A large majority of garbage collectors are currently on strike in Paris, which is causing a difficult health situation in the streets of the capital, where tons of waste are accumulating. While their number is now approaching 5,000 tonnes, the Town Hall is considering new perspectives to relaunch the collection of garbage cans. Why did the garbage collectors go on strike? Do they have significant benefits at the end of their professional activity and, if so, which ones?

While the garbage collectors’ strike poses a real health problem in the streets of the capital, the movement continues, under the impetus of the CGT. The status obtained by garbage collectors is however very different from that of private sector employees since they depend on the active categories of the public service. Thus, like firefighters or nurses, garbage collectors can claim, because of their working conditions, early retirement. Today, the legal age of garbage collectors is set at 57, but the reform has planned to push this threshold to 59, i.e. the two additional years required by the text.

With this two-year decline, the duration of contributions in order to obtain a full pension will, in turn, reach 43 annuities, as for private sector employees. As a result, many garbage collectors will soon pass the legal retirement age. However, the reform does not modify the calculation of the pension over the last six months of career, nor the possibility of retiring at full rate, from the age of 62. In this context, the secretary general of the CGT-Public Services, François Livartowski, wished to point the finger at an unfair reform. He thus confided to Europe 1 that “very few garbage collectors [arriving] in good health at retirement” and that a large majority “dies earlier than the average”. Enough to rekindle the anger of agents placed on the front line during the Covid crisis.