EUROPE'S NEW PROLETARIANS

...France's largest trade union, the Communist CGT, is so institutionalized and so preoccupied in helping the Communist Party ingratiate itself with the French middle class that it almost completely ignores the foreign workers...

...In Germany they are nearly all white—Greeks, Turks, Yugoslavs, Spaniards, and Italians...

...The big worry was West Germany, which had gained eight million refugees from the East...

...EUROPE'S NEW PROLETARIANS JONATHAN POWER London "Judging from the way you British talk," one European bureaucrat said to me over coffee, "one would think you were the only country in the world that had ever received an immigrant...

...But when it became clear that Britain was to enter the EEC, a sharp panic swept through the Dutch government, which realized that a large number of Britain's foreign workers had full rights as British citizens and could emigrate to Holland...

...But—catch 22—they cannot apply for the government-subsidized housing (and most Dutch housing is of this kind) unless they have their families with them...

...The Dutch double-talk—the dichotomy between their boasts of how well they have succeeded with the Indonesians and their policies today—was vividly illustrated during the Common Market negotiations for Britain's entry...

...Waldraff, the personnel manager of Bosch, the great German electrical company, told me, "I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the decade half our blue-collar staff were non-German...

...As a result, proceedings against numerous pub owners in southern Germany who had put up notices banning Gastarbeiter from their premises had to be dropped...

...What evidence is there to suggest that private investment will be a beneficial asset to the developing countries...

...Colored workers are actively discouraged...

...When the workers returned from the factory and discovered what had happened, they immediately decided to refuse to pay any more rent until the suitcases were returned...

...She told me that she had been living in bidonvilles for nine years...

...Her husband is a road-sweeper...

...France's great plus, of course, is the absence of the kind of racism prevalent in Britain and America...

...300,000 of its members are foreign workers...

...The rules differ from establishment to establishment but basically they are the same—no brothels and no politics...

...Their concern to maximize their profits often conflicts with the social goals of the emerging nations...

...You have to live in the country for ten years, pay 16,000 francs, and have your naturalization approved by the legislative chambers and the King...

...Is anti-discriminatory legislation necessary...

...The problem is the different nationalities and languages...

...Incredulously, I asked her if anything could be worse than this...

...However, Belgian laws inculcate a feeling of insecurity in the foreign workers, who are made to feel that if they organize and protest too much they will be ejected...

...The working population in France is only forty per cent of the total compared with forty-seven per cent in Germany...

...His view was one I had heard echoed all over Europe wherever I talked to trade union leaders...

...In Britain there has been the restrictive legislation of the Immigration Act of 1971—which means that the majority of newcomers from now on will be treated like aliens...

...Immigration is seen as inevitable, but there is no real desire to burrow down into its implications and responsibilities...

...That is why we have 3,500,000 and 300,000 more coming in each year...

...People are retiring earlier and working shorter weeks...

...indeed it's often a hindrance to development...

...They are called bidonvilles—literally, tin-can towns...

...Should they be allowed to bring their families...

...While the workers were at work the management arranged for the suitcases to be removed...

...The Common Market itself has no agency dealing with this question in any kind of overall way...

...All European countries have experienced a great influx of foreign workers since World War II...

...the Italians, for instance, can bring their families with them...

...They provide what the German economist Professor Marios Nikolinakos calls a "buffer function"—a buffer for the native population against the winds of economic change...

...Today tin cans are a luxury material...

...France has even more...

...This gives a pretty high return per square foot to the factories that own the barracks...

...But that is now a euphemism...

...The view of the workers as fodder for the German economy, which is certainly the dominant view in Germany today, is thrown into sharp relief by the campaign now going on in the German Parliament to restrict the rights of immigrant workers...

...What they have are special workers' camps...

...Three men to a twelve by six foot room, for which they each pay thirty Deutschemarks a week...

...There is also the question of political interference...

...Joining a trade union would be regarded as political subversion back home...

...The emphasis is on owning your home, and municipal housing is infinitesimal...

...Opinion at the Common Market HQ in Brussels is unanimous that the declaration has no judicial standing, but it gives the Dutch government something to wave in front of its right-wing lobby...

...Not only does it allow foreign workers to bring their families as soon as they want to, it actively encourages them...

...In Belgium they are mainly Italians, Turks, and Greeks...

...Max Diament, director of the union's department of foreign workers, told me: "Many foreign workers are afraid to join a trade union...

...The other part is what is going on in the "sending" countries...

