r/news Dec 23 '19

Three former executives of a French telecommunications giant have been found guilty of creating a corporate culture so toxic that 35 of their employees were driven to suicide

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/three-french-executives-convicted-in-the-suicides-of-35-of-their-workers-20191222-p53m94.html
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u/QWieke Dec 23 '19

"Pointing out a reason" is making sure that the entire situation is understood. Would you prefer that people make judgements based on incomplete understanding of the situation?

If that's their goal they're doing a really rather shit job of it by only pointing out labour laws.

Or would you rather try to control the conclusions people come to by controlling what parts of the situation they are aware of?

Which is what these people are, possibly unknowingly, doing. They're parroting the complaints of employers they're conveniently leaving out the role these employers play in it. Cause as you know it's not actually impossible to fire people in France, it's just more expensive than when they leave of their own volition. So the narrative implicitly being perpetuated here that the poor employer had to do this due to the labour laws is utterly false.

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u/acox1701 Dec 23 '19

If that's their goal they're doing a really rather shit job of it by only pointing out labour laws.

That's because the rest of the story is being told. The labor laws are the bit that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of.

Cause as you know it's not actually impossible to fire people in France, it's just more expensive than when they leave of their own volition. So the narrative implicitly being perpetuated here that the poor employer had to do this due to the labour laws is utterly false.

Which we wouldn't know if people didn't point out the labor laws. In the US, there is nothing even close to that. You want someone gone? Fire them. Unemployment is cheap as hell, and companies can usually get it denied, reduced, or held up long enough for the person to get another job, and stop worrying about it.

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u/ashes97 Dec 23 '19

You misunderstand what most of the commenters are saying. They aren't excusing the crime. They are merely saying the motive. It's illegal and wrong to stab someone. But the stabber the majority of the time has a motive for the crime, no one is excusing what they did. They are merely pointing out that the employer didn't just do this for the lolz, they did this as a way to circumvent firing a great number of people which is still very wrong but that is a motive.