A judicial investigation has been opened for aggravated manslaughter, the Lyon prosecutor’s office announced this Friday, after two suicides and a suicide attempt by La Poste employees who worked in the same place.
The facts took place within 11 weeksbetween the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. The three victims were employed on the Corbas mail preparation and distribution platform, in the metropolis of Lyon. The site then began its second reorganization of tours mail delivery in just two years. Redesigns which had direct consequences on the working conditions and health of employees, according to an independent expertise from the Secafi firm, dated 2019 and that Mediapart was obtained. The three staff were also placed on sick leave at the time of the events, specifies the investigation site. The labor inspectorate, for its part, described the context as “pathogenic” and considered that the lack of reaction from the company represented a possible “endangering others”.
“Stress intense”
In December 2017, a 30-year-old employee of the site committed suicide, then an employee at the end of his career did the same in March 2018. At the end of 2017, one of their colleagues, also at the end of his career, was left on foot and without a phone towards the oceanhundreds of kilometers from home, with the aim of ending his life, according to the online media. He was found in a forest in Corrèze, where he lived isolated, with frostbite on both feet which led to a double amputation, according to a ruling from the Lyon administrative court of appeal in 2022, which rejected a request from the postman “recognition of accountability in the service of his professional burnout and his suicide attempt”.
According to Mediapart, the labor inspectorate then carried out a report to the courts. The investigation is open for “involuntary manslaughter aggravated by the manifestly deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence in the context of work, involuntary injuries in the context of work, moral harassment at work and endangering the lives of others”the prosecution told AFP. “No indictment has taken place at this stage”.
THE reorganizations at La Poste continue in the Rhône. This week, Lyon deputies and elected officials questioned the Minister of the Civil Service Guillaume Kasbarian about the planned closure of three post offices in the Lyon metropolitan area. “The instability linked to reorganizations and staff reductions within La Poste group agencies are a source of intense stress for employees and an overall deterioration of working conditions noted by the unions”they wrote in their joint letter.
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