JO-2024: construction giants assigned to industrial tribunals by immigrant workers

Ten workers who worked at the time without papers on the construction sites of the Paris Olympic Games, assigned several building giants to the industrial tribunal of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), in particular to obtain the "recognition" of their work and the payment of salary arrears, we learned on Tuesday.

The summons before the industrial tribunal targets four giants in the sector, Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC, the main contractors for the future Olympic sites, but also eight subcontractors who directly employed these African workers, many originating from Mali.

The ten workers, since regularized, who have been denouncing for several months their "exploitation" on these sites where they worked without an employment contract or a pay slip, are asking for "the recognition of an employment contract, requalified as a full-time permanent contract" , explained to AFP the trade unionist Richard Bloch, confirming information from franceinfo. Union defender at the CGT, he had accompanied these workers in their process of regularization.

In the file filed on March 31, the union and the workers also demand the payment of the "arrears" of unpaid wages, the recognition of a "dismissal without real and serious cause", and that "the responsibility of the masters of work" in the use of this irregular work.

Especially since, by the time the case is heard at the industrial tribunal in October, according to the CGT, the subcontractors could simply evaporate into thin air. "What costs the construction giants the most is not paying these salaries, it's their tarnished brand image," said Richard Bloch.

A year ago, the Bobigny prosecutor's office had opened a preliminary investigation, in particular for "concealed work" and "employment of a foreigner without title in an organized gang" after checks had made it possible to identify several irregular workers on an Olympic site.