After the refusal of the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo, support of the social movement, to request the requisition of dump trucks while the garbage collectors have been on strike for thirteen days, the prefect of police had himself signed the order on Thursday. The effect of this requisition remains limited: on Friday the town hall had estimated that 10,000 tonnes of waste were awaiting collection on the Parisian sidewalks, a volume in “stabilization” this Saturday.
The capital has a special collection system: city hall officials collect waste in half of the arrondissements, while the other half is served by private service providers. Late in the evening on Friday, the Derichebourg company announced in a press release “to have been requisitioned” by the police headquarters “in order to contribute to a minimum garbage collection service”.
Action extended until Tuesday
The prefecture confirmed this information on Saturday morning, stating that “five dump truck garages had resumed activity” and that “two treatment concession companies as well as several agents (had) been required since” Friday. “Dumpsters have come out of all the garages,” it was said at the town hall. For their part, the strikers of the three waste incineration sites produced by Paris have set up “filtering dams” to let garbage collection trucks pass, said a union delegate, confirming information from Liberation.
At a general meeting on Friday, the strikers “continued the action until Tuesday inclusive, with filtering of trucks” in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine) on Saturday and Sunday, then in Saint-Ouen (Seine- Saint-Denis) Monday and Tuesday, said Fatiha Lahrech, CGT union representative at the Issy-les-Moulineaux site. Letting trucks pass is a “security decision to limit the risk of an epidemic”, she explained. By mid-morning Saturday, only three passed.
Mobilized, the garbage collectors of the town hall refuse with this reform the postponement of their retirement from 57 to 59 years. “We have twelve years less life expectancy for garbage collectors and seven years less for sewer workers,” said Fréderic Aubisse, 54-year-old sewer worker, on Friday.