2023-06-20 10:15:41
The labor inspectorate and “Liberation” had already noted the presence of undocumented migrants on the site of the Olympic village. Ten of them, who denounce a form of “exploitation”, have decided to go through the justice box to have their rights recognized.
Poor working conditions continue to taint preparations for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Ten undocumented workers from the Olympics sites summon construction giants before the industrial tribunal of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), says France info this Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
Originally from Mali or the Democratic Republic of Congo, they have been living in France for several years and have now been regularized. But, undocumented when they worked on the sites, these workers say they worked on the Olympic village in particular without an employment contract, pay slip, paid leave or even paid overtime. These workers denounce the “exploitation” of which they say they have been victims, comparing themselves to those of the construction sites of the World Cup in Qatar.
“On the site, there are almost only foreigners”
The testimonies collected by Franceinfo are eloquent, with some workers even saying that they had to buy their own protective equipment. “Everyone knew that I had no papers. And it is Spie Batignolles who commands on the site, explains Moussa, one of the ten workers. One day I had pain in my knee. I asked my boss if I could take a day or two off. He said to me: ”If you’re not here on Monday, you take your things”. I had to continue working despite the pain. France is no better than Qatar.”
Although there are no certified data on deaths due to work on the construction of stadiums in the Gulf country, the Guardian estimated in 2021 that 6,751 migrant workers had died because of construction sites when Amnesty International claimed that “according [leurs] research, nearly 70% of these deaths remain unexplained. Proportions without common measure with the Olympic Games in France.
Still, the testimonies on the working conditions identified for several years are alarming in a country where the labor code is supposed to protect employees a little more than elsewhere. In a survey published by Liberation at the end of 2022 on the working conditions of undocumented workers, one of them described one of the characteristics of the emergence from the ground of these Olympic Games, which is often found on construction sites. of construction. “The French do not want to do this job. On the construction site, there are almost only foreigners. Pakistanis for electricity, Arabs for plumbing, Afghans for masonry… The whites are those who are in the offices.” A little over a year ago, a labor inspection check had already noted the presence of undocumented migrants on the Olympic Village site. The Bobigny prosecutor’s office then opened an investigation for “employment of foreigners without title” and “execution in an organized gang of concealed work”.
“We normally host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in France every hundred years, it is better, my dear friends, to be there with the world”, declaimed however in 2021 the former Prime Minister Jean Castex, calling for his wishes “successful Olympic Games, both inspiring and illustrating the aspirations of our society and the public policies that we conduct to respond to them and to transform our country”.
“We were promised exemplary Olympics sites, reminds France info Richard Bloch, of the CGT. In the end, it’s worse than elsewhere, because there is a political imperative: the sites must be delivered on time. So the companies implement all legal or illegal means to deliver on time.”
“We were promised exemplary Olympics sites”
Eight subcontracting companies are sued by the ten undocumented workers, for whom they worked, as well as the principals Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC. The hearing is set for early October at the Bobigny industrial tribunal.
According to the CGT, which defends these workers in this procedure and estimates that a hundred workers are in this situation, the ordering companies are responsible, because the labor code requires the ordering parties to control what is goes to the construction site. For the Olympic works delivery company (Solidéo), less than a hundred cases have been identified despite 850 checks. At the end of 2022, Jean-Albert Guidou, of the CGT, warned Liberation: “The French government wants clean Olympic Games, we take them at their word.”
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