In the European Union, it’s social dumping, the ongoing battle to reduce wages.
The posted workers directive, the European treaties enshrining the competition between peoples are among the options that French companies strongly benefit from.
Just one example: anyone who visited the construction site of the new stadium in Nice during its building phase will remember not hearing only Gaulish accents (to use a fashionable term!).
Transport, construction, agriculture… there are few sectors that escape the phenomenon of posted workers.
Hundreds of thousands of workers from Eastern or Southern European countries are employed under the lowest wage conditions in Western European countries to circumvent minimum wages and labor rights, unduly exerting downward pressure on the wages and rights of local workers, in sectors where activity cannot be easily relocated.
Thus, they compete with French minimum wage workers (€1,445 gross monthly) with those from Poland (€410), Slovakia (€357), or worse, Romania (€218) and Bulgaria (€184). And tomorrow, Ukraine (€40…).
In fact, to protect wages and workers’ rights from social dumping, it is essential to revise the rules governing them and not invoke, as some parties do, a return to protectionism, which it should be reminded, works both ways.
Buying less from the Germans means selling less to the Germans, and it’s the same for others. However, 75% of our exports are destined for the EU…
