The chairman/CEO of France Télécom, Didier Lombard, is facing calls to step down from his post following the company’s latest employee suicide – the 24th in just over 18 months.

There have also been 13 attempted suicides among the staff, with unions blaming modernisation and restructuring plans for high stress levels.

News reports say Lombard’s announcement last week that the operator was suspending its ‘Time to Move’ plan – in which managers switch jobs every three years – had done little to alleviate workplace tension.

The telecommunications firm – a former state monopoly – has 102,000 employees in France and a total of 10,000 staff have changed jobs in the role-switching scheme. An in-house doctor is reported to have said: “Engineers who spent 20 years doing repairs to phone lines are being reassigned to work in call centres and some of them struggle with the change.”

One employee’s suicide note blamed ‘overwork, stress, absence of training and total disorganisation in the company’.

Industrial action has been reported in Bordeaux, Lyon and Annecy, where the latest victim worked.

The events have sparked furious political debate. In a recent Senate social affairs committee hearing, socialist senator Yannick Bodin said the group needed a new chief to reassure employees, and others called for Lombard’s resignation on the principle of responsibility.

But the CEO has received support from former prime minister and UMP senator Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who called for calm not a public lynching, but conceded a change in France Télécom’s social strategy was needed.

Stephane Richard – due to succeed Lombard in 2011 – has declared his solidarity with the current CEO but said he would take part in negotiations about stress with unions.