2023-10-17 21:27:55
Around 500 illegal workers went on strike this Tuesday (17) in more than 30 companies in the Paris region to ask for their regularization. Some of them are hired to work on the construction of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games by outsourced companies. Within three weeks, the French government will begin analyzing an immigration bill that should address this thorny issue.
Published on: 17/10/2023 – 21:27
3 min
The majority of strikers are of African origin and work in the construction, cleaning and distribution sectors. A large part of them are temporary workers subcontracted by companies outsourced by multinationals such as Veolia, Chronopost and Carrefour, which “allows the exploitation” of these immigrants without visas to be masked, the General Labor Confederation (CGT) union, which supports the action, denounced in a statement.
“We are on strike in our companies to achieve our regularization and our rights”, the strikers state in the text. “This strike will demonstrate that immigrants keep French society functioning”, says Jean-Albert Guidou, responsible for the issue at the CGT.
He hopes that the strike “will weigh on the debate surrounding the immigration bill”, whose parliamentary consideration is expected to begin on November 6th. The emblematic measure of the text concerns a proposal for a residence permit reserved for “professions in tension”, that is, those that suffer from a lack of labor.
Olympic workers
At the construction site of the Arena Porte de la Chapelle stadium in northern Paris, which is to be used during the Olympic Games, strikers organized a mobilization.
Heavy chains prevent the public from entering the site. On Tuesday morning, around fifteen illegal workers and supporters set up a strike picket inside the construction site and others gathered in front of the site. Among them, Abdoulaye and Simbala, two workers from Mali employed by one of the subcontractors of the French construction company Bouygues, managing the project.
“I’m tired of working under three different names,” says Abdoulaye. “I want to work under my own name and have my documents,” says the immigrant who works using a false identity. Simbala also used the same technique to work on site.
“They (the outsourced company) managed to get him to secretly enter (the construction site). He started the day, then they (the project manager) understood that he had sneaked in and took him out. He started the day, but he didn’t finish it and he wasn’t paid,” says Étienne Deschamps, lawyer for the CNT Solidarité Ouvrière union.
“In all the Olympic venues there are dozens and dozens of undocumented workers and the companies know this. The main companies abdicate their responsibilities, leaving subcontractors to manage this confusion created by the government’s migration policy”, he laments.
In the Paris region, immigrants represent “40 to 62% of workers in the domestic help, construction, hotel, cleaning, security and agri-food sectors”, highlights the union, hoping that the action will gain a scale similar to the movement at the end of the 2000s. 2000.
At the time, several strikes led to a wave of regularizations. Years later, the 2012 circular came into force, which still defines the criteria for regularization.
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