More than 3,000 tons of waste are already accumulating in the streets of Marseille. And every day, 1,000 tons are added to it. Despite a decision by the administrative court of Marseille, Saturday, January 29, which ordered the lifting of the pickets, the garbage collectors’ conflict is still bogged down in Marseille, arousing the ire of the people of Marseille and the mayor.
The metropolis on Friday summoned the FO union, the majority in the city and the metropolis, to request the lifting of the blockages of transfer centers and garages where dump trucks are stored, which prevent non-strikers from working. freely.
The administrative court ordered “release without delay” these strategic sites, under penalty of a fine of 250 euros per day of delay and per person blocking these sites, according to a judgment that Agence France-Presse was able to consult.
Third in four months
“It’s a non-event, we judge something that no longer exists”, reacted Patrick Rué, the boss of FO in Marseille, estimating that the strikers, who are now forty on average per day, no longer block the sites.
The Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, which manages waste collection, believes on the contrary that these blockages remain intermittently. Be that as it may, the strike continues, insisted Patrick Rué, who believes that “the solution is not to be found in the courts but in social dialogue”.
This new strike, which has lasted for ten days, is the third in four months in Marseille. FO believes that certain provisions of a previous agreement concluded at the end of December with all the trade unions around the application of thirty-five hours, in particular on Sunday bonuses, are not respected.
On Saturday, the mayor, Benoît Payan, banged his fist on the table: ” That’s enough (…), I wish, I want and I demand that the city be clean”, he got annoyed in the daily Provence. And he accuses the metropolis of ” to bury one’s head in the sand “ : “People are going to have to talk to each other, willingly or by force. »
The Marseillais also express their fed up, in the streets, where they have to step over the heaps of overflowing garbage cans, or on social networks. Some even came to deposit their waste in front of the FO headquarters. In addition, the metropolis faces the absence of more than two hundred agents for illness.
The announced arrival of the mistral from Sunday on Marseille should not help, while everyone keeps in mind the images of the beaches covered with waste after torrential rains in October, during the first strike of this new cycle of protests around garbage collection.