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Originally published: June 26, 2005
Original link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/international/europe/26poland.html
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, June 25 - Blond, buffed and blow-dried, a come-hither half-smile on
his face, the man in the travel ad grips the tools of his trade as he
beckons visitors to Poland.
"I'm staying in Poland," the man says, a set of strategically placed pipes
in one hand, a metal-cutter in the other. "Lots of you should come."
He is the "Polish plumber," a mythical figure who became a central actor
in the debate in France over the European Union constitution, which was
roundly rejected by French voters last month. Portrayed as a predator who
would move to France and steal jobs by working for less pay, this
"plumber" has come to personify French fears about the future.
Now the Polish Tourism Bureau is using the character to try to allay
French fears and attract visitors at the same time.
"With all the bad publicity about the 'Polish plumber,' we thought why not
have a sense of humor and make him work for us?" Krzysztof Turowski, the
creator of an ad on the bureau's Web site, said in a telephone interview
from Warsaw.
"We picked someone handsome and clean with a sexy look in his eyes - to
get the French to come to our beautiful country."
Next week the tourist office will offer Paris a firsthand look at Piotr
Adamski, the 21-year-old model, who will also pose at the Eiffel Tower in
the same green overalls and Stanley Kowalski T-shirt he wore in the ad.
Mr. Adamski has become such an overnight sensation that even Poland's
former president, Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of
the Solidarity labor movement, offered him advice for his Paris trip.
"I suggest that he ask the French why the heck for so many years they
encouraged Poles to build capitalism when as it turns out they are
Communists themselves," Mr. Walesa, an electrician by trade, said in an
interview published Friday in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. He added,
"Piotr probably won't have the chance to say this, so he should at least
publicize Poland well in Paris."
The ad campaign blends humor with a more serious message. At a moment when
France is suffering from an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, and
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is waging what he calls a 100-day
battle to combat it, it is an effort to assure the French that Polish
workers have no intention of stealing their jobs.
Even if they wanted to, they could not. Under the treaty that allowed
Poland and nine other countries to join the European Union last year,
older members of the union can restrict access to their labor markets for
up to seven years. Only Britain, Ireland and Sweden have allowed in
workers from the new members.
But labor has always been one of Poland's most important exports. In a
sense, the "Polish plumber" is much more than that, because in most cases
he is also an electrician and sometimes even a mason, carpenter, painter
and roofer as well.
"It's ridiculous, truly bizarre to say Polish plumbers are dangerous for
France," said Wieslaw Zieba, 55, who has worked in France as a plumber and
electrician for 25 years. "Some of the things that have been said by
political figures border on the xenophobic. This is a country that
desperately needs more plumbers. But it's not a noble profession that
everyone wants to follow. You have to clean up after flooding and unblock
toilets."
Indeed, according to the French plumbing union, there is a shortage of
6,000 plumbers, and there are only about 150 Polish plumbers in France.
When Mr. Zieba first came to Paris, he said, he had no friends, knew no
French and slept in the Metro. He now has dual Polish-French citizenship
and runs a thriving business that also does masonry, carpentry, plumbing
and electrical work.
But the fear of cheap imported labor in France is so profound that it has
dominated the discourse about the troubled French economy.
The term "Polish plumber" was coined in March by Philippe de Villiers, the
head of the right-wing Movement for France party, in response to a
European Union proposal known as the Bolkestein directive, which would
make it easier for workers to live in other member countries and receive
the same salaries and benefits as if they had never left home.
The thinking behind the directive was that if goods could move freely
across the borders of European Union countries, why not services?
The directive "will permit a Polish plumber to come to work in France with
a salary and social protection of his country of origin," Mr. de Villiers
said. He also expressed worries about the "Latvian mason" and the
"Estonian gardener."
At a news conference in April, Frits Bolkestein, a former Dutch member of
the European Commission, used the term himself, saying he was looking
forward to the arrival of "Polish plumbers to do work, because it is
difficult to find an electrician or a plumber where I live in the north of
France." He said he hoped that "Czech nannies" and "Slovenian accountants"
would find work in France as well.
The next week, a band of rogue electricians from the state-owned utility
EDF cut off the power supply to his country home in the village of
Ramousies (population 248).
Opponents of the European Union constitution, meanwhile, urged voters to
reject the document, arguing falsely that it would facilitate the invasion
of the Polish plumber.
The issue became so serious that Poland's president, Aleksander
Kwasniewski, brought it up during an official visit to France just days
before the referendum. "I know that the argument about the Polish plumber
is very often used, or exploited, in France, but I must tell you that this
is really exaggerated," he said. "It's not true that low-wage workers from
the new members of the European Union have flooded the other countries."
Meanwhile, Mr. Adamski, the model, is getting used to his newfound fame,
boasting that he spent several days installing the hot and cold water
faucets in his Warsaw apartment. "I'm very pleased to be the postcard for
my country," he said in a telephone interview from Warsaw.
But for a real-life Polish plumber like Mr. Zieba, who is 5 feet 4, wears
old jeans and hides his belly under a multipocketed work vest, plumbers
just do not look like that. Mr. Zieba noted that in the ad, Mr. Adamski is
carrying the wrong cutter for the plastic and metal pipes he is holding.
"He's too lacquered, too handsome and too clean to be on a work site," Mr.
Zieba said of Mr. Adamski. "He looks like something out of an X-rated
fantasy film about women who are waiting for the plumber to come."
But then, he added, "I wasn't so bad when I was his age."
Hélène Fouquet contributed reporting for this article.
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