The French Supreme Court, known as the Cour de Cassation, has confirmed the convictions of former France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard, 82, and his former deputy Louis-Pierre Wenès, 75. The ruling finalizes the verdict from the Paris Court of Appeal, which sentenced both executives to a one-year suspended prison term and fined them €15,000 each.

These sentences were reductions from the original judgments issued in 2019.

The legal proceedings against the former executives revolved around two restructuring plans initiated after the company was privatized in 2004. These plans, starting in 2006, aimed to reduce the workforce by 22,000 employees and relocate another 10,000, affecting a total of 120,000 staff members.

The executives had argued that their actions constituted 'business policy' and should not be considered moral harassment under existing labor laws.

The court's final ruling emphasized that actions deliberately intended to degrade working conditions to meet managerial, economic, or financial goals could indeed constitute moral harassment.

These actions were found to have significantly impacted employee wellbeing during the organizational downsizing.

During the trial, the struggle to categorize the restructuring as mere enterprise strategy was consistently challenged by legal representatives of the plaintiffs.

Claire Waquet, representing the CFE-CGC Orange union, underscored the gravity of the situation, describing it as 'intentional and orchestrated harassment.' This sentiment was echoed by Antoine Lyon-Caen, lawyer for the SUD-PTT union, who pointed to the ruling as a landmark precedent recognizing institutional harassment in workplace legislation.

Initial judgments had seen Lombard and Wenès receive harsher sentences, including a year of imprisonment with four months to be served, acknowledging their prominent roles in implementing a strict workforce reduction strategy between 2007 and 2008 at France Telecom.

Lombard, throughout the appeal, maintained that he was unaware of the severity of the working conditions but had previously been recorded urging plant managers to make staff departures happen 'one way or another.'

The context of widespread employee distress includes multiple suicides, notably highlighted by the case of Michel Deparis, a technician who explicitly blamed France Telecom in a note before his death in 2009. This period of turmoil marked a critical point for the company, which was subsequently fined €75,000 in a historic ruling.

This made France Telecom the first CAC 40-listed firm convicted of institutional moral harassment.

This court decision establishes as binding precedent the acknowledgment of institutional policies that can lead to severe workplace distress, resonating across labor laws and corporate governance frameworks.