PARIS, October 23 — Nearly 30 worksites were still occupied here today in the 2009 mobilization of 3,000 undocumented workers, striking for “legalization” and for decent working conditions. Since October 12, around 160 undocumented workers have been occupying the FNTP, the building trades’ employers association. On the building’s façade the brass FNTP plaque rubs shoulders with a small red flag.

This Autumn “Act II” 2009 strike follows the big strike movement of undocumented workers in the Spring of 2008 — “Act I.”
 “We want to come out of the shadows, we can’t go on this way,” Dèh Barou told one newspaper. The undocumented Mauritanian immigrant has temped for eight years in the automobile industry. “We’re exploited, underpaid and haven’t any rights — if we don’t say ‘no’ at some point, things will never change.”

X. Macalou, a fortyish building trades worker from Mali, is a veteran of “Act I,” the Spring 2008 strikes (see CHALLENGE, 5/31/2008). Today he’s a strike organizer, leading the occupation of a temporary work agency by 200 to 300 undocumented workers. The strikers take turns manning a picket line day and night. “We’re ready to hold out to the end,” Macalou said.

Condemn Government’s Racist Policy

On October 10, over 10,000 protesters marched here to condemn the government’s racist policy of case-by-case “legalization” of undocumented workers. They castigated “a policy that segregates undocumented workers in a no-rights zone of administrative uncertainty, preventing their social integration.”

The strike was symbolically kicked off on October 13 when 23 undocumented temporary workers from West Africa who maintain the RATP subway station platforms erected a tent camp in the parking lot of the RATP Paris regional transport depot. They told how “for hours on end, we break up the asphalt on the station platforms, take 110-pound chunks up to street level, and then go back down with buckets of bubbling tar” – all this at night, “without a break, without a safety helmet, without safety shoes, without a mask ... and without ever seeing a doctor,” because none have documents.

Then, without a warrant, the government sent in the police to evict the workers and their tent camp, parroting the racist line of the French fascists, who claim that “foreigners” rob the French social security system. On October 20, the 70 strikers occupying the tax collection office in Vitry-sur-Seine were violently evicted by the police, two workers requiring first-aid treatment.

Fed up with being afraid to walk in the street, tired of being confronted with ID checks, a man from Mali, in his fifties, searches feverishly in his wallet and holds out his building trades worker ID card. Having lived in France since 1994, he has been working eight hours a day in industrial cleaning. “I’ve got all my pay stubs. I pay taxes and sales taxes like everybody else. But I have no right to social security, or to a retirement pension, or to unemployment benefits, because I haven’t got any immigration documents. That’s why I’ve joined the occupation.”
To get a job, undocumented workers have to submit fake papers. “Nobody checks if they are fakes when it is a question of paying social security contributions and taxes, but they’re fakes because they don’t give us any rights,” commented Mamadou Sognane.

“If you protest, if you are tired, they tell you that you can go, because there always another undocumented worker who will take the job,” said Aboubacar. He has worked with fake documents, which cost him 4,000 euros, for the past eleven years. Undocumented workers comprise a majority in some trades.

“For the temp agencies, undocumented workers are pure profit,” said Aberkhane Boukhalfa, a union steward who works for Manpower and who makes the rounds of the picket lines “to lend a hand.” The racist super-exploitation of immigrant workers nets super-profits for these bosses.

The strikers are backed by five trade union federations and five associations. A support statement from the Paris SUD-Education teachers union said: “The exploitation of undocumented workers, the most insecure of the insecure workers, opens the way to the destruction of job security for all workers. They are the main victims of a development which is depriving increasing numbers of workers of stable jobs, generalizing job flexibility, deregulating work codes and putting pressure on workers.”

‘We’ll Occupy This Place For a Year if Necessary…’

“We’ve got to set up a solidarity fund to be able to buy food to eat,” said Kouaté Kandjura, one of the spokespeople at the FNTP occupation. “We’re determined to occupy this place as long as is necessary, for a day, a month...or a year if necessary.”

These undocumented immigrant workers are fighting for the whole working class, internationally, setting an example for workers everywhere who are exploited by the same profit system. They’re fighting the bosses’ attempts to divide us by nationality (borders established by capitalists worldwide). The “legality” of workers is based on racist laws that serve the bosses. They use it to set one group of workers against another and thereby drag down conditions of all workers.