...Of the others, only the Italians have full social rights...

...Foreigners are not allowed to be trade union officials...

...The foreign labor force is now of such size and strategic importance to the European economy that it can no longer be written off as a temporary phenomenon...

...The plain fact is that Europe cannot do without its foreign laborers...

...A subsequent survey led to some significant if little known findings...

...They are the new proletarians—the ten million immigrant workers in the Common Market countries— who do the menial jobs, are poorly paid with little job security, live in housing that is often appalling, and frequently are separated from their families...

...Nevertheless, Diament admits that part of the problem is the unions themselves...

...Common Market Commissioner Coppe says that the main problem of the underdeveloped countries was the loss of their youngest, most dynamic, and better-educated youths...

...At the same time, Belgium has for a long time found it impossible to do without foreign labor...

...France has the slowest population growth in Europe...

...this can take up to three years...

...Above all, what are the long-run repercussions...

...The living and working conditions of the immigrants who are already in Europe are just part of the problem...

...There was one tap for the sprawling community of 2,000 people...

...A majority of Britain's immigrants and twenty-five per cent of Holland's, because of old colonial connections, have been granted the automatic right to settle...

...The only countries that can partially escape this accusation are Britain and Holland...

...Yet its housing policy is the antithesis of its crowded neighbor, Holland...

...When I talked to senior officials at the headquarters of I. G. Metall, the steelworkers' union (more than two million members) in Frankfurt, they confirmed Genio's observations...

...What social services are they entitled to...

...Bosch is considered to be one of Germany's most progressive employers...

...Until now, the politics have been inevitably subdued, but the workers are slowly beginning to find a political tongue...

...It has also been generous in its family policy...

...First its own people, and then, when the drift from the land was not sufficient, the industrializing countries reached out to the more backward areas of Europe...

...By maintaining the public fiction that it is not a country of immigration it manages to get away with all kinds of unacceptable behavior...

...The economic motor that powers Europe now is in need of a radical overhaul—an overhaul that would make the "repairs" of the previous two centuries appear minor indeed...

...It is extraordinarily difficult to become a Belgian citizen...

...Already it is illegal for foreigners to form political associations...

...But by the end of World War II it was thought that most European countries would not be able to provide enough employment for their own citizens...

...In Holland, besides Indonesians (who are refugees rather than immigrant workers), there are West Indians, Turks, Greeks, and Italians...

...That is true...

...For the most part bidonvilles are made out of wood and cardboard—mainly cardboard...

...Children are staying in school longer...

...Germany now has two and a quarter million foreign workers plus a million dependents...

...We Italians, for example, just because we are members of the Common Market, think we are superior to the others...

...A court ruling in Munich last year stated that since the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) only stay temporarily in Germany they cannot be regarded as "part of the population...

...Waldraff was unresponsive to my suggestion that a benign family policy would give him a more effective work-force: "The fact that they can't get housing is partly their fault...

...Among the 200,000 foreign workers in Holland, 45,000 have the full social rights of a Dutch citizen: these are the immigrants from Surinam (Dutch Guiana) and the Dutch-owned islands of the Leeward and Windward group in the Caribbean...

...In the end, a special joint declaration was appended to the Treaty of Accession, providing that if the free movement of labor gave rise to "certain difficulties for the social situation in one or more member States," the member State could bring the matter up for discussion...

...she had lived there longer than most...

...But Dr...

...I asked her why she had left Portugal...

...Where will these people be housed...

...It now has a budget of $700,000 and sees as part of its work the organization of tenants' groups and training programs...

...This tone of complacency characterizes "official Europe...

...The lavatory was a mud channel that wound itself in half-circles around the shacks...

...Do you realize that during the 1960s Germany alone imported ten times as many immigrants as you...

...The native European working force is shrinking, but the European economy is expanding...

...Yet, as one traverses Europe, listening to all levels of opinion, it is startlingly obvious that people whose responsibility it should be to know and be concerned about this phenomenon are only just beginning to realize its dimensions...

...The foreign work force is now 600,000, which is seven per cent of the total...

...The Germans are quick to point out that their restrictive family policy means that they do not have the French immigrants' slums...

...We have a lot of silly nationalistic ideas...

...Even if it rained the sewer did not get a decent douche, since all the filth agglomerated on the corners...

...France has managed to bypass this, if only because of the elitist political and educational system that allowed, until 1957, the cream of its colonies' intelligentsia to move into its public life on equal footing with native citizens...

