Five days after the lifting of the strike movement of garbage collectors against the pension reform, waste collection in Paris is beginning to return to its usual functioning. On Monday, the pile of garbage in the streets was almost absorbed. "Activity is gradually returning to normal. Selective collection (yellow bins) also resumes today (Monday)," says the Town Hall on Twitter.

On Sunday, still according to the City Hall, there were only 650 tons of bins not collected on the sidewalks of the capital, against 3,200 Friday and a record of 10,500 on March 24.

A strike movement supported by the mayor of Paris

Symbolized by this bar crossed twice, the second despite the requisitions of personnel ordered by the prefecture of police, as well as by spectacular images of piles of garbage cans reaching several meters in height, this crisis of Parisian waste has earned the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo accusations of inaction, because the elected socialist has officially supported the social movement.

But the Parisian executive, which was reluctant to communicate the rate of strikers among its agents, had stressed that the accumulation of waste was above all related to the blocking of the three incineration sites in the suburbs, under the responsibility of a metropolitan union, Syctom.

Blockages at factory gates

The CGT, the majority union in the sector in Paris, decided to lift the strike movement on Wednesday, for lack of a sufficient number of strikers after three weeks of movement. If this decision, associated with a reinforcement of dumpsters in circulation compared to normal activity, has therefore allowed the streets of Paris to regain in a few days an almost normal appearance, sporadic blockages of factories located at the gates of the capital are noted.

In Ivry-sur-Seine and Issy-les-Moulineaux, people from outside the sector come regularly. Monday morning, the entrance to the Issy plant was again the subject of a blockade, noted an AFP journalist.


If the pension reform is implemented, incinerator workers with seventeen years of active service (in the field, in 3/8) will be able to retire at 59, compared to 57 today.

  • Ile
  • Paris
  • Rubbish
  • Strike
  • Pension reform 2023
  • Anne Hidalgo