few things
First, French national figures : if you do consider the amount of suicides that are from teenagers, and if you do consider that there are no teenagers in France Télécom, then you can consider that the figures are more above French average than under.
Then, what is worth considering, is the amount of people that are commiting suicide, mentioning the main reason for that is their work, and because of the pressure of their work, they no longer can cope with that.
Then, this is very unusual. People generally comitting suicide because of personal problems. Not because of problems with their manager's pressure.
Then, yes there may be civil servant that were not used to work with pressure. Then, I was shocked to see people (not in this forum) saying that it was the wikest that were failing.
In fact, if you are looking at the average people that are comitting suicide, you discover that they were people that did succeed in the past, but because of the neverending structure remodelling, they were doing job they were not comfortible in, they were failing to cope with their workload, and their objectives. Then, themselves or their manager were telling them that they are weak and should leave.
They are lost and are commiting suicide.
Moreover, one important point to consider, is that in France, as FT is partially state owned, there has never been any redundancy plan. The government never allowed that to FT management, though that is necessary.
But there are great pressure from the management to see people leaving the company. The bonuses of managers are based on how many people from their service are leaving the company. Anf those people are sometimes harassing the employees and bullying them, to drive them to resign.
As a consequence of what, people are sometimes choosing a more extreme solution.