France Télécom is preparing to set aside €1 billion as part of a plan to end a spate of suicides amongst staff by offering older workers the chance to go part time.

The Gallic telecommunications giant, where 25 employees have killed themselves since 2008, announced the move as its unveiled a 6.4 per cent drop in third quarter profits.

Amid fierce controversy over the spate of suicides, France Telecom, which has already suspended restructuring, said it may enable staff aged over 57 to work part time under a stress-reduction programme.

The part-time jobs would be made available on a voluntary basis to employees who felt that full time work was endangering their health.

Gervais Pellissier, the financial director, said the measure would be provisioned in this year's accounts and added that a cost estimate of €1 billion ''is not fundamentally far from our working hypothesis."

His comments are likely to heighten concern amongst investors that the company could row back from its pledge to save €1.7 billion by the end of 2011 to appease critics in France, where it is due to make one third of the savings.

Mr Pellissier said the group had recorded third quarter sales of €12.69 billion - less than most analysts had expected - and pre-tax profits of €4.56 billion.

Didier Lombard, the company's embattled chairman, described the performance in France, where sales fell by 1.6 per cent, as ''remarkable''.

But Mr Lombard is blamed by unions for disorientating staff through swinging change since privatisation in 2004.

They blame performance targets, tough management and workplace mobility programmes for the series of suicides.

The deaths have prompted the former state monopoly into a wide-ranging review of working practices overseen by Stéphane Richard, a former French government adviser who took over as deputy chief executive this month.

Mr Richards, who is set to replace Mr Lombard as chief executive in 2011, admitted the group had ''gone too far'' into its attempts to supervise staff through the introduction ''control tools''.

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