Ten workers who worked without documents on the construction sites of the Paris Olympic Games have taken several construction giants to court, asking among other things for the “recognition” of their work. The summons to appear before the Labor Tribunal (Conseil des prud’hommes) concerns four giants of the sector – Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC – the main contractors of the future Olympic sites, as well as eight subcontractors who directly employed these original workers African, many of them coming from Mali.
The ten workers, who in the meantime have been regularized and who for several months have denounced their exploitation in these construction sites, where they worked without an employment contract or pay slip, are asking for the “recognition of an employment contract”, explained Richard Bloch, a trade unionist who accompanied them in the regularization process. In the request filed on March 31, the union and the workers also ask for the payment of the arrears of unpaid wages, the recognition of the “dismissal without a real and serious cause” and the “responsibility of the project leaders” as regards the use of irregular work . A year ago, the public prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, near Paris, opened a preliminary investigation into undeclared work and the “employment of undocumented foreigners in an organized gang” after checks had identified several clandestine workers on an Olympic construction site.