“We deploy everything we can deploy! » The words of Nicolas Ferrand, the Executive Director General of the Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo), reflect, in a way, the limits of his field of action to fight against illegal work, a subject that is still topical. on public worksites, as shown by some recent testimonies from undocumented workers.
Faced with possible fraud at Urssaf and situations of absence of a residence permit, “we can only make sure, through checks on site cards [cartes d’identification professionnelles du BTP dont chaque personne sur un chantier doit disposer], that the companions have a complete administrative file (identity document, declaration prior to hiring, construction card and photo)”, explains Mr. Ferrand.
Since the month of June and the discovery of cases of undocumented immigrants which had led it to terminate a contract with a company, Solideo has set up a system of “systematic control” : all the companies present on the worksites for which it is the contracting authority must, for each worker, enter the documents making up the administrative file into a database.
“We have service providers who go to the worksites and scan the cards. If a problem appears, companies have forty-eight hours to correct [le problème] », explains Mr. Ferrand, who adds that “The objective is for all the workers on our worksites to be tested once a month. We are gaining momentum.”
The data relating to 1,088 workers present on the sites piloted by Solideo have been entered into this database. There are about 3,000 workers working in the athletes’ village, in Saint-Denis, for example – between 5,000 and 6,000 on all the Olympic sites.
“Having the same level of struggle” during the second work
The director general of the public institution agrees with the limits of this system, emphasizing that it has no “no way to check” if what is entered corresponds to reality and if there is a match between the cardholder and the elements linked to it. “In case of suspicion, it is the labor inspectorate or the police who can carry out checks”he says.
The labor inspectorate has carried out some five hundred checks over the past two years, according to Solideo. These would have led to suspicions of fifty to eighty litigious cases. At the beginning of December, the labor inspectorate had told the World “the use of false European identity cards, the reduction of social declarations, the illegal loan of labor or the use of temporary workers in violation of the rules of the labor code”. A preliminary investigation was opened in June by the Bobigny prosecution for ” hidden work “, “employment of undocumented foreigners in an organized gang” and “aggravated bleaching” of these offences.
However, the Solideo is not at the end of its troubles. With the structural work nearly 95% complete, the sites will switch to the finishing phase, with a greater number and layers of companies. “We will have to have the same level of fight, that all the subcontractors are subject to the same controls”, argues Mr. Ferrand, who also underlines the role that trade unions can play in “guarantee the exemplary nature of the work”.
The construction branches of the five confederations have offices on the worksites, in addition to those held by the in-house unions of the construction groups. Their target: the employees of subcontractors, where there are many SMEs with, often, little or no union representation.
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