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Garbage collectors in Paris and other cities in the country are one of the groups that have been on strike for several days against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform. In the French capital there are already thousands of tons of waste that accumulates in the streets and that have confronted the city’s mayor’s office and a government that does not back down with the law. Strikes also continue at the refineries.
Along with the image of the iconic Eiffel Tower, in Paris these days you can also see towers of garbage on the streets, which already add up to more than 5,000 tons due to the strike that waste collectors have been carrying out for eight days. They do so within the framework of protests and days of general strikes against the government’s pension reform, which seeks to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
In the French capital, half of the 20 neighborhoods have been affected by this strike which, for the moment, does not affect the 10 that have the privatized service. On the streets, public opinion is divided between those who understand the garbage collectors’ reasons for going on strike and those who are beginning to see the situation as unacceptable.
Garbage incineration plants are also unemployed and the situation is repeated in other large cities in the country. The situation has ignited the discussion between the local Executive, led by the social democrat Anne Hidalgo, and the Macron government.
Several ministers have accused Hidalgo of promoting the strike to harm the Executive and not address what they judge as “a health and public safety problem.” In an interview with France Inter radio, Finance Minister Gabriel Attal opened the door for employees to be forced by decree to work, as happened last year in a similar strike in Marseille.
The capital’s Councilor for Cleaning, Colombe Brossel, responded that “if the government pension reform that raises the minimum retirement age to 64 is immediately withdrawn, incinerators and garages will be unblocked immediately.”
New round of protests
The unions of the country promise a new day of mobilizations throughout the country for this Wednesday. It will be the eighth day of this type and will coincide with the day that the pension bill is addressed to a committee of seven senators and seven lower house legislators who will seek an agreement between the versions issued by the Senate and the National Assembly. The final vote is expected on Thursday.
This Monday, the leaders of the CGT union, the largest in France, met in Paris. “This week we are going to take even more energetic measures than in previous days, whether in gas or electricity (…) the hardening of the movement’s actions means selective cuts, even more than last week,” said Sebastien Menesplier, Secretary General of CGT in the mining and energy sector.
It is precisely in this sector where some of the most effective and continuous actions are being carried out over time by the trade union movement.
Six days with blockades in the refineries
“Today in France the electricity and gas networks are in the hands of the strikers. So it is the general assemblies that are going to decide what they are going to do with this seizure of the work tool. But effectively the objective is to harden the movement in relation to a government that hardens its position, and that has decided to step on national representation and democracy.
While Cedric Liechti, general secretary of CGT Energy Paris, spoke like this on Monday in the French capital, in the city of Haulchin, in the north of the country, the same union decided to block the entrances and exits of the fuel depot of the TotalEnergies company. It’s been six days with blockades and protests similar to this throughout the country.
Finally it had to be the police who unlocked the barricades formed with burning tires. According to a spokesperson for the company itself, various warehouses were blocked across the country with 41% of morning shift workers joining the strike.
With Reuters, EFE and AP.
