A neon yellow swarm rushes onboard a night bus in the outskirts of Paris at 4:05 a.m. Undocumented Mohamed Traoré works in the back of a garbage truck. He can pass identity checks thanks to his garbage collector attire, but he needs to go to the depot right away.
Since the announcement of an immigration bill incorporating a “occupations in tension” residency permit, one of the employees whose probable regularization has sparked the political debate is a 38-year-old Malian with a goatee and the physique of a heavyweight fighter.
Mohamed Traoré has worked in every industry that hires covertly over the course of ten years. He has been a scavenger hitched to a huge cleaning company’s dump truck for three years. He is employed by a temp agency week to week.
He finds out he won’t be working this Monday morning in October when he exits the N45 at Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis). decision of the leader. No payment for today.
- Like their dog
“When you’re undocumented, the bosses take advantage of it, you’re like their dog. If they need to use you, they use you. Otherwise, they leave you behind. Either way, you don’t have no choice, you’re going to come back, you’re in their cage” , explains the native of Bamako .
Like many, he works with someone else’s papers, in this case an “uncle” . This is called working “under alias” . Does his boss know? “Of course he knows! The uncle is 53 years old, we don’t really look the same ,” he gets exasperated.
If it didn’t hurt, he nearly found the scenario amusing. When the French praised these “first on duty” amid the Covid crisis in 2020, Mohamed Traoré had “hope” of getting regularised.
Having papers would allow him to stop paying his alias 30% of his earnings (between 1,000 and 1,400 euros), leave his $300-a-night room in a cramped shared apartment, and see his family in Mali. To “put an end to the hassle,” to put it briefly. His boss is not interested in learning about it.
- Subordination
It is to break this relationship of “subordination” between the employee and the employer that the bill (the parliamentary examination of which is due to begin on November 6) opens up the possibility for an untitled worker to submit their request alone.
It remains to be seen which jobs will be covered by this list of professions currently being revised, observes Jean-Albert Guidou, responsible for the subject at the CGT.
“If the list is restrictive, we would end up with workers who would no longer have any way out, except to change profession,” worries the trade unionist, while 7,000 to 10,000 people are regularized each year by the Valls circular. from 2012.
In Ile-de-France, this workforce represents several hundred thousand people, estimates the CGT.
- Electroshock
“We need an electric shock to find a system that regulates things. We need young people who want to do jobs that our fellow citizens no longer want to do,” judges Manuel Heurtier, 65, chef and restaurateur in Montrouge (Hauts-de -Seine).
The man is angry. In 40 years of work, he has seen a summary of the recent history of immigration pass through his kitchens: North Africans, Sri Lankans, Africans … He has also observed the administrative “gas factory” , the sticks in the wheels of restaurateurs, who nevertheless struggle to hire.
For five years now, he has accompanied the quest for papers from his assistant in the kitchen, Amadou Ba, a 27-year-old Senegalese. “This guy is gold. Punctual, serious, kind ,” sums up the owner of Mendi Gorria, frantically rubbing lemon on his hands and forearms after lunch service.
“If the chef didn’t help me, I would have broken down ,” confides Amadou Ba, hands trembling and covered in burns. Shy, slender in his white kitchen jacket, the Senegalese who started dishwashing five years ago holds a permanent contract and has around sixty pay slips (80 are enough for the procedure). He does n’t “understand” why his file was refused or lost three times.
“As long as you don’t have the papers, you have no rights: no unemployment, no retirement, no vacation…” he blurted out.
A few weeks ago, he had a conversation with the majority of the deputies present in the eatery. On September 12, Libération released a photograph that captured this unlikely encounter. When his file was discovered, the prefecture promptly phoned him. Shoulders are shrugged by Amadou Ba. The dining rooms of power…
