Mounds of rubbish formed in Paris, where 5,400 tonnes of waste remained uncollected, Sunday March 12, according to the town hall, on the seventh day of the garbage collectors’ strike against the pension reform.
Three incineration plants at the gates of the capital, those of Ivry-sur-Seine, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Saint-Ouen, are also shut down, explaining these overflowing trash cans in certain neighborhoods, sometimes aligned along the entire width of the sidewalks.
The metropolitan household waste agency, Syctom, declared diverting the dumpsters to about fifteen other treatment or storage sites and not having required, at this stage, the intervention of the police to put an end to the blocking of its centers. City hall officials collect waste in half of the Parisian arrondissements (2e5e6e7e9e12e14e16e17e et 20e), while the other half is managed by private providers.
Retirement postponed from 57 to 59
In its renewable strike notice, the CGT recalls that garbage collectors and drivers can currently claim retirement at 57 without bonus, an age pushed back to 59 in the event of the adoption of the pension reform.
“The vast majority of waste and water management personnel have a life expectancy of twelve to seventeen years less than all employees”, assures the union, also in the midst of negotiations on the index reclassification and career development of garbage collectors. Requested by Agence France-Presse, the CGT FTDNEEA (waste treatment, cleaning, water, sewer, sanitation sector) could not be reached immediately
In the streets, passers-by questioned on Sunday often say “understanding movement”. Garbage collectors “are the first victims of this reform” car “often they started working young” et “do a more difficult job than other people who are in offices”comments Christophe Mouterde, an 18-year-old student.
“It’s terrible, there are rats and mice”notes Romain Gaia, a 36-year-old pastry chef, who, like other shopkeepers from 2e arrondissement, has stored garbage cans that accumulate more than a meter high near a square. But working longer for the garbage collectors, “It’s delusional, they are absolutely right to make a social movement” et “should make it last perhaps even longer”, says the pastry chef. Those are “people who usually don’t have power, but if they stop working, they have real power”he notes.