The smell of spring is in the air in Paris. It makes a change from the stench of overflowing bins that had hung over the French capital for the last three weeks after refuse collectors went on strike and up to 10,000 metric tonnes of festering rubbish piled up on the streets.
Hours after the CGT trade union announced it was suspending the industrial action and lifting a blockade of incinerators serving the city, much of the rubbish had gone.
With the sun out and an unexpectedly warm day, it was just as well.
One resident of the central 5th arrondissement on Paris’s Left Bank posted a picture of a huge pile of rubbish bags and household detritus outside their front door in the process of being cleared by refuse collectors. “Hallelujah! First trash collection since March 6,” they wrote.
In the same arrondissement, desperate restaurant owners had taken to covering the piles of rubbish with tarpaulins so diners could still enjoy a drink or eat on terraces.
The strike, part of a wave of protests and industrial action against Emmanuel Macron’s pension law, was reportedly called off after the number of refuse collectors taking part dwindled. Strikers in France lose their wages when they stop work, and strike funds, mostly financed by donations, are insufficient to compensate for lost pay.
At the time of the strike suspension on Tuesday afternoon, City Hall said an estimated 7,000 tonnes of rubbish remained uncollected, despite officials’ attempts to engage private refuse companies.
Union leaders said they would discuss resuming more powerful industrial action in the future if the government does not revoke a new law raising the official retirement age to 64 and requiring workers to have contributed to the system for longer to be eligible for a full pension.
“We need to discuss again with City Hall’s refuse collectors and cleaning workers to start again with a stronger strike … because we have almost no strikers left,” the CGT said.
It said it was suspending the strike out of a sense of “responsibility”, and said the industrial action against Macron and Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister in his centrist government, was widely supported by the public.
“The fight is not finished. Macron and Borne must withdraw this reform and get around the table to negotiate retirement at 60 for all and with 35 [years] of contributions for a full pension, retirement at 55 for the most arduous jobs and 50 years for those in dirty jobs and for a minimum €2,000 [a month] pension.”
Jérôme Gaschard, a refuse collector, told BFM TV: “We’ve lost the battle but not yet the war. I think that there are no more strikers simply because, financially speaking, a strike is very, very expensive. Purchasing power is in freefall. Now we’re going to lift it so that people go back to work and recover financially.”
The CGT has called on all members to take part in another day of national action next Thursday, 6 April.
Paris is cleaner but not yet entirely clean. Outside a hospital in an eastern district, refuse collectors threw black big bags and the contents of wheelie bins into their vehicle, leaving a trail of rubbish in their wake.
“They do seem to have left rather a lot of it on the street, but thankfully the worst has gone,” said a passerby. “The rats have been having a party here.”
The government has said it will not suspend or delay the new law, which is currently being considered by the constitutional court, and will talk about other measures to improve workers’ conditions but not the pension changes.
On Wednesday, Laurent Berger, the secretary general of France’s largest union, the CFDT, said he would accept an invitation from the PM to talks next week, but insisted he would be there to speak about the pension law.
