Rachid Belkacem
Fonction
Maitre de conférences
Organisation
Université de Lorraine, France
Les pratiques de détachements de travailleurs en Union européenne : importance formes et enjeux. Le cas de la grande région Sarre-Lor-Lux
Les pratiques de détachements de travailleurs en Union européenne : importance formes et enjeux. Le cas de la grande région Sarre-Lor-Lux
Border Region
Greater Region, SaarLorLux
Language(s)
Français
Main Category
Introduction
This report presents the results of research produced for Force Ouvrière by the Objectives agency at IRES. The purpose is to analyze the forms of detachment practiced by workers from or to France. The field of study mainly concerns the Greater Region.
Summary
Throughout the Greater Saar-Lor-Lux Region, the development of border work has been accompanied by a diversification of its forms such as temporary cross-border labor. Temporary-work agencies have imposed themselves as new intermediaries of employment in these cross-border spaces, privileging the development of particular forms of employment and taking advantage of the different social and fiscal legislations operating in different jurisdictions, as they contribute to the recruitment of the cross-border labor-force. These detached temporary workers are relatively well-trained and well-qualified, and most of all they are tied to the temporary employment agencies. While such detachment of temporary workers remains the classical form of a flexible labor-force allowing for access to human resources not available in a given jurisdiction, it also represents a tool for the management of cross-border labor-cost differentials. On a larger scale, such practices of cross-border detachment threaten to speed up the process of deterritorializing systems of national law, and compel within the GR increased competition between national regulatory systems that have, notably, to do with finance and social protection.
Content
This report further develops research previously contracted in 2014-15 by the IRES (Institute for Social and Economic Research, Paris). Having reviewed existing European literature on the subject, the report is based on both statistical analysis and field work that engaged with relevant social and economic actors. The report focusses on the detachment of workers in Europe generally, but particularly on the detachment of cross-border temporary workers in the Greater Region, notably across the borders between Lorraine and Luxembourg. It gathers statistical information from French workplace inspection services and from labor force inquiries across Europe. "Detachment", here, refers to situations in which a person temporarily leaves to work in another country, either for their own company, for a partnered company of some kind, or for a temporary employment agency. The report is organized around 5 principle tasks. The first provides an analysis of European regulatory structures pertaining to detachment from the point of view of their main characteristics, their evolution, and the debate they have elicited around Europe. Second, the report describes the current state of the art of detachment in and from France into other EU member and non-member countries, from the perspective of both legal regulations and statistics. Third, the report provides an overview of the academic literature on the subject. Fourthly, it provides an analysis of the different flows of detachment in and around the Greater Region, with a particular focus on the movement from Luxembourg to Lorraine of workers detached by temporary employment agencies located in Luxembourg. Finally, in the fifth and last chapter, the report presents the result of field-work interviews with relevant actors, such as the detached workers themselves, labor inspectors, trade unions, and representatives from temporary employment agencies located in Luxembourg.
Conclusions
This study draws six main conclusions. First, the detachment of workers in the Greater Region generally is in large measure a result of the detachment of such cross-border workers as temp-workers coming from Luxembourg to Lorraine. These are old practices that have been in operation in Lorraine and Saarland since the 1970s, representing a large measure of the diversification of cross-border flows. Second, the significant economic and social disparities within the Greater Region serve as the mainspring of development for such cross-border detachments. These disparities of economic and social dynamics translate into labor cost levels that make temporary workers in Luxembourg attractive to the companies in Lorraine that employ them. Third, the detached workers in the Greater Region are rather well-qualified, well-trained, and tied to the temporary employment agencies. None of this, indeed, has anything to do with low-cost detachment models. Detached labor feeds into cross-border labor and is in turn fed by it. It constitutes an important element of the dynamism of cross-border mobilities throughout the Greater Region. Fourth, temporary employment agencies located in Luxembourg seek to profit from the labor-cost differentials by developing strategies for managing cross-border spaces via the networking of companies. Further, industries that most often have recourse to detached workers are those that live of local production. Such industries as construction companies as well as certain parts of the automobile industry cannot simply relocate to countries with lower cost options. Thus, two modes of detached labor coexist here: a classic model whereby detached labor comes from Southern Europe (e.g. Portugal) or from countries such as Poland and Romania; and a more purely trans-border model having to do with detachments from proximate border crossings that are geographically very limited.
Lead
Rachid Belkacem
Contributions
Rachid Belkacem, Laurence Montcharmont, Christophe Nosbonne and Benoît Scalvinoni - Université de Lorraine
Cathel Kornig - Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du Travail (LEST), Aix-Marseille Université
François Michon - CNRS, Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne
Keywords
Contact Person(s)
Date of creation
2018
Date