For the third time since January, cleaners at Saint-Charles station in Marseille, one of the largest in France, went on strike a week ago, joined Monday by their metro colleagues, to demand the payment of their wages. Cans, food packaging and various rubbish, scattered by the wind which has blown over the second city of France in recent days, littered the floor of the station until Sunday, before being grouped around the garbage cans now overflowing with piles of waste.
“It’s not a pleasure to see the station in this state” because “all that, we will pick it up” in the end, comments Houria Tahri, employee of the private company Laser Propreté and elected to the CSE of the Solidaires union. , in front of banners that read: “Cleaning on strike for non-payment of wages, pay us”. “Many of us have not received a salary”, or partially, for the month of July, she explains, adding that moreover, employees have not received their pay slips for several months.
According to Kamel Djeffel, national secretary of the CAT Cleaning union, it has been several months since the thirty or so Laser Propreté employees working at the Saint-Charles station and the approximately 80 others working in the Marseille metro have been receiving salaries reduced by certain bonuses or holidays. “This is not an ordinary conflict”, adds Kamel Djeffel, referring to previous union mobilizations against the company: “Today, it is a fight where we are asking for an honest boss, where one asks to be paid”.
“We question the practices of Laser Propreté, which we accuse of carrying out a disguised social and economic plan. In a few months, we approach the 40 people dismissed without real and serious cause”, he also denounced, referring to “practices from another time” of this company, also in charge of cleaning the tramway and in contract with the Grand maritime port of Marseille. Contacted by AFP, the management of Laser Cleanliness could not be reached immediately.
