From next Monday, garbage collectors in Amsterdam will go on strike for a week. This is not the first time: in 2010 mountains of waste on the street already caused a lot of smell and rats. The municipality of Amsterdam informs NU.nl that it is not preparing for a possible recurrence.
However, Amsterdammers are being asked to keep their garbage – if possible – in their homes for longer and not to put it on the street.
“As long as the waste is simply put in containers, we do not expect this to cause a lot of inconvenience,” says a spokesperson for the municipality. “But a strike is a strike: so even if it turns out that the waste causes a nuisance, it will not be collected.”
The garbage collectors are stopping work to enforce a better collective labor agreement. Trade union FNV wants a wage increase of 10 to 12 percent. Garbage collectors in other cities, such as Utrecht