Renault today did not officially acknowledge that work pressures drove three of its staffers to suicide recently, but it did say it would improve working conditions. Proactive measures the company plans to take include helping its engineers get better job training with things like CAD drawings, and improving "workload management" at its Renault’s Guyancourt research and development site, after a third worker there committed suicide in recent weeks.
Stereotypes and seven-week vacations mandated by law aside, French workers really do work hard at the job, evinced by the country's productivity rate, which is one of the highest in the world. It is also difficult to change jobs here, for several reasons, ranging from rigid corporate hiring practices to high unemployment. So for Renault's engineers, who are expected to design over a dozen new cars during the next couple of years, they can't just walk off the job at will. Unfortunately and tragically, three workers took the other way out.
