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On Friday, March 17, 2023, the French authorities announced that the amount of waste on the streets of Paris had reached 10,000 tons due to a strike by garbage collection workers, despite efforts to force them back to work.
The amount of rubbish on the streets rose from a record 7,600 tonnes earlier in the week, despite Home Secretary Gerald Darmanin announcing that the strikers had been forced to return to work under emergency powers designed to protect essential services.
“From today, from this morning, the containers are unloaded,” he told RTL radio.
An aide to the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who opposes Darmanin and French President Emmanuel Macron, denied any change, saying, “There were no trucks in public places.”
Garbage workers have been on strike in Paris for 12 days, as incinerators closed, to protest a pension reform that raises the legal retirement age in the sector from 57 to 59.
These workers handle garbage collection operations in about half of the capital’s 20 districts, while private companies handle other areas.
Private companies are still operating, and some have signed contracts to clean the crowded streets in the hardest-hit areas, where an increasingly foul odor emanates.
Delphine Burkley, mayor of the hard-hit Ninth District, proposed Friday to “call in the military to clean up the streets.”
