Maybe this will help you rustle people's jimmies.

(1) Countries' legal systems should be able to punish those responsible for working conditions that provably and significantly impede health.

(2) Working conditions that provably and significantly contribute to death and sickness impede health. (1, consequence)

(3) There are many independent reports of working conditions at Orange significantly contributing to deaths and sickness and they should be trusted and treated as evidence. (Premise)

(4a) It is reasonable to believe that working conditions at Orange contributed significantly to deaths and sickness. (3, using the evidence).

(4b) It is unreasonable to believe that working conditions at Orange did not contribute significantly to deaths and sickness (3, using the evidence).

(5) France's legal system should be able to punish those responsible at Orange for the working conditions at their company as they provably and significantly impeded health.

They were convicted of harrassing people. Which they did. They were not convicted of causing the suicides. Which would then be some kind of homocide. They were truly terrible people doing things no employer should do with the intent they had. As an employer you have a lot of control of people for a significant part of their week. In a great economy, they can just hop somewhere else. You're responsible if they take their lives, but you are responsible for abusing the position to make people feel like shit and that was their goal. Make people feel like shit, so they quit.

(1) Countries' legal systems should be able to punish those responsible for working conditions that provably and significantly impede health. — fdrake

The rightist wonders about that, though.

It sounds like the French job market was such that miserable people at Orange didn't think they could quit and work elsewhere, so they remained in their positions until the darkness overtook them.

The fact that the job market was tight indicates that France is overpopulated and some portion of the workers need to move to where there are jobs. By forcing French companies to maintain happy work environments, they're effectively making the problem worse. French people will stay in France and produce more French people into an overloaded system. Companies will struggle to maintain the happiness quotient until they finally go out of business and the crowds of hungry French people will start executing people by guillotine.

Thus the heroic efforts to create happiness have the potential to produce disaster.

It's better to work with nature and allow small adjustments (which might include 35 suicides), rather than prop up an artificial system that will eventually fail in a larger bloody adjustment.

The fact that the job market was tight indicates that France is overpopulated and some portion of the workers need to move to where there are jobs. By forcing French companies to maintain happy work environments, they're effectively making the problem worse. French people will stay in France and produce more French people into an overloaded system. Companies will struggle to maintain the happiness quotient until they finally go out of business and the crowds of hungry French people will start executing people by guillotine. — frank

Are you arguing that it is necessary for people to be harassed into suicide in every workplace because if it doesn't happen civilisation will collapse quicker?

Are you arguing that it is necessary for people to be harassed into suicide in every workplace because if it doesn't happen civilisation will collapse quicker? — fdrake

No, I'm not. The rightist argues that survival of the fittest generates healthy entities in human industry in very much the same way it does in the evolution of organisms.

There is no depth of depravity to which the economy will not descend with enthusiasm if a profit can be made.

There is no depth of depravity to which the economy will not descend with enthusiasm if a profit can be made. — unenlightened

:100:

Isnt it each person's responsibility to maintain his or her own sanity? — frank

Does that have no limitations? If someone binds you to a table and has water drip on your forehead for ten years straight, is it still your own responsibility to maintain sanity? If someone secretly administers psychosis-inducing drugs to your system, is it your responsibility?

If the material conditions of the workers did not allow them or make them feel they were allowed to rebel or change their circumstances, how much can be said to be their own responsibility?

The rightist argues that survival of the fittest generates healthy entities — frank

Who survives in these scenarios? The callous and psychopathic? I would not classify them as "healthy."

Isnt it each person's responsibility to maintain his or her own sanity? — frank

Sure, and for being abuse of power jerks they can take responsibility for their santiy and experiences in prison for a short time, and then likely go back to priviledged lives, where they perhaps will just be bad bosses but not sadistic ones.

Were all the Civilized Nations (sic) to apply the French law to their various corporate and/or state employers and then resort to the guillotine, a new large corporation would be needed to design, build, deliver, and maintain all the beheading equipment--sharpening blades, cleaning up the copious blood spatter, making sure that Occupational Safety and Health rules were followed, etc.

There is a reason why we get paid for coming into work every day: we sure as hell wouldn't do it for free.

There is something about the world-wide dominant paradigm of management - worker relations that so easily begins the slide down the slippery slope towards dehumanization, alienation, anomie, etc, and I bet France is a relatively good place to work, by and large. And maybe the workers at this spoiled Orange French Telecom should have practiced more la solidarité and la résistance, oui?

Moral responsibility works both ways -- offense and defense. A better cure than small fines and short jail sentences (which are under appeal and might be dismissed) is strong united worker power.

The idea that someone else is to blame for someone else’s suicide is not without its irony. There is no place in the workplace for bullying and harassment, but then again it was completely within their power to quit and leave those conditions behind them.

