Gaye Sarambounou is accustomed to working hard for little pay. He is a Malian living in France without official documentation, but this problem exists everywhere.
The distinction in this instance is that Sarambounou is one of a horde of construction workers constructing Paris’s Olympic Games for the following year.
Political and social unrest is growing as a result of the fact that illegal workers are being used to assemble France’s upcoming sporting extravaganza.
Sarambounou, 41, worked eight to eleven-hour shifts for €80 per day for three months.
Obviously, “overtime was never paid,” he said ruefully.
“I accepted because I know my situation. If you don’t have papers, you do all the hard work, all the crappy jobs. You have no choice,” he said as he boiled water on a stove on the floor of the tiny room he shares with four compatriots.
“Everyone knows what’s going on, but nobody talks about it”, said a smiling Sarambounou, who was kicked off an Olympic building site last year after a raid by labour inspectors.
Trade unionist Bernard Thibault, who co-chairs the Paris 2024 Social Charter Monitoring Committee, says there is “a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities”.
As a sign of concern, the Labor Inspectorate has created a specialized unit that has been checking nearly one site a day for the past two years.
In June, nine irregular workers were identified on a site run by Solideo, the public company responsible for building facilities and infrastructure for the Olympics.
At the same time, a local public prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation into the “employment of foreigners without a permit in an organized gang”.
Solideo swiftly “took the necessary steps” by terminating the contract of the offending subcontractor and the construction giant that used it, said Antoine du Souich, the company’s strategy director.
Since then procedures have been tightened up, he assured, while admitting it’s impossible to set up a system “entirely impervious” to such fraud.
“All these beautiful stadiums are built by poor people… who are exploited,” said another Malian worker, who requested anonymity.
“It’s always 80 per cent immigrants who do the work. So you see Malians, Portuguese, Turks. And the French… in the offices!” he added.
The Malian workers want to be regularized so they don’t have to live in fear of an identity check.
The left-wing CGT union is preparing to submit an application for Sarambounou to receive his working papers.
He says that if he gets those within 18 months, the recent hardships will seem like nothing more than a bad dream.
“I’ll be legal for the Games!”
Source: InfoMigrant
