Garbage collectors' strike, act 7. The protest movement started a week earlier can hardly go unnoticed for those who cross the capital this Sunday, March 12. Mounds of garbage have formed in Paris where 5,400 tons of waste remain uncollected Sunday, according to the town hall.

Three incineration plants at the gates of the capital, those of Ivry-sur-Seine, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Saint-Ouen, are also at a standstill, explaining these overflowing bins in some neighborhoods, sometimes aligned with the entire width of the sidewalks.

No unblocking of factories

The metropolitan agency of household waste Syctom said to divert the skips to fifteen other treatment or storage sites and not to have required, at this stage, the intervention of the police to end the blockade of its centers.

City hall officials collect waste in half of the Parisian arrondissements (2nd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 20th), while the other half is managed by private service providers.

In its renewable strike notice, the CGT recalls that garbage collectors and drivers can for the moment claim retirement at 57 years without bonus, an age postponed to 59 years in case of adoption of the pension reform.



One meter high

"The vast majority of staff in the management of cleaning and water have a life expectancy of 12 to 17 years less than all employees," says the union, also in full negotiation on the index reclassification and career development of garbage collectors.

Asked by AFP, the CGT FTDNEEA (waste treatment, cleaning, water, sewerage, sanitation) was not immediately reachable. In the streets, passers-by interviewed by AFP on Sunday often say they "understand the movement".

Garbage collectors "are the first victims of this reform" because "often they started working young" and "do a more difficult job than other people who are in the office," said Christophe Mouterde, an 18-year-old student.

"It's terrible, there are rats and mice," says Romain Gaia, a 36-year-old pastry chef who, like other traders in the 2nd arrondissement, has stored near a square the bins that accumulate over a meter high.

But working longer for garbage collectors, "it's delusional, they are quite right to make a social movement" and "should make it last maybe even longer," says the pastry chef. These are "people who usually don't have power, but if they stop working, they have a real one," he said.

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