Victory for the undocumented immigrant workers with the CGT in France

Press Communiqué of the UITBB 30th of June 2010 For three years in the Paris region, the CGT has been supporting a mass struggle of undocumented immigrant workers to obtain their regularization. After numerous initiatives, site occupations, hunger strikes, and other actions, 6700 of them decided on the 12th October 2009 to stop working and to occupy business offices and construction sites.The strike lasted eight months. During this period, the government continuously ordered the evacuation of those sites by the police. However, thanks to the support of the CGT, of humanitarian associations, of numerous artists, including filmmakers, and of the public, the workers always re-occupied new sites. Since the National Action Day of 27 May 2009, they occupied night and day the stairs in front of the Opera Bastille in Paris. Faced with such determination and such support, the government had to yield and modify on 18 June 2010 its circular letter of November 2009. 30.06.2010 After one month of negotiations, undocumented immigrant workers obtained the following arrangement: A letter allowing them to move freely and to work while their dossier is being studied. The individual dossiers shall be examined by the Labour Directorates within four months maximum, and the State representatives (préfets) in each Département (administrative unit between municipality and region in France) will have to take a decision regarding the regularization on the basis of the same set of criteria. The minimum seniority entitling a worker to regularization is of one year and the eight months of strikes are included in this time. Vigilance continues to be necessary for a correct implementation of this settlement and to obtain the regularization of a maximum of immigrant workers. Yet, this arrangement is considered an important victory for undocumented workers and for the organizations that support them. The status of being undocumented, their , overexploitation, their constant fear of police harassment, a condition generating anxiety and health disorders,are unfortunately the plight of many workers in the world, especially in our building, wood and building materials’ trades. We swot here! - we live here!- we stay here! The UITBB, which has raised this question on all continents and which initiated an action day of solidarity between native and migrant workers in Asia, welcomes this result. It salutes the 6700 immigrant workers and the organizations that support them, among them the CGT Construction Union in Paris. Their success is an encouragement to continue our action so that workers enjoy existing rights in each country, in particular all trade union rights recognized by the ILO. Secretariat UITBB