No, I'm not. The rightist argues that survival of the fittest generates healthy entities in human industry in very much the same way it does in the evolution of organisms. — frank

Can you spell out for me how that relates to workplace conditions that lead to unhealthy workers - exposed to conditions that are not necessary for the good functioning of an office?

You're responsible if they take their lives, but you are responsible for abusing the position to make people feel like shit and that was their goal. — Coben

Why didn't they just lay them off?

Moral responsibility works both ways -- offense and defense. A better cure than small fines and short jail sentences (which are under appeal and might be dismissed) is strong united worker power. — Bitter Crank

I once heard that when workers unionize, they just get two asshole bosses instead of one since unionizers tend to be belligerent buttheads. But at least with a union there would have been a way for those 35 people to have their voices heard.

The rightist argues that survival of the fittest generates healthy entities
— frank

Who survives in these scenarios? The callous and psychopathic? I would not classify them as "healthy." — Artemis

I was thinking more about the survival of a French company that attacks its employees instead of facilitating enthusiasm. How has it survived this long?

Can you spell out for me how that relates to workplace conditions that lead to unhealthy workers - exposed to conditions that are not necessary for the good functioning of an office? — fdrake

On reflection, my point was a weird one to be making. The French should punish whoever they want to.

Iago didn't make Othello into a murderer. Othello did that. Iago is tortured to death at the end, though. The crime of the French executives is similar to Iago's. Intellectually, it's hard to pinpoint it, but it's very clear emotionally. We're supposed to help each other.

The idea that someone else is to blame for someone else’s suicide is not without its irony. There is no place in the workplace for bullying and harassment, but then again it was completely within their power to quit and leave those conditions behind them. — NOS4A2

Yep.

Why didn't they just lay them off? — frank

Because laying them off would have required severance payouts. It was more economical to terrorize their employees into leaving than offering them redundancy.

It's better to work with nature and allow small adjustments (which might include 35 suicides), rather than prop up an artificial system that will eventually fail in a larger bloody adjustment. — frank

That is an exceedingly callous thing to say.

You shouldn’t underestimate how hard it is to leave a salaried position in a large company. It’s easy to say ‘well, just find another job’ but it’s often extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. Mortgages, school fees, car repayments and everything else comes out of that monthly paycheck and often an employee has spent years working up to a position. When you interview for jobs, one leading question is always ‘why did you leave your last job.’ And one piece of regular interview advice is ‘never run down or badmouth your previous employer, it will make you appear disloyal and untrustworthy.’ So, if you quit one of those roles, it’s metaphorically like being out on the street. Hence the ‘stickiness’ of such positions.

Intellectually, it's hard to pinpoint it, but it's very clear emotionally. We're supposed to help each other. — frank

If you need a structural argument for why workplace safety should have laws attached, consider that sickness has huge social costs; it decreases workplace productivity and requires the use of social safety nets to care for those that are sick. In essence, workplaces harassing employees offloads the costs the business would have for dealing with the issue adequately onto whatever measures there are in their employees' social safety nets, the business loses productivity from the harassed workers, and the harassed employees' social relationships suffer too.

There are cases where workplaces stand to gain, or avoid loss, by harassing their employees or having an unsafe working environment (like with Orange), and in doing so their interests go against the public and the state. It makes sense to punish workplace harassment and unsafe working environments to impede the social and financial costs of this negligence from being offloaded onto the public and the state.

If you need a structural argument for why workplace safety should have laws attached, consider that sickness has huge social costs; it decreases workplace productivity and requires the use of social safety nets to care for those that are sick. — fdrake

And that argument is pretty easy to understand if we're talking about chemical exposure or the absence of safety equipment on machinery.

It's a little harder see how to apply that in the case of psychological abuse because while asbestos has pretty much the same effect on everyone, moral harassment doesn't. Some people thrive on an emotionally charged environment that includes permission to be abusive (which is provided by an abusive executive.) And in regard to the suicides, the clearest sign of toxicity, it would be hard to prove that workplace stress was the only cause in each case, in fact that would be a little odd. Again, with asbestos, the chest x-ray gives you a diagnosis that can't be questioned.

It makes sense to punish workplace harassment and unsafe working environments to impede the social and financial costs of this negligence from being offloaded onto the public and the state. — fdrake

With moral harassment, it will be hard to quantify that cost. Less hard to quantify will be the revenues the government will lose for lack of companies like Uber in the economy, a company known for both ruthlessness and profitability.

It's better to work with nature and allow small adjustments (which might include 35 suicides), rather than prop up an artificial system that will eventually fail in a larger bloody adjustment.
— frank

That is an exceedingly callous thing to say.

You shouldn’t underestimate how hard it is to leave a salaried position in a large company. — Wayfarer

I know it was callous. It also happens to be true. That said, I'd rather be in a society that reaches out with compassion to people who are in pain than one that sees them as superfluous (even though we probably all are.)

And that argument is pretty easy to understand if we're talking about chemical exposure or the absence of safety equipment on machinery. — frank

Whatever causes the sickness and death doesn't really matter, does it? It just changes what should be done to address the issue, and the laws which may apply. Widespread workplace harassment and mental illness inducing work environments give business globally 1 trillion dollars in losses from productivity decrease alone, never mind the social costs and the weight that brings on social safety nets.

Some people thrive on an emotionally charged environment that includes permission to be abusive (which is provided by an abusive executive.) — frank

There's a big difference between a high pressure work environment and an abusive one. High pressure work environments can still have clear goals, efficient allocation of talent to tasks, and provide employees with downtime or appropriate compensation. The case with Orange wilfully stopped good management practices for the sole purpose of driving out employees they did not want to pay any more or provide a severance package for.

With moral harassment, it will be hard to quantify that cost. Less hard to quantify will be the revenues the government will lose for lack of companies like Uber in the economy, a company known for both ruthlessness and profitability. — frank

The WHO keeps statistics on it. It has the benefit of book-keeping on its side, whereas the reasons Orange treated their workers like they did was much more to do with, well, downsizing to avoid paying people (get those outflows off the books by any means necessary) and forcing them out without a severance package.

If it wasn't so clear cut that Orange's management practices caused the suicide of some of their workers, it wouldn't've been proved beyond reasonable doubt would it?

Edit: An unstated assumption in what you're saying is that such abuses actually produce efficiency gains or mitigate efficiency losses, which remains unargued for, and is implausible given the obvious effects of illness promoting environments on productivity and the costs they impose on societies.

Presumably they did not have just cause in whatever government or employment or union related contracts. Obviously they would have done that if they could have. That would have saved them labor. To harrass people took management hours that could have been spent on other things.

Some people thrive on an emotionally charged environment that includes permission to be abusive — frank

You mean like sadistic serial killers might?

A person's enjoyment of being a bully does not make a right.

Whatever causes the sickness and death doesn't really matter, does it? — fdrake

In the case of depression and anxiety disorders the cause is likely to be genetic. You can't have a genetic predisposition to having your head ripped off in a combine accident, so agricultural accidents can be easily traced to a lack of safety precautions. Psychological disorders can't be.

The world is full of assholes. Sooner or later we all have to learn how to deal with that. An asshole boss is an opportunity to either learn how to deal with abuse or grow a spine stiff enough to get yourself out of the situation.

Widespread workplace harassment and mental illness inducing work environments give business globally 1 trillion dollars in losses from productivity decrease alone — fdrake

Source?

The case with Orange wilfully stopped good management practices for the sole purpose of driving out employees they did not want to pay any more or provide a severance package for. — fdrake

Has France started legally mandating good management practices?

Edit: An unstated assumption in what you're saying is that such abuses actually produce efficiency gains or mitigate efficiency losses, which remains unargued for, — fdrake

I just pointed out that an abusive environment can produce efficiency gains. It's called bootcamp. It's you who wants to make the positive claim that abusive workplaces create costs for society in general. I'm not seeing it. As BC pointed out, every job has a downside. You get paid to put up with it.

The best case (and questionably realistic) scenario for allowing abusive work environments of the sort described is that company X makes more profits. That doesn't seem a very compelling reason to sanction lives being destroyed unless you deify commercial success to balance the equation. Which I suppose many rightists do. Mix that with a bit of social Darwinism and corporate psychopathy and soon you're at "Fuck the lambs, we need more Doner kebab!". Not much of a crowd pleaser this side of the pond.

It's a choice. As a society we choose what we will put up with. Why should potential "efficiency gains" outweigh every other consideration? You could get efficiency gains by forcing kids to work, extending the working week to 60 hours, abolishing retirement. That would toughen us all up too. The question is why would we want that?

Some people thrive on an emotionally charged environment that includes permission to be abusive
— frank

You mean like sadistic serial killers might?

A person's enjoyment of being a bully does not make a right. — Artemis

We weren't talking about whether or not it's right. We were talking about whether it costs the taxpayers money. But since you brought it up, why would you say that being an asshole is wrong?

"Fuck the lambs, we need more Doner kebab!". Not much of a crowd pleaser this side of the pond. — Baden

France is on your side of the pond, Baden.

Makes my point. "French Telecom Company Convicted Of 'Moral Harassment". And you won't hear much argument against that over here. Seems self-evident its undesirable practice.