Protesters Make Camp Inside Famous French Restaurant
by Spence Cooper on 11/06/09 at 8:59 am
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Immigrants make up a large percentage of the service industry
Since October 23, chefs, assistant cooks, waiters, plongeurs, and dishwashers have camped out 24 hours a day in a corner of the French chic restaurant Georges, a favorite spot among the jetset. They have red flags and lounge on pink plastic sofas around the restaurant’s stylish bar. [see photo]
“French cuisine is famous throughout the world,” said Mamadou, an assistant chef in a Parisian bistro who has joined the protest. He along with 4,700 illegal immigrants across the country have gone on strike to back their demand for a French Green Card. “Without the Africans, the Sri Lankans and the Asians, there would be no one to cook it. It just wouldn’t exist.”
Waitresses walk past them carrying plates of expensive food, and diners look away as they enter. “They don’t like to see who’s behind the stoves,” said Dramane, 38, from Mali.
Currents estimates are that some 4,000 undocumented workers are striking in Paris. Some of them come from sub-Saharan Africa and lack the official papers that entitle them to the benefits that French workers enjoy. Last month, 25 striking workers employed by Plus Net, a cleaning company in Montreuil, obtained regular immigration status after a year-long fight. The undocumented workers were on strike 361 days while occupying their cleaning company headquarters to apply pressure on their employer to pay the tax necessary for them to obtain legal status. They went without a salary for a year, and were supported by neighbors, associations, unions, and political parties, who provided economic and moral aid. The strikers told reporters with Ihumatnite about working conditions which included work days exceeding 24 hours without stop.
Last year in May, Kebe Gaye, an illegal restaurant worker in Paris who arrived in France 10 years ago on a tourist visa went on strike with 32 other employees at Chez Papa, a restaurant chain specializing in southwestern French cuisine. Gaye worked his way up from dishwasher to cook. He acquired forged papers that allowed him to earn €1,200, or $1,900, a month, but he was afraid to apply for health insurance for fear of being reported to the police. “We are paying all the charges, all the taxes, but we have no rights, no insurance, nothing,” he told Celestine Bohlen with New York Times.
Jobs in construction, security and cleaning companies — often filled by illegal workers — are known in France as the “sans-papiers.” They’re paid in cash or get paychecks on the basis of falsified documents. Those who pay taxes and charges for social services including health insurance, taxes, pension contributions and social security, cannot collect the benefits.
This is an issue that concerns restaurateurs throughout the world. Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration which tracks worker movement around the world claims there are roughly 200 million international migrants working globally, accounting for 3 percent of the world’s population. QSR Magazine notes that according to the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, there are an estimated 23.5 million immigrants over the age of 18—both legal and undocumented—in the U.S. civilian work force. The leisure and hospitality industry accounts for 11 percent of those workers, who are predominantly from Mexico and Central America.
But along with the weaker economy, stricter federal immigration enforcement, and the increase of state laws targeting unauthorized workers, there are now fewer migrant workers immigrating to foreign countries worldwide. “There are now policies to return immigrants to their countries of origin,” Chauzy says, noting that hostility is rising due to a trend reversal, and reduction in the number of foreign workers willing to risk coming in to the U.S. — a result of the high unemployment rate.
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