A question for…Tom Deleu, Secretary General of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW)

On 17 September, in conjunction with other European trade union federations, you organised a demonstration outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg, calling for better supervision of subcontracting. So, what are your demands?
A new legislature, together with a new European Commission and a new European Parliament, is now coming into being, and from the outset, we wanted to remind the European institutions to put the battle against social dumping on the agenda, with a view to finding solutions. We absolutely must have legislation designed to limit subcontracting chains. The current legislative framework doesn’t allow us to combat social dumping effectively. We’re seeing an increase in abusive situations, which – in an increasing number of cases – are involving third-country nationals, whose circumstances are particularly precarious. They’re vulnerable to various forms of human trafficking and forced labour. These abuses are in addition to the more traditional phenomena of unpaid wages and workers being housed in unsanitary accommodation. There’s no technical reason why long subcontracting chains should be allowed. The only reasons why they exist are to hide these phenomena, to evade social legislation and to make it harder to conduct inspections, especially when these take place in a crossborder context. So what we need to do is: firstly, force companies to reduce subcontracting chains; secondly, make the main contractor jointly and severally liable for what goes on; and thirdly, regulate the role played by intermediaries such as temporary work agencies and other placement services.