The normal thing to do is split the company into multiple divisions, then separate those with little future and let them go bust. But leading a smaller company would have diminished the stature of the FT management, and they thought they could get away with it in the era of Sarkozy.

> If the major company needed to fire 20k people and was legally unable to do so due to grandfathered in formerly-government-employees then they should have raised this, brought it up with the government, made it a national conversation, be the squeaky wheel.

Because the press and people in France are know to be very sympathetic to tear-jerk stories from major Telecom companies?

The disregard for human beings isn't ok, but the alternative here is the company going bankrupt, firing all 130k employees, and prompting the sale of French Telecom infrastructure to foreign corporations at a discount via liquidation. I'm for that compared to harassment to suicide, but let's not pretend there's a happy alternative where everybody gets together and saves the company.

You seem to be thinking in only the extremes "Drive people to suicide or go bankcrupt" and "Save the company, rainbows and unicorns".

Get laws changed to allow for the firing and since it would be done publicly you can make sure the populace would pressure the government to give aid to those fired.

According to other posts it is apparently not as hard to fire state employees as is made out in the article but it costs extra money, so company paids the one-time redundency costs, shit happens, company eats the cost (and maybe the gov loans / bails them out to cover this one time cost)

There is an entire range of possible options, presenting it as a black and white "Necessary evil to prevent $ABSOLUTE_WORST_CASE_SCENARIO" is justifying the worst behaviour.

Can you proof that they would have gone under without "letting go" of 20k people? The usual reason is "we need to look better to the stock market" and that's simply not a valid reason. The reality is that there's a big margin between "we are growing 20% per year!" and "we all go bust!" that most companies exist in. Sure, you won't be Wall Streets darling, if all you do is make a small profit every year, but if that's your main goal that's your problem, not something your employees should have to pay for.

The real solution is what companies did until early 90s: you cut your company in multiple parts and let those unprofitable bust (and try to sell them before they do). Market consolidation is the worst if you're a pro-market guy.

Probably my bias working at small shops where hiring difficult and firing people is often ugly. Got to ask. Why try to fire 20,000 workers instead of find something profitable for them to do?

Because it’s easier to posit than to achieve it. If someone knew how to do that, they would already be doing it.