...France has no other solution, given the present economic system," Wagner told me, "but to import foreign labor...

...I grabbed a taxi to the nearest reference library...

...In Portugal we had nothing...

...Denis...

...Brussels is the headquarters of the European Free Trade Union Movement—a gigantic AFL-CIO for the whole of Europe...

...As Dr...

...It is a gigantic problem, and each Common Market country has tackled its responsibility differently...

...They want to save a lot to take home...

...But the Maoists' help is double-edged...

...Britain has a mere 1,800,000 immigrants...

...I asked him how difficult it was to organize the foreign workers...

...Beyond that very little has been done...

...The Dutch Government's expenditures to help immigrants to settle has dropped dramatically since 1960...

...In a time of recession, the intake of new foreign workers can be cut down, or, if things are serious enough, they can be ejected...

...I talked with Carlo Savoini, one of EFTUM's three secretaries...

...He believes that "the time has come to export capital [to such countries] rather than bringing people here...

...There is a noticeable absence of overt racial tension in the poor neighborhoods...

...The Ministry of Employment and Labor contributes half of the travel expenses of the family...

...The economies of the West European countries soon expanded, and before long attention was swiveling outwards to foreign sources of labor...

...This only intimidates the foreign workers even more...

...The management decided that they took up too much space and ordered the suitcases to be removed to a storage hut...

...You have to remember we have to compete with the Japanese and the Americans...

...His articles have appeared in Encounter and The Observer, and he recently won a silver medal at the Venice Film Festival for his film work...

...It must be clear from this survey that unless there is a radical and unprecedented restructuring of the European economy, Europe's future growth will be dependent on large amounts of cheap, unskilled foreign labor...

...One of the great pillars of the Articles of the Common Market is that there should be free mobility of labor...

...In Britain immigration began as a trickle and became a flood: West Indians first, closely followed by Indians and Pakistanis...

...They have helped make possible the tremendous economic growth that has taken place in Europe since the war—we live in a competitive society...

...Long barrack-like quarters, clean and characterless...

...Holland, however, still has the best race relations and social policies in the West, and public pressure is mounting against its immigrant family policies...

...All too often their presence in the bidonvilles brings the riot police racing in to drive them out...

...But it had no toilet and no running water...

...Our wages have gone up a lot already...

...Are they keeping wages down or helping inflationary tendencies...

...The government, however, has consciously tried to limit the unionizing of foreign workers...

...The precarious unity of the Walloon and the Flemish parts of the country is cited as the reason for discouraging foreigners...

...The Belgians have always been schizophrenic about foreigners...

...Unfortunately, it does not satisfy three questions...

...I doubt if we could increase that rate...

...Furthermore, these foreign workers were not white—they were West Indians, Indians, and Pakistanis...

...However, it does not embrace the Communist-backed unions...

...And they feel they are being watched here...

...Yet in the opinion of most economists, industrialists, trade union leaders, and politicians, the tremendous economic growth that has been experienced in Europe (Britain really is now the odd man out) would not have been possible without them...

...Jonathan Power, a free lance writer and economist now based in London, spent several months on the continent in research for this article...

...Meanwhile, the Christian Democratic trade union, the DFDT, has moved to the left, and is developing a much more radical stance...

...If there is renewed economic growth they can be sucked in again...

...Even so, the senior civil servant who so gladly gave up hours of his time to help me know what was going on in the inner recesses of government policy, made sure I wrote down his emphatic concluding words: "As long as we go on doing the necessary things in an insufficient way, the risk of a Dutch Enoch Powell is always there...

...Although the native poor and the immigrants tend to live in the old inner city housing with less than a fair share of facilities, most housing is well maintained and not overcrowded...

...The French government has estimated that the potential labor supply by 1980 will be 1,650,000 less than it is today...

...Today the prejudices of the Dutch are mostly visited upon the West Indians and the south Europeans...

...You can't build workers' languages...

...Now she is living in one in St...

...The churches, an important part of Dutch life, are becoming increasingly radical and outspoken on social issues...

...The workers had, until the month previously, always kept their suitcases in their rooms...

...Who will do the menial jobs...

...No one wants to be accused of upsetting the delicate Flemish-Walloon balance...

...Professors Godula Korsache and Stephen Castles of the University of Sussex, in their forthcoming book on labor migration in Europe, describe it as "a form of development aid given by the poor countries to the rich countries—labor migration does nothing to alleviate the backwardness of the regions from which migrants came...

