France’s Macron Looks to Confront Eastern Europe Over Low-Cost Workers
The push comes as higher-salary countries like France, Austria
and the Netherlands face political pressure to curb "social dumping,” a widespread practice in which companies hire subcontractors in lower-wage European Union member-states and post them in a more costly one.
“Do you think I can explain to the French that businesses are closing in France to move to Poland while construction
firms in France are recruiting Polish workers because they are cheaper?” he said during the interview.
One of the biggest French construction companies, Bouygues Travaux Publics, was fined around 30,000 euros, or $35,000, after lengthy government
investigations found it had contracted with exploitative, low-cost employment agencies to hire hundreds of Polish and Romanian workers.
Last year, the European Commission proposed reforming the system to require
that posted workers be paid on par with local ones, and that any posting occur “within a climate of fair competition and respect for the rights of workers.” But Central and East European countries halted the proposals, and asked Brussels for a further review.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who promised to protect his compatriots from “unfair competition” from the east, is moving
aggressively to focus attention on these posted workers as he begins a three-day tour of Central and Eastern Europe on Wednesday.
While posted workers make up less than 1 percent of Europe’s labor force, eastern bloc leaders have
vowed to fight any efforts to restrict the rights of their citizens to work across the region.
