Udon’t eat on the terrace to take advantage of the mild weather… in front of a row of garbage cans placed on the sidewalk. In Paris, the volume of uncollected waste continues to rise, like the tone between the government and the town hall, on the eighth day of the garbage collectors’ strike against the pension reform. A week after the start of the renewable strike launched on March 7, rue Montorgueil is not “at a standstill”, far from it: at lunchtime, this pedestrian and very commercial artery in the heart of Paris teeming with residents and tourists alike.
But here and there, heaps of garbage cans and uncollected boxes come to remind passers-by of the social movement in progress. “It’s horrible,” fumes a bakery saleswoman who does not want to say her name. “Do you realize, if pests enter a pastry, what will it do? adds the employee.
Disrupted collection at three incineration plants
On Monday, 5,600 tons of waste remained uncollected, according to the town hall, a volume which increases every day. And “the conflict hardens” with the blocking of the depot of Pizzorno, a private operator, warns the assistant (PS) for cleanliness Colombe Brossel. The situation varies according to the sectors, the most affected being the ten districts whose collection is ensured by the agents of the town hall. But even in those managed by private service providers, collection is disrupted since the three incineration plants of Ivry-sur-Seine, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Saint-Ouen, in the hands of Syctom, the agency metropolitan household waste, are blocked.
READ ALSOPension reform: an arm of honor that hides others
In Issy, from 6 a.m., in the drizzle and in the smell of waste, a hundred demonstrators planted their FO and CGT flags in front of the site, which normally burns 1,600 tonnes of waste per day. As a result, the waste collected is redirected to around fifteen external sites, indicates Syctom.
“I will live poor”
The strikers remain determined to continue their action at least until Wednesday, day of examination of the text in joint committee. “We are outside every day, we work whether it rains, snows or sells,” describes Nabil Latreche, a 44-year-old garbage collector. “When we are behind the dumpster, we breathe volatile things, we have a lot of occupational diseases, cancers. The work is painful. »
READ ALSOMichel Richard – Pensions: and in the end, who wins?
Murielle Gaeremynck, a slender 56-year-old woman, 20 of whom as a garbage collector, lists the falls from the walk of the truck, the repeated tendinitis of the sweepers or, like her, of the drivers of small machines “with rotten suspensions”. In retirement, “I know that I will live poor”, with a pension of 1,200 euros at the most, she laments.
The CGT recalls that garbage collectors and drivers can currently claim retirement at 57 without bonus, an age pushed back to 59 if the reform is adopted. It is also for an index revaluation that the garbage collectors are mobilized, explain the strikers on the spot. Their career development is negotiated directly with the town hall. “They found the money to send us to the front line during the Covid, that they don’t tell us today at Hidalgo that they have no money”, comments Nabil Latreche.
Agents requisitioned?
The PS mayor of Paris finds herself in an uncomfortable situation, she who decreed the town hall “solidarity with the social movement”. “It is not a totally surprising situation since the mayor of Paris had encouraged the agents to strike”, tackled on France Inter the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal, citing the requisitions of agents among the possible measures to be taken. take.
READ ALSOCalculation of pensions: welcome to bureaucratic hell
Opponent LR Rachida Dati calls for “the establishment of a minimum service for garbage collection” and, in the immediate future, “to call on integration companies”. Minimum service or benefits, “it is legally prohibited”, replied the first deputy (PS) Emmanuel Grégoire for whom the requisitions are “an initiative and legal competence which fall under the State”.
To the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune who slays “yet another example of inaction and contempt for Parisians”, Emmanuel Grégoire accuses the government of “very crude instrumentalization”. “It is a national situation that other cities are facing”, underlines the right arm of Anne Hidalgo, citing Nantes, Antibes, Saint-Brieuc or… Le Havre, city of Édouard Philippe, the former Prime Minister by Emmanuel Macron.