During the proceedings regarding the French transport company, it was established that the drivers were regularly forced to ride without a card. The prosecutor is demanding a high penalty for dishonest carrier practices.
After testimony by drivers employed in an enterprise based in French Seeuche, the prosecutor wants to impose on the employer a fine of 30 thousand euro. The employees of the company were forced to ride without a card in the tachograph at least once a week – reports the French regional daily „Le Progrès Loire”.
As a result, the company did not document those periods in which drivers were traveling without a card in the tachograph as working hours. Consequently, the employer did not pay appropriate contributions and tax for the driver.
As the truckers testified, one of their colleagues was dismissed for refusing to comply with the boss’s requirements. They also admitted that the entrepreneur „treated them like slaves”.
While the prosecutor recognized the company’s practices as „a catastrophic example of road transport work”, the carrier’s counsel pointed to the „lack of moral element” and blamed the drivers for fraud. The attorney of the carrier stated that „failure to put the tachograph card was an action committed by drivers only for personal reasons”.
The sentence must wait until April 25.
Editor’s comment:
Belgium, France, and Germany are the countries where the issue of social dumping is raised most frequently, especially with regard to carriers from Central and Eastern Europe. The above story and many similar ones, however, show that the Old Union states should focus with equal zeal on removing pathologies from their own backyards.
Unfortunately, the regulations enforced by the West and the fight against the widespread „social dumping” are to steps taken against Eastern transport companies which have taken over a large part of the European market in recent years. Meanwhile, actual social dumping is not the drivers legally employed in companies from Poland, Romania or Lithuania who transport cargo to the West.
Social dumping is just dishonest carriers from Western Europe who employ workers from poorer countries of the Community, bypassing regulations from their own countries. It is even the well-known practice of the so-called ‘letterbox’ companies. An entrepreneur from Western Europe opens a company in Romania, for instance, and employs Romanian drivers there, which allows him to significantly reduce operating costs. Then he provides services on his home market, and drivers from Eastern Europe work for much lower rates than their counterparts from a given country.
This is how Spanish entrepreneurs, among others. The Spanish Transport Inspectorate discovered last year that „letterbox” companies generate from 75 percent up to 90 percent of their income on Spanish territory. How is this possible? According to the EU law, workers who spend more than 8 days in Spain are subject to the rules on posting. However, these regulations practically do not apply to an industry such as transport.
Dishonest practices are also allowed by well-known companies from Belgium or carriers from the Netherlands.
Photo: Trans.INFO