it is recognized. “We cannot reason on average by saying that, on the whole, the Next Plan [the company restructuring plan launched in 2005 by Didier Lombard] was good for employees.”
“Permanent instability climate”
“I am convinced that the leaders of France Telecom wanted to save the company, observed Yves Micolet, but they also designed and implemented a real policy of moral, industrial, collective and methodical harassment”, which has led to the “degradation of working conditions” of thousands of employees. At the heart of the transformation of France Telecom, faced with the arrival of the Internet and the opening of the telephony market for new competitors, was then the abolition of 22,000 jobs. “As a priority objective, it has become an imperative objective, while the leaders knew that it would be unrealizable. The serious element of this file was to say:” We continue “,” said the Advocate General.
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