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THE EGG OF THE EU BUILT WITH UNDECLARED AND ILLEGAL EMPLOYED WORKERS

09/01/2020
THE EGG OF THE EU BUILT WITH UNDECLARED AND ILLEGAL EMPLOYED WORKERS

We are at the headquarters of the European Council, the Europe Building in Brussels. The iconic building has a gigantic “egg" - according the architects – it lights up as a symbol of European lighting values. But a research by a Belgian newspaper “De Standaard” demonstrates that this building was co-built by many undocumented workers and exploited migrant workers. Their wages were paid in cash or sometimes simply withheld. On this specific building site workers came from Bulgaria, Guinee, Portugal, Brazil, Moldova, Russia, Morocco and Romania.

Many exploited migrant and posted workers on this building site were recruited by subcontractors, which looked like legal businesses, and worked in long non transparent chains of subcontractors.

The article presents several practical cases and concludes that within the Belgian construction industry social dumping is a widespread practice.

You can download the original article (in Dutch).