France’s Macron Looks to Confront Eastern Europe Over Low-Cost Workers<br />The push comes as higher-salary countries like France, Austria<br />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.<br />“Do you think I can explain to the French that businesses are closing in France to move to Poland while construction<br />firms in France are recruiting Polish workers because they are cheaper?” he said during the interview.<br />One of the biggest French construction companies, Bouygues Travaux Publics, was fined around 30,000 euros, or $35,000, after lengthy government<br />investigations found it had contracted with exploitative, low-cost employment agencies to hire hundreds of Polish and Romanian workers.<br />Last year, the European Commission proposed reforming the system to require<br />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.<br />The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who promised to protect his compatriots from “unfair competition” from the east, is moving<br />aggressively to focus attention on these posted workers as he begins a three-day tour of Central and Eastern Europe on Wednesday.<br />While posted workers make up less than 1 percent of Europe’s labor force, eastern bloc leaders have<br />vowed to fight any efforts to restrict the rights of their citizens to work across the region.
