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Gay Saranbounou is used to spending long days for little money. He’s a Malian living in France and there is no working paper, but it’s a situation that’s happening all over the world.
The difference here is that Sarabouunou is one of an army of construction workers preparing for next year’s Paris Olympics.
The fact that France’s next sports showcase is being prepared with the help of illegal workers is becoming a source of political and social tension.
41-year-old Sarabouunou worked 8 to 11 hour shifts for €80 a day for three months.
Apparently, “I wasn’t paid overtime,” he said sadly.
“I know my situation, so I accepted. Without papers, you do all the hard work, all the crappy work. You have no choice,” he said on the floor of a small room. said as he boiled water on the stove in the room he shared with four of his compatriots.
“Everybody knows what’s going on, but nobody talks about it,” said a smiling Saran Bounou, who was evicted from the Olympic construction site last year after a raid by labor inspectors.
“There is a lot of hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities,” said trade unionist Bernard Thibault, co-chair of the Paris 2024 Social Charter Supervisory Commission.
In a sign of concern, the Labor Inspectorate has created a dedicated unit to check one site almost every day for the past two years.
In June, nine irregular workers were identified at a site operated by Solideo, a public company responsible for building Olympic facilities and infrastructure.
At the same time, the local public prosecutor’s office launched a preliminary investigation for “hiring foreigners to organized crime groups without permission.”
Solideo quickly “did the necessary steps” by terminating not only the offending subcontractor, but also the construction giant that was using it, said Antoine, the company’s head of strategy. Du Suish said.
He asserted that procedures have been tightened since then, but conceded that it would be impossible to build a system that would be “totally impervious” to such fraud.
“All these beautiful stadiums are built by poor people who are being exploited,” said another Malian worker who requested anonymity.
“The people who work are always 80% immigrants. We have Malians, Portuguese, Turkish and French in the office!” he added.
Mali workers only want to be regularized, so they don’t have to live in fear of identification.
The left-wing CGT union is preparing to submit an application for Saraambounou to receive his working papers.
If he gets them in 18 months, he says, recent hardships will seem like nothing more than a bad dream.
“I will be legal for the competition!”
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