Travail au noir (France)

Travail au noir 🇫🇷
Location: France
Definition: Travail au noir refers to undeclared or unreported employment.
Keywords: France – Europe – informal labour – underreported labour
Clusters: Survival – Informal entrepreneurship – Market
Author: Carla Montigny
Affiliation: Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

By Carla Montigny, Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

Travail au noir, literally ‘black labour’ in French, refers to undeclared or unreported employment. The practice is spread worldwide, but similar expressions exist in Italy, where it is called lavoro sommerso or lavoro in nero (literally submerged or black labour), and in Sweden, under the name svart arbete. In French law, in the article of the 11th of July 1972, travail au noir is defined as the money-making act of production, transformation, reparation, or trade, by a person who is not declared and has not fulfilled the social and fiscal obligation linked to their activities, except if they only occur occasionally (Barthélemy: 1982).

According to Laé, travail au noir can be micro-local or based on group solidarity; it can also be short-term limited work, or a full-time job. It can be divided into two categories: ‘self-employment’, which includes employers in informal enterprises or own-account workers in informal enterprises, and ‘wage employment’, which includes employees of informal enterprises or paid domestic workers (Chen, in Stuart et al.: 2018). Travail au noir is often used as a stepping stone towards formal employment, as an opportunity to develop a skill before looking for a legal job, specifically in the context of immigration. It is important to note that travail au noir often comes with a level of imbalance; indeed, it is usually created by employers rather than sought out by employees (Barthe: 1985). It also seems to mostly affect people in a condition of social and economic weakness – for example, someone who is in a desperate economic condition will be more likely to accept undeclared labour. Similarly, immigration or periods of long unemployment often heighten the risk of travail au noir for communities. It can also have different implications depending on the demographic; while young people are more likely to engage in travail au noir to gain extra income, while they still live with their parents or receive money from them, people aged 25-45 often turn to it because of a situation of extreme scarcity, for example in the context of parenthood or debt (Barthe: 1985).

Travail au noir is most prevalent in the contexts of manual labour, such as cleaning, construction, or farming jobs, where administrative costs are perceived as excessively burdening. A common form of the practice is a family hiring a cleaner for two or three hours a week. In such a context, informal rules such as morals and social pressure would help regulate the wage received by the cleaner. They might therefore decide, informally, on a salary relatively similar to what it would be in a formal context. The main difference would therefore be minimised paperwork and taxes, rather than the salary itself.

Travail au noir can also take the shape of full-time employment. In France, this is quite common in restaurants, where employees sometimes work ‘illegally’, as restaurant owners want to reduce costs and while having access to a large supply of migrant workers, who are willing to work despite not being legally allowed to. This could be a transitionary situation, if the employee is waiting to receive their work permit, or it could be permanent. The employee could have no desire or possibility to obtain a work permit. In this situation, there is a clear power imbalance, as the employees are more likely to accept difficult or unsanitary work conditions due to their situations; it is also easier for them to get fired.

Travail au noir can also be ‘50/50’. Especially in the agricultural context, employers hire workers “half legally” – in such a situation, there is a contract, and a formal legal framework defining wages and work conditions, but the employer may choose to declare only half of their employee’s working hours. By doing so, both employer and employee pay taxes on half of the hours effectively worked, but they still benefit from legal protection. This is often seen as a harmless example of travail au noir, as the two parties involved pay less taxes, and it takes place through a shared understanding that the ‘50/50’ agreement is best for both parties, even if it harms the employee in the long run.

Travail au noir is insidious when one of the parties is unaware of the situation. This happens when an employee (A), for example on a construction site, is momentarily unable to work, and instead sends someone they know and who usually works for them (B). B thus becomes another employee of the construction site. If the employer trusts A, he might not bother to check B’s legal situation. If B is working au noir for A, the employer will not be aware of this, and he will therefore be unknowingly engaging in travail au noir. In these examples, the state has been, for better or worse, partially or fully excluded from the equation.

Undeclared labour is most prevalent in societies where state institutions are ineffective or absent. The known ineffectiveness of informal institutions, or the lack of trust in them, often leads to a desire or need to bypass them. In this context, unreported employment acts as a substitutive institution following the Helmke and Levitsky model (2004). However, unreported labour remains widespread in more developed economies with effective institutions, as evidenced by the prevalence of travail au noir in France, where, according to data collected by the European Union in 2013, it involves as much as 11% of the private sector.

This may be due to formal institutions being perceived as intrusive in everyday life; people may struggle to pay taxes and their living expenses, they may be disappointed by the perceived unfairness of formal rules, or reject a system they see as invasive. Indeed, in trying to formalise mutual aid through taxation, labour-regulating laws often undermine small-scale cooperation and solidarity. In France, travail au noir becomes a competing informal institution in the context of ‘over-effective’ formal institutions.

The prevalence of travail au noir comes with consequences. Beyond the obvious impact on a country’s GDP, it also has serious social implications. Since employers and employees do not pay taxes on their travail au noir, at least a part of their activities evade taxation; while paying less taxes seems positive in the short-term, the long-term effects have serious consequences on the community. Indeed, less tax money collected implies that formal institutions, such as welfare, healthcare (Stuart et al.: 2018), education, or the public function will receive less funding, thus lowering their quality. This can lead to a vicious cycle in which, as formal institutions decrease in quality, people are less and less likely to trust them and more and more likely to engage in informal activities. The consequences can also be personal and even more dire as travail au noir disproportionately affects people in precarious situations. Working au noir to have more money at the end of the month often comes with a lower pension, among other things; this experience is quite common among members of more precarious groups, such as recent migrants, parents with a large family, or people in unstable economic situations.

Travail au noir is a complex informal practice that falls in a moral grey area with important consequences on communities and on society at large. Being survival-based, people resort to it to fulfill a dire need for money or employment. It is however difficult to know where needs end and where greed begins. Is an employer hiring workers au noir because he cannot afford to pay taxes on their salary, or because it will allow him to have more money at the end of the month? Such grey zones make it hard to establish when travail au noir has more a positive or negative impact on those who participate in it. 

References

Barthe, M.-A. (1985) ‘Chômage, travail au noir et entraide familiale’, Revue Consommation.

Barthélemy, P. (1982) ‘Travail au noir et économie souterraine : un état de la recherche’, Travail et Emploi, no. 12, vol. 4.

Fleming, M. H., Roman, J. & Farrell, G. (2000) ‘The Shadow Economy’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 387-409.

Helmke, G. & Levitsky, S. (2004) ‘Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda’, Perspectives on Politics, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 725-740.

Laé, J. F. (1990) ‘Le travail au noir, vestibule de l'emploi’, Sociologie du Travail, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 23-37.

Ledeneva, A. & Efendic, A. (2020) ‘The rules of the game in transition: how informal institutions work in South East Europe’, in: Douarin, E. & Havrylyshyn, O. (eds.) Handbook of Comparative Economics, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

North, D. C. (1991) ‘Institutions’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 97-112

Stuart, E., Samman, E. & Hunt, A. (2018) ‘Informal is the new normal – Improving the lives of workers at risk of being left behind’, Shaping Policy for Development.