...Francesco Genio, an Italian worker in the camp who helped organize the strike, told me: "For politically active workers Mercedes Benz have a novel system of discrimination...

...Belgian trade unions have done more to make foreign workers feel wanted than the Dutch, French, or German unions...

...In fact, the reverse happened...

...Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Germany...

...The fiction of the temporary worker also helps Germans to justify their restrictive policy on the right of workers to bring their families to join them...

...The unions have limited themselves to making sure that the wages paid to foreign workers do not undercut their own wage levels...

...The Belgian Ministry of Justice has almost unlimited powers to order a foreigner to leave...

...de Gaulle's immediate successor was a West Indian —Gaston Monnerville, the President of the Senate...

...The majority of their inhabitants are Portuguese and Algerians...

...After a two-week rent strike they won...

...It was stemmed only when, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United Kingdom's economy went into the doldrums...

...The postwar idealism that led to the relatively smooth integration of 300,000 Indonesian refugees—on whom the myth of Holland's superior race relations has been built—does not really exist today...

...Blacks have served in the Cabinet...

...In Holland this is, of course, marred by the treatment given to those who do not have this connection...

...Because the new proletarians are politically handcuffed, they are seen as marginal to the real decisions that confront the new dynamic Europe...

...Genio's small cell, which he shared with two other Italians, was decorated with two pictures, one of Stalin and one of Christ...

...However critical one is of official Dutch attitudes, France makes one rabidly pro-Dutch...

...Here we have money...

...It is only recently that they have set about trying to recruit the foreign workers...

...This union recently has been making moves to organize the foreign workers and integrate them into the trade union movement...

...If there is any common thread to these policies it is that they are haphazard, makeshift, and geared primarily to meeting the narrow needs of the host country...

...The majority are Italians, followed by Greeks, Spaniards, Turks, and Moroccans...

...It is almost impossible to find a major employer in Germany who will publicly back a family policy for immigrants...

...The temptations to exploit this large non-voting sub-proletariat are legion...

...Michael Wagner, CIMADE's executive secretary, explained to me some of the reasons why France goes on importing labor despite the terrible housing conditions...

...If we didn't have foreign workers there would be inflationary pressures...

...Belgium is the most densely populated country in Europe, and land is at a premium...

...You can't build workers' solidarity...

...The week before I visited the Mercedes Benz camp in Stuttgart there had been a rent strike over "suitcases in the room...

...There is no land," she said, "no opportunities...

...Ever since the industrial revolution, the capitalist machine has been sucking in labor...

...The workers refused, arguing that the problem was not the suitcases but the lack of space given to each man...

...The Dutch popular daily De Telegraaf ran a headline, Britain's Colored Will Pour into Holland...

...Nevertheless, in comparison to the blacks in Britain or America, the Indonesians are integrated...

...If Britain ever needed to suck in labor again she would find herself imitating the worst European practices...

...Maria Martins Conde is the wife of a Portuguese worker...

...Her two-room wood and cardboard shack was the best in the bidonville...

...The only people who are really making an effort to help the bidonville dwellers to organize themselves and fight for better facilities are some radical church groups and the Maoists...

...No one in our union disapproves of foreign workers," Savoini said...

...He was right...

...The media, television in particular, are mostly on the side of the underdog...

...They send you to an isolated part of the factory, such as the furnace room, where it's too hot to talk...

...Some of the most useful work in the bidonvilles is being carried out by CIMADE, an affiliate of the World Council of Churches...

...Now there are pressures to restrict their rights even further...

...The Greeks and Spaniards in particular are under a lot of pressure...

...Paris is still an incredibly beautiful city, yet around its outer edges are some of the worst slums in the world...

...This "liberal" view is put forward for the best of motives by those who feel uneasy about the long-term implications of what is happening...

...And of course the employers try to play on these differences...

...It was the first company in Germany to introduce sickness benefits and accident compensation...

...They don't want to spend it here...

...How will the European economy continue to grow without large influxes of foreign labor...

...In France the principal groups are Portuguese, Spanish, and North Africans...

...The rest— southern Europeans and North Africans—have to work for one year before they can send for their families and then only if they can prove they have housing...

...As in other European countries, French trade union interest in immigrant workers is slight...

...Giant multi-national corporations investing in underdeveloped countries wield a disproportionate amount of power...

...I. G. Metall is the most progressive of the unions...

...It takes some time to realize that hardly any of the German foreign workers are colored...