“What is Anne Hidalgo doing?” The question is repeated, in a loop, by right-wing elected officials or members of the government on TV sets, in interviews, on social networks, while trash cans are piling up in the streets of the capital – as in other French cities – due to the garbage collectors’ strike against the pension reform. Calls for the requisitioning of strikers are repeated, even at the Ministry of the Interior: Gérald Darmanin instructed the Paris police chief to ask the town hall to “requisition” means for disposing of waste. But the town hall is not obliged to do so.
>> Garbage collectors’ strike: three questions about garbage collection in Paris
Olivia Grégoire accuses Anne Hidalgo
In this context, the Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises Olivia Grégoire affirms that the socialist mayor had requisitioned garbage collectors in 2016, when he went on strike against the El Khomri law, known as the “Work” law. “History is important, she says on RMC. It’s not that old in 2016, during the strike linked to the El Khomri law, Mrs. Hidalgo had found solutions. She had requisitioned incineration sites, she had requisitioned landfill sites, she had called in teams from the private sector to relieve a little of the unsanitary conditions and the heaping up of garbage cans.
Olivia Grégoire thus implies that Anne Hidalgo is doing a double standard, that she was more severe towards the strikers when the president was François Hollande and therefore a socialist. Olivia Grégoire accuses the mayor, opposed to the reform, of confusing her opinions with her responsibilities. Except that it is false, Anne Hidalgo had not requisitioned garbage collectors in 2016.
But Anne Hidalgo had not made a requisition in 2016
A requisition is a very legally regulated act. It is an order taken by the town hall or the prefecture, in the event of an emergency in this case for public health. But the town hall must first have tried all the other possible solutions, and they must all have failed, as the association SOS Maires explains. Otherwise, she can be accused of not respecting the right to strike and her order can be overturned by the courts.
In 2016, Anne Hidalgo had therefore not requisitioned anything, but she had done what the law asks of her in the first place: to try other solutions. It had involved the police to unblock 2 dump truck garages, reorganized the rounds of non-striking employees and asked private companies to pick up garbage also in the districts usually managed by the public authority.
The mayor had also spoken with the strikers and obtained resumption of work for a day or half a day, especially during the flooding of the Seine. Finally, in a few days, almost all the trash strewn on the sidewalks could be picked up. At the time, it was a lot for the mayor to clean up the capital before the start of Euro 2016 football, for questions of image and public health.
“Palliative solutions” for picking up garbage
On this Wednesday, March 15, 2023, the calls for requisition, mainly from the mayors of right-wing districts, including Rachida Dati and Florence Berthout, and members of the government, remain, for the moment, a dead letter. “If the state wants to requisition, that’s its problem”launched Emmanuel Grégoire, the first deputy mayor of Paris, the day before during a press conference, recalling in passing that the State and the prefecture can take requisitions themselves if they want to, without the town hall is involved.
As in 2016, the city of Paris has put in place what the first deputy calls “workarounds”. She changed the collection paths of non-striking garbage collectors from the public sector and asked garbage collectors from private companies to go all over the capital, even where they are not usually supposed to go. Between 50% and 60% of the waste thrown away each day is collected, according to the town hall. On the other hand, unlike 2016, the city has not yet had recourse to the police.
Finally, the biggest difference is perhaps in the firmness of the remarks made by the elected socialist not towards the strikers, but towards the government in place. In 2016, during an interview on RMC, she advocated dialogue, the rewriting of certain articles of the Labor law that she would not vote for if she were a deputy and felt that it was not her role to support the strikers. Seven years later, Anne Hidalgo assured them of her support and simply called on the government to withdraw its pension reform.