A third Renault worker commits suicide in France

t was the third suicide in four months of an employee working at the Technocentre Renault research centre at Guyancourt in the Yvelines department near Paris. It occurred barely three weeks after a silent march by workers at the company in honour of the two employees who had previously taken their own lives (in October and January, respectively).

Since the announcement of the third death, spouses of workers at the Technocentre have contacted the unions fearing that their husbands might do the same. The CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union representative Vincent Neveu reports: “Their husbands have similar characteristics to those of our colleagues who committed suicide: coming home from work after 10 p.m., the feeling of being overwhelmed by their work load. One of the wives ended up bursting into tears. She had not dared tell her husband that she was contacting a union.”

The worries of the wives are well founded, as Pascal Bahnweg of the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labour) union confirmed on LCI.fr: “For two years the pressure on staff has been much greater. The reorganisation distressed some of the workers, whose condition is often difficult to detect.”

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