France: Undocumented Workers’ Strike Shows Need to Smash All Borders

PARIS, January 27 — Class struggle sharpens contradictions and reveals the truth, proven again by the undocumented workers’ strike here, now in its fourth month.

Riot batons, tear gas and rubber bullets for the workers, and kid gloves for their bosses. Why? Because the racist bosses here want and need a permanent mass of super-exploited undocumented workers.

That’s why, at the crack of dawn on January 20, 100 riot cops violently evicted 62 undocumented workers who were  occupying the Hotel Majestic — a foreign ministry conference center undergoing renovation – since they struck on October 12. Workers were beaten, shot point-blank in the chest with a rubber bullet and had their teeth smashed in.

Despite the police attack, strike leader Old Doucouré declared, “With or without the building site, we will continue to tell the truth.” Indeed, on January 22, 2,000 undocumented workers and their supporters protested near the French National Assembly to denounce the bloody eviction and demand across-the-board “legalization” for all undocumented workers.

Raid A Retaliation for Workers’ Public Condemnation of Boss’s Duplicity

The bloody eviction was retaliation for a press conference the 62 workers held at the French National Assembly on Jan. 13. They castigated Bouygues Bâtiment, which subcontracts work to ADEC Demolition — their employer — in these terms: Our boss “knows our situation [as undocumented workers] and profits from it. He has set things up so as not to hire us directly. He has us paid by temporary work agencies. He says he isn’t responsible, that we are not his employees. And yet, we have been working for him for years, some of us for ten years.”

Their boss is Martin Bouygues, French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s “best friend.” Bouygues Bâtiment is just one company in the Bouygues empire, which employs 145,000 workers around the globe and raked in 32.7 billion euros ($46 billion) in profits in 2008.

The undocumented workers attacked the French fascists’ lie that undocumented immigrants come here to benefit from the social security system. “We pay social security contributions, we pay taxes,” they declared. “When we are injured on the construction sites, no medical coverage, no sick time. And often: “Mission over” for those who are unfortunate enough to have their foot crushed by rubble or get burned by a blowtorch.”

They also attacked the French government’s lie that undocumented workers are “dangerous.” Four workers even showed security clearances from having worked in French National Assembly offices.

The French government is also attacking undocumented students. On January 25, two Comorian students were arrested on their way to class at the University of Pau and sent over 400 miles away to a detention center here. Two days later fellow students demonstrated at a Pau police station to protest their arrest and transfer. Club-wielding cops broke up the demonstration.

Kid Gloves For The Bosses

While French rulers repress striking undocumented workers demanding “legalization,” it treats their employers with kid gloves. On January 12, the police mistakenly arrested three directors of SENI, a cleaning company. Documents there showed that 500 workers — one-fifth of the workforce — are undocumented, the biggest such case in French history.

The following day, the government released the bosses, saying prosecution was being postponed indefinitely. Why? Because firstly, with the bosses in jail, 2,000 workers — documented and undocumented — would be sacked, impelling them to unite and possibly stage a sit-down.

Secondly, SENI is a subsidiary of Samsic, owned by Christian Roulleau, one of the 100-richest bosses in France. Samsic and its subsidiaries clean the French presidential palace and other government offices, as well as the Eiffel Tower. It also handles nuclear plants and submarines and works for the Roissy police, charged with hunting down undocumented workers. The government doesn’t want it known how much it employs undocumented workers.

A bill enabling prosecutors to shut down companies “that employ undocumented workers in a repeated and sizeable way” has now been postponed indefinitely, admitted the labor ministry to the weekly newspaper “Le Canard enchaîné.” Such a law could shut thousands of companies and lay off tens, even hundreds, of thousands of workers, “legal” and “illegal.”

Capitalism Needs
Undocumented Workers

The savage repression of striking undocumented workers and the kid-glove treatment of their bosses proves that the bosses need and want undocumented workers. As the ADEC Demolition workers said on January 13: “We owe this life as workers without rights, as modern-day slaves, to our administrative situation. The government refuses to give us permission to work. And yet, the bosses hire us. Most of us have filed requests for ‘legalization’….but that hasn’t helped. It must be believed that the boss and the government want to keep us ‘illegal,’ the better to exploit us.”

While undocumented workers are super-exploited, the fascists and the government fabricate racist lies about undocumented workers “stealing the jobs” of native-born workers, “taking advantage” of the welfare system, and “threatening national security.” They use this stereotype to divide native-born and undocumented workers, the age-old bosses’ weapon of divide-and-conquer.

Only communist revolution — which destroys national boundaries, along with the bosses and their system that creates them, and exploits all workers — can free the entire working class from this barbarism. J

Bulletin

The overwhelming majority of the 30,000 government healthcare practitioners — doctors and specialists — in two unions are in the 6th week of a strike for higher wages and better conditions. They say they’re “ready to take blows from [police] riot sticks” to win their demands. (More next issue.)