Twenty-three staff of France Telecom have killed themselves since March 2008 in a story that has sent shockwaves through French society and prompted the labor minister, Xavier Darcos, to ring up the France Telecom CEO and urge him to come up with a solution.

The country's biggest telecom firm initially denied responsibility, saying the figure is roughly the same as the national average of 26 suicides per 100,000, but has now promised emergency measures such as a counseling hotline and an end to shift transfers.

There is a structural factor behind the suicide crisis. The employment environment has changed drastically at France Telecom since 2004, when the near-bankrupt state firm needed a 9 billion euro bailout from the government before privatization. It then went through drastic restructuring -- 60,000 out of 160,000 staff were laid off, and 70,000 were transferred to other positions. According to the labor union, some employees were shifted around 20 times since 2004.

But there has to be a cultural reason as well. France has traditionally been a country where the power of labor is strong, and firing employee is extremely difficult even when the company is in trouble. Early this year, when several French companies hinted at mass layoffs, unions responded by detaining top executives, and public opinion was sympathetic to the workers. In Anglo-Saxon capitalist culture, workers are accustomed to being fired, but French people have a much harder time dealing with what they perceive as infringement of workers' rights, which explains the largely sympathetic reaction in the press.