Published: October 28, 2010
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Numbers Diminish at Protests in France (October 29, 2010)
MARSEILLE — The strikes and protests against a seemingly inevitable pension change may be waning here, as elsewhere in France, but much of the port remains blocked, nearly 11,000 tons of uncollected trash remain piled in the streets, and residents remain embarrassed and exasperated, if somewhat unsurprised.
Dockers and other port workers have been blocking two major oil depots here for the past month, and have signaled no intent to stop. And thousands of city trash collectors spent two weeks on strike this month, seeing expansive piles of refuse occupy the streets and sidewalks. Though they returned to work on Tuesday, the clean-up is expected to last at least several more days and cost the city almost $700,000, officials said.
The strikes are widely viewed as having had a greater impact on day-to-day life here than anywhere else in France. They have once again shown the sunny port city to be something of a paradox: a heavily immigrant coastal refuge, seen as largely untouched by the racial and cultural tensions so tangible elsewhere in the country, but also a hotbed of social conflict and union strong-arming.
Perhaps tellingly, in an uncharacteristic show of bipartisanship, local leaders from Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling U.M.P. party were joined in recent days by opposition Socialists in calling for an end to the strikes.
“It’s deplorable to give an image of such strong fanaticism,” said Jean-Claude Gaudin, the mayor of Marseille and a U.M.P. member, speaking Wednesday on France-Info radio. “The unions completely blocked the city.”
Union-led protests here on Thursday saw 12,000 marchers in the streets, the police estimated, while union leaders put the number at 150,000; the vast disparity between those estimations might itself be considered testament to the longstanding tensions here between the unions and government. Marseille commonly has the widest spread between police and organizer estimates in France.
“I was born in Marseille, and it’s always been this way,” said Antoinette Gomis, 47, a waitress at Le Bellagio, a cafe and bakery on the city’s central drag, the Canebière. She noted that this was far from the first time the city’s trash-collectors had gone on strike, despite a host of special, union-won rights.
“It’s always the ones who work the least who protest the most,” she said. She added that she typically works far more than the standard 35-hour French workweek, though business has slowed lately as a result of the strikes and the trash.
Since the end of the Second World War, the city’s port workers and trash collectors have protested and struck with great regularity, and gained a great deal of local influence. The trash collectors alone have gone on strike about 20 times in the past three decades.
The contentious attitude of many of Marseille’s unions, according to Domenichino, a historian who has studied them, is in part the result of a “strong corporatism.”
“To become a trash-collector in Marseille, this is not something open to everyone,” said Mr. Domenichino.
Like the city’s dock and port workers, he said, the trash collectors “recruit within their own network,” and generally strike for reasons specific to themselves, with little concern for what the public might think of them.
“You can’t be mixed up about the role of the unions,” said Patrick Rué, the genial deputy secretary general of a local union of city employees, including the trash collectors. “We’re the representatives of the employees we represent.”
He added: “If you tell me local business people aren’t happy, honestly, it’s not my problem.”
In the narrow Rue du Tapis-Vert, near the stock exchange, local business people were not happy. Mounds of bulging bags of putrid trash bags, old sofa cushions, cardboard boxes and bottles of all sizes and varieties were still waist high on the street on Thursday.
“You never get used to this system, it’s completely illogical,” said Laura Atlan, 22, marking packages inside Basic & Cie, a women’s clothing wholesaler. The store has been offering protective masks to clients to block the smell. “It’s had an enormous impact on our revenues,” she said, of the trash-collectors’ strike.
The trash pile in front of the store was also recently set aflame; the fire charred part of the storefront and destroyed the sign above the entrance.
“It’s a pure and simple catastrophe,” offered the owner, Monique Amsellem, 46, Ms. Atlan’s mother. “In particular, they shouldn’t count on end-of-year tips this year!” she said, referring to the trash-collectors.
Instead, she said, she might offer them an envelope stuffed with trash.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 29, 2010
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the mayor of Marseille. He is Jean-Claude Gaudin.
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