Which factors do you consider to have been the most influential in this case? France Telecom France is particularly sensitive to workplace suicides after patterns of staff taking their lives at Renault, Peugeot and the electricity giant EDF in recent years. Some argue that the remaining public sector workers at the company are having difficulty adapting to the cut-throat ways of a privatised enterprise. But Gaëlle Urvoas, a CGT Brittany union representative, said, ‘It’s not change, it’s the way it’s being handled’.

A sociologist, Monique Crinon, said ‘management by stress’ was not uniquely French, but part of a new trend across Europe. After interviewing a cross-section of France Télécom and Orange staff, she identified feelings of being undervalued and ‘low self-esteem’ running from directory inquiries, call-centre staff and sales assistants in mobile phone shops, right up to senior managers. Teams were deliberately broken up to leave workers isolated and feeling like failures in a performance-driven system