By Bernama,
Paris : The main union of French Labour Inspectors (CGT) has called on the government to take steps to commence immediate negotiations in order to allow for the regularisation of undocumented workers, at the same time denouncing the “hypocrisy” of the current legislation, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
“We, the controllers and inspectors who are forced to deal with the specter of illegal workers every day, will no longer support the management of immigration which is totally hypocritical,” said the French labour ministry officials in a petition to the government.
“The undocumented workers have continued to contribute to the wealth of our country for many years, but the ministry has adopted an attitude of not seeing, not acknowledging,” said the union in a statement.
“We demand that our ministry move immediately to remedy this hypocrisy by opening immediate negotiations with the social partners to allow for the regularisation of all undocumented workers,” according to the union.
Over 500 undocumented workers drawn from catering, security and cleaning companies in the Paris region are participating in a coordinated strike, which was launched on April 15 by the CGT and Droits Devant, a French association, in a bid to push for regularisation.
However, the French immigration and labour ministries have so far only confirmed the possibility of looking into the demand on a case-by-case basis “using the prefects, in line with a November 2007 law.”
Further, the labour inspectors also said that they will no longer stand to see their “professional ethics being despised in circulars from the labour and immigration ministries, requiring them to take part in police operations to hunt for illegal workers,” according to the statement.
“We do not have a mission to hunt for undocumented workers, but rather to ensure that all workers, regardless of their nationalities, enjoy the benefit of the protective provisions of the Labour Code,” said the statement.
Elsewhere, the association France Terre d’Asile (FTA) has also added its voice to the debate over illegal foreign workers, calling on the main opposition Socialist Party to push for the creation of a “committee of wise men” to address the issue.
In a statement published Monday, the FTA urged the Socialist Party to “speak and act for the establishment of a committee of wise men to look in the possibility of regularising the status of all illegal foreign workers in the country.”
“The regularisation of the status of foreign workers has been done constantly under the Fifth Republic,” France Terre d’Asile President Pierre Henry told reporters recently, arguing that illegal immigrants were as keen as anyone else to contribute to the development of France.