'Invasion' of Polish plumbers taps French fears

PARIS - If you believe the hype, France is being invaded by shadowy figures from the East who are helping to push up unemployment.

The "aliens" are migrants from the former Soviet Bloc, whose countries joined the European Union in May 2004.

At the time, the entry of 10 countries into the 15-member EU was trumpeted as a glorious event. It marked the final healing of Europe after nearly half a century of division. Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and the others were welcomed liked long-lost brothers.

Today, though, the fraternal feeling has all but evaporated, but especially in France, where the "Big Bang" enlargement is now being widely cursed as a move that was too much, too soon.

Much of the success of the "no" vote in the May 29 referendum on the European constitution was a protest against President Jacques Chirac.

But there was also brazen populism that sometimes bordered on xenophobia, targeting East European migrants.

So bitter was this debate that a stereotypical character emerged: The "Polish plumber", a flat-capped semi-skilled, monosyllabic worker who would knock off a job for just a fraction of the price of his better-qualified French counterpart.

"The Polish plumber, the Chinese-made T-shirt and the Indian computer worker have fuelled a gnawing anxiety capable of unleashing a protectionist storm," the daily Le Monde commented.

With two and a half million French people without a job and with a spate of French firms making high-profile decisions to relocate industrial output to Eastern Europe, it was easy for the extreme left and right to paint France as victim of the EU's "social dumping".

Yet how big a menace are the plumber and his kind? The answer seems to be: Hardly a threat at all - and quite possibly a big bonus.

For one thing, most of the Eastern workers have preferred not to go to France anyway. According to unofficial estimates, around 100,000 Easterners have gone to work in the old 15 EU countries since the "Big Bang".

Fifty thousand are in Britain and a further 10,000 are in Ireland, where the economies are booming and which, along with Sweden, are the only EU countries that have not imposed temporary restrictions on the newcomers. In addition, employers and locals in Britain and Ireland speak English, the preferred foreign language in the former Eastern Bloc.

On the other hand, France, like the vast majority of the EU 15, has invoked the right not to open up its labour market fully to the new members for two years, with the possibility of a three-year extension.

The restrictions apply only to individuals but not companies which have the right to supply labour for subcontracts, provided they honour French laws on the minimum wage and working conditions.

Under this arrangement, 5500 Poles have been authorised to work in France since May 2004, in addition to 8000 crop pickers who are allowed in at harvest time under previous bilateral arrangements, according to the Ministry of Employment.

But this does not give the full picture. The press has recounted many anecdotes of building sites, farms and industrial sites where front companies bus in "temporary" help, paying them below-minimum wages and forcing them to work 45-hour weeks or longer, compared with the statutory maximum in France of 35 hours, and scoffing at the understaffed squad of labour inspectors.

Even so, the lure of France appears to remain quite muted, given its sagging economy and language barrier. And the abuse of labour laws on building sites and other free-flowing temporary sites is time-honoured, in France as elsewhere.

An EU-funded thinktank, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, estimates that about 220,000 East European workers a year will head West in search of a job by the end of the decade.

If this exodus poses a problem, it will be mainly for the Eastern countries, in the form of a brain drain, it says.

Most migrants are in the prime of life - average age 34 - and some are highly educated. It means that, if they do not return home, their skills and economic contribution will be lost to their homeland while the host country, with its ageing population, will be the big gainer, it says.

Hakan Sicakkan, a researcher at the Norwegian Research Institute for International Migration and Ethnic Relations, says the migrants do the work which is dirty, dangerous or boring and which most Western Europeans no longer want to do at the prevailing market price.

"Western workers will lose a bit and the East Europeans will gain a bit, but the ones who will really win are the international firms and the owners of capital."

Steve Vertovec, director of Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at Oxford University, says migration touches on a raw national nerve in almost every country. "There are questions of national identity which is particularly staunch in a lot of the European countries. They really think this is going to be watered down the more foreigners you have."