They dive into the kitchens of Café Marly, a chic restaurant located under the arcades of the Louvre in Paris; they collect household waste throughout Ile-de-France, under the banner of the Sepur company; they deliver groceries to the homes of Monoprix customers in Paris; they package and send the newspapers to France Routage ; are temporary workers at Manpower and gardeners, construction workers or logistics handlers on behalf of large groups such as Bouygues, Eiffage, Chronopost … On Monday October 25, some 200 undocumented workers were to start a vast strike movement in Ile-de- France, at the call of the CGT, to denounce their working conditions and demand their regularization.
Sunday, at the headquarters of the trade union confederation, in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), they met to organize their walkout. “It is very important that you come out in the open, especially with the rise of far-right ideas”, defends Marilyne Poulain, responsible for undocumented workers for the CGT, in front of an assembly of men mostly from Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast. “If you weren’t there, who would pick up the trash at 5 am? asks Jean-Albert Guidou, of the CGT of Seine-Saint-Denis, to the applause of the strikers. Who would be in the kitchen? Who would ensure the security of stores and hospitals or the cleaning of offices? This is the reality, not the one presented on CNews. “
It is by definition impossible to quantify the number of undocumented workers, but the strike movement launched on Monday shows the extent of the sectors using them, often to occupy arduous jobs, atypical and poorly paid hours. The fact that these workers do not have residence permits places them, moreover, in a particular vulnerability with regard to their employer. If they want to request a regularization in the prefecture, exceptionally, they must justify their presence in France for several years, present a certain number of payslips and, imperatively, a promise of employment. “It is deeply problematic, because some employers have no interest in this”, underlines Mme Poulain, who denounces “Precarious working conditions”.
No partial unemployment
Cheick, 34, has been in France for over six years. His build as a basketball player – he played in the national cadet and junior team of Mali – has earned him a job as a security guard. For almost three years, he has also been a garbage collector in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis), in a difficult district. “We are on this site because there are a lot of attacks”, he said. He works evenings and weekends, sweeps the streets with a blower and washes the sidewalks.
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