Media attention to a recent spate of suicides at France Telecom has revealed a paradox at the heart of French society: Even with robust labor protection, workers feel profoundly insecure, with many complaining that the pace of economic change is pushing them beyond their limits. A popular image outside France is of a cosseted work force protected from layoffs by near-hermetic job security and pampered by a 35-hour work week. But the reality is often very different, according to experts, union representatives and the workers themselves. 'When I started as a psychiatrist, 35 years ago, my patients were talking about their personal lives,' said Marie-France Hirigoyen, a French psychiatrist who did pioneering work on bullying and workplace relations. 'Now it's all about their jobs. People are suffering in the workplace. They shouldn't be, from the logic of management. After all, they have a good job, a nice vacation. But they are suffering.' In statistical terms, the 24 suicides at France Telecom since February 2008 -- including eight since the beginning of summer, with the latest confirmed on Monday -- are not extraordinary for a company employing 102,0000 people in France. Mental health experts are always extremely cautious about attributing a suicide to any one cause: One often never knows what forces act upon a person. But what has caught the attention of the public and the French government is that many of the suicides and more than a dozen failed suicides have been attributed by some experts and labor officials to work-related problems. 'Stress has become a national sport,' said Michel Marchet, the secretary of the banking chapter of France's General Confederation of Labor, or CGT union. 'We need employers to modify the way that they organize work, but we don't have the impression that anything will happen soon.' Sebastien Crozier, head of the Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff, part of the general union at France Telecom, estimated that in the last five years, half of all France Telecom employees had either changed jobs internally, changed work locations, or both. That, he said, has created a sense of constant upheaval and insecurity. In response to a flurry of media attention, France Telecom has said it will freeze worker transfers until the end of October, establish an anonymous help line for troubled employees and add extra psychological and human resources support. 'We are the only incumbent telecoms operator not to have carried out mass redundancies,' said Olivier Barberot, the head of human resources at France Telecom. 'Most people, the bulk of them, have been able to increase their skills and move on to new jobs,' he said. 'But some have had difficulty adapting.' 