The situation of waste collection in Paris is still confused on the thirteenth day of the garbage collectors’ strike against the pension reform, while the Minister of the Interior assured that the requisitions “worked”.
Ten thousand tons of trash are piling up in the streets of Paris but for the first time after thirteen days of garbage collectors’ strike against the pension reform, the town hall says it has seen a “stabilization” of the piles of waste. It must be said that the requisitions demanded by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and carried out by the police headquarters began Friday evening.
>> LIVE. Find here the latest information on the pension reform
However, of the 4,000 names of garbage collectors transmitted by the town hall of Paris to the prefecture of Paris, only fifty were requisitioned, according to the CGT. We are therefore far from the usual rates of garbage collection.
“We were broken off the strike!”
At the Ivry-sur-Seine waste treatment center, south of Paris, barely nine dump truck drivers were requisitioned on Saturday March 18. “It’s not funny, indicates this garbage collector. It doesn’t sound like much, but what do you want? We have been broken! This will not prevent us from going on strike again, on the contrary, it motivates us.” “There was a lot of garbage, he continues and at the end of two streets, we were stalled. So we couldn’t complete the collection.” A skip corresponds to two tonnes, out of the 10,000 to be collected in Paris. So it will take time. “It will take more than a week to put everything back in place”says the garbage collector.
The garbage collected still cannot be brought back to the three incinerators near Paris, still blocked by the strikers. Trucks have to go further to storage sites. They lose time and therefore collect less garbage: seventy tons on Saturday morning, in this garage. “The production of waste every day on average on May 14 is 90 tons, explains Régis Vieceli, the general secretary of the CGT waste sector. It will slow down the accumulation of waste in the streets, but I still remind you that we are not here to accumulate waste in the street: we are here to bring down the law on pensions!
“Our job is to make Paris clean. If Macron gives up, we’ll get back to work and it can be sorted out very quickly.”
Régis Vieceli (CGT)at franceinfo
But it’s not really for now: “The action of the workers in this country, and not just that of the garbage collectors and Parisian drivers, brought Macron to his knees, he continues. So us, it remotivated us, the 49.3. And we saw what happened at Concorde and in the provinces: there were big and beautiful demonstrations immediately afterwards, so…”
For the moment, the strike of the Parisian garbage collectors is renewable until Monday, day of the vote of the motions of censure in the National Assembly. The same evening, they will meet in general assembly to decide what to do next. With whatever happens, the new big day of protest on Thursday already in sight.
