Garbage collectors' strike: the prefect of police announces requisitions despite Hidalgo's refusal

Europe 1 with AFP 09:58, March 16, 2023

The government decided Wednesday to force through the showdown with the mayor of Paris on the 10th day of strike of Parisian garbage collectors against the pension reform, ordering requisitions to empty the bins that pile up in the capital. Unsurprisingly, the prefect of police of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, on the orders of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, informed Anne Hidalgo in the evening of his decision to requisition garbage collectors, which she had refused to do beforehand.

>>READ ALSO – And if the strike of garbage collectors in Paris allowed to put to zero waste?

On Tuesday evening, Gérald Darmanin had warned that if the PS mayor of Paris refused to proceed with the requisitions herself, the State would do so for reasons of public health. On Wednesday afternoon, before the Senate, the Minister of the Interior said it again. While the pension reform project has passed the crucial stage of the joint committee (CMP), 7,600 tons of waste cluttered Wednesday morning the sidewalks of the capital, according to the town hall.

The conflict of the garbage collectors gave a bad image of Paris, especially abroad, which the government and the town hall quickly used on the political field. Through the voice of its spokesman Olivier Véran, the executive accused Anne Hidalgo of "imposing" Parisians "the consequences" of her support for the strike movement against pensions. From the beginning of the examination of the reform at the end of January, the former presidential candidate of 2022 had chosen to display the City Hall as a "solidarity town hall" of the social movement.

Paradox

The replica of the Town Hall was immediate. "It is paradoxical that the state asks local authorities to solve a problem that it has created itself when the requisition is, by right, a competence of the state," Anne Hidalgo replied to Laurent Nuñez. In a letter on Tuesday, the police prefecture had stressed, based - like Mrs. Dati - on the General Code of Territorial Collectivities, that "the town hall holds the health police on the public road".

It is therefore "its competence to request a private company or requisition agents", had added the prefecture, estimating that it could "in a second time" put the City on notice to do so. If this procedure "remains unsuccessful, the prefect of police can replace" the town hall, "in case of emergency when the observed or foreseeable attack on good order, health, public safety requires it," according to the prefecture.

'Absolute emergencies'

Wednesday on BFMTV, the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger challenged Gérald Darmanin: "How do you requisition people? Are you going to get them one by one? It takes 3,000 to collect waste in Paris." In fact, it will be complicated for the prefect to proceed with these requisitions on Thursday, when the Senate and then the National Assembly must decide on the adoption of the pension reform project, with or without recourse to article 49-3 which allows adoption without a vote.

For Anne Hidalgo, "the demand of the garbage collectors of the City of Paris, who legitimately wish not to work two more years (...) is just" and "the only response likely to calm the current climate is to engage in social dialogue rather than engage in a showdown by making requisitions". As for the employment of private agents to act "on absolute emergencies", which the town hall recognized Tuesday, it does not constitute "at all substitute work", assured his first deputy (PS) Emmanuel Grégoire.

"Anne Hidalgo and the elected representatives of this majority would never commit to breaking a strike movement," he said. The town hall also stressed that the outcome of the crisis was played out above all at the door of the three incinerators in the suburbs blocked for ten days, and which do not depend on it but on the metropolitan union, Syctom.