Waste collection gradually resumed on Friday evening in the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis. The streets where garbage is overflowing have started to be cleaned, after a week of strikes by garbage collectors around their working time. On the night of Thursday and Friday, the metropolis led by LR Martine Vassal and the majority union FO reached an agreement around the application of 35 hours for garbage collectors, with a 9.5% discount to take into account the hardship. FSU also signed this agreement, not the CGT.
“The watchword is a resumption of work tonight and all sectors should resume by Monday”, said Friday afternoon Patrice Ayache, deputy secretary general of FO, majority union in the territorial communities of Marseille and its metropolis. Depending on the community, a few days will be needed to remove the mountains of waste that pile up in the streets and trickle down the sidewalks and the pavement in many narrow streets of Marseille or Aix-en-Provence, arousing disgust and exasperation. . It should take about a week to get back to normal.
No loss of leave
The metropolis, resulting from the merger of six intercommunalities, wanted to harmonize the working time of all its agents and comply with the 2019 law on the transformation of the civil service, which imposes the application of the 35 hours on January 1, 2022 (i.e. 1,607 working hours per year), while opening up the possibility of negotiating arrangements to take into account the arduousness. Initially, it proposed a 5% reduction in working time, or 1,530 hours. Finally, a 9.5% reduction in working time (around 1,460 hours) was granted, with the opening of a time savings account, the setting up of training courses to avoid accidents and assistance with retraining, notably.
“It was not the question of the percentage reduction in working time that worried us, but the fact that agents should not lose days of leave or euros in salary. And not only do they not lose the 28 days that they risked losing, but they will have a salary valuation of 80 euros / month, ”said Patrice Ayache. But for the CGT, the agreement is unacceptable: “The Metropolis is playing rotting. The end of the conflict is far from being a certainty, ”said the minority union. According to him, the tours will not resume Friday evening in certain sectors such as Martigues, Istres or certain districts of Marseille.
A sea serpent
The working time of the garbage collectors is a real sea serpent in the second largest city in France, where the unofficial rule of “finished party” is the object of many fantasies. Roland Mouren, vice-president of the Metropolis in charge of cleanliness and waste, advanced this week to the press an average working time of three to three and a half hours per day over six days. He was referring to an opinion from the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur regional chamber of accounts dated 2017 which also indicated that the average service, including “journey, emptying, break and taking service”, reached five hours. half past six to six.
“There is no agent who works 3 hours 30”, assures FO. “We stigmatize the agents. We cannot compare their hourly amplitude to that of an agent in an office: the garbage collector, when he is on his dumpster, he performs intensive work, he is there and he does just that, he cannot stop », Comments Patrice Ayache.