a Franco-Turkish sector employed many illegal immigrants on Olympic Games construction sites

The Olympic village in Saint-Ouen, the Marville swimming pool, and the Pleyel tower which is being transformed into a luxury hotel in Saint-Denis: all these construction sites for the 2024 Olympic Games have used undocumented workers. On June 20, 2023, a group of ten of them had assigned several companies to the Bobigny industrial tribunal. These workers from sub-Saharan Africa, assigned to the most difficult work, had been hired without an employment contract or pay slip, paid leave, overtime, or payment of transport and lunch costs, by nine companies, under -contractors of two “giants” of the sector: GCC and Spie-Batignolles.

These workers were paid alternately in cash, check or bank transfer. Recruitment was done by word of mouth within the Malian, Gabonese, Senegalese, Congolese or Mauritanian diasporas in Île-de-France. Mamadou (not his real name) alone introduced four of his compatriots to his “boss”, who then hired them on construction sites.

This thirty-year-old from Bamako, Mali, arrived in France at the beginning of 2018 after crossing the Mediterranean in very difficult conditions. He claims that his employer did everything to cover his tracks. “Every year the company changed my name [sur le badge]. Last year she wrote Wali. The following year, Moussa. And next year it will be Adama, quips the worker. Even if we worked overtime, we received the same salary. Every month, I received between 1,500 and 1,600 euros, and 1,800 to 1,900 euros if I worked on Saturdays.”.

Another complaint: Mamadou and his colleagues explain that on construction sites, their bosses only provided them with gloves. They had to buy their own safety shoes, helmets and work clothes. Injuries were frequent, he continues, showing a scar under his nose: “In 2019, I had an accident. I had a hammer. I hit a wall. A window broke and I injured myself. I called the boss telling him that I had had an accident at work. He said to me: ‘Oh no. If you have an accident at work, I won’t pay you'”. As soon as he expressed his intention to approach the CGT to regularize his situation, Mamadou said he was fired. He says he had to give up 2,500 euros of unpaid debts. His former foreman blocked his number so he could no longer reach him.

As part of the procedure launched by Mamadou and his nine comrades, two principals and nine subcontractors were identified. But in a twist, recently, three of the subcontracting companies closed. Through an amicable procedure, they were removed from the commercial registers. The companies EPS and ISO-TP, registered respectively at the commercial courts of Créteil in Val-de-Marne and Pontoise in Val-d’Oise, were the first to cease to exist a few hours before the referral to the industrial tribunal. men. The consequence of this procedure is immediate: no action can anymore be taken against them or their former managers. There is no longer anyone to summon to the industrial tribunal. “The company having been removed from the commercial register, there is nothing more to reproach it” deplores Maria-Beatriz Salgado, university professor of private law at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. If the plaintiffs’ damage were to be established, they would have to turn to the principals of the missing subcontractors, which would lengthen the procedure by several months.

Two other companies involved (BMCR and MCR Bâtiment) went into liquidation on November 23 and 30, 2022, i.e. before the start of the industrial tribunal procedure, but after an investigation carried out by the inspectorate. of work in Seine-Saint-Denis. Here again, if the plaintiffs were to be compensated, the sum would not be paid by their former employers, since they are in cessation of payments. It would then be up to the Salary Guarantee Association (AGS), a sort of parapublic insurance financed by employer contributions, to compensate workers. As for the four other companies involved: one cannot be found and the other claims not to be linked to one of the disputed projects.

A Franco-Turkish network

According to information from the Radio France investigation unit, in addition to the first procedure, 14 other undocumented workers have taken their employers to the industrial tribunal. This new dispute concerns 11 additional companies, at least nine of which have also been placed in liquidation. All operate on the model already observed in the first procedure, deciphers Jean-Albert Guidou, a tax inspector who became secretary of the local union of the CGT in Bobigny: “They have an ephemeral nature with a share capital of only 1,000 to 2,000 euros. They have no equipment. Their headquarters are mailboxes, sometimes located at the manager’s home. At worst, a company will be liquidated. But when you have committed 1,000 or 2,000 euros, the game is worth it. And if one link falls, the network remains.”.

Within this “system”, we discovered a real intertwining of several subcontractors domiciled at the same addresses, sometimes with service providers who rent professional offices in Paris, Sarcelles and Saint-Denis. In the latter town, the offices are located just a few dozen meters from the Olympic facilities. “We mainly see people of Turkish, Pakistani or Portuguese origins, observes the manager of the premises. Renting the premises costs between 400 and 500 euros per month, without lease. It’s very flexible. All you need to do is show identification. It’s so easy to open or close a company. They have fairly short lifespans, between one and two years, especially in construction.”.

In the network that we have identified, the vast majority of declared managers are Turkish, French from Turkey or members of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. Those who were born in Turkey all come from the same town: Yaprakli, 8,000 inhabitants, in the province of Cankiri. It’s a unique place, explains Turkish political scientist Ahmet Insel: “The Yukarıöz district, attached to Yaprakli, is nicknamed Little Paris. There are less than 2,000 inhabitants in winter, but in summer, it increases to 7,000 thanks to Franco-Turks on vacation. It is the village richest in the region thanks to expatriate money”. The official Turkish agency Anadolu devoted an article to these Turks from France who return to the country and almost all work in construction. Politically speaking, it is a sector “very right”, continues Ahmet Insel. Turkish Islamo-conservative President Erdogan achieved very high scores, as did the nationalist “Grey Wolves” movement, whose French branch was dissolved by the authorities in November 2020. That year, members of the “Grey Wolves” ” had violently attacked people of Armenian origin in the Rhône and Isère.

A hundred undocumented immigrants

At SOLIDEO, the public body responsible for supervising the 68 Olympic projects, including the athletes’ village and the Marville swimming pool, “We have identified around a hundred people in an illegal work situation, admits Antoine du Souich, the strategy director. But we are not aware of the organization of such sectors.”. An elected official from the Ile-de-France region who is closely following this issue appears fatalistic: “SOLIDEO has developed a unique control methodology for the Games. I have never seen such high standards. But the construction industry is so corrupt that our supervision system will always run after reality…”

As for the major clients, SPIE Batignolles did not respond to our requests. On the other hand, GCC’s human resources director, Eric Spielmann, told us that his company had “became aware of the criminal acts within the framework of the administrative investigations carried out by [l’inspection du travail] (…) While specifying: the GCC company denies any collusion by large construction companies to favor illegal systems”. The labor inspectorate, for its part, referred the matter to the Bobigny public prosecutor for concealed work and employment of employees in an irregular situation. The CGT also filed a complaint and became a civil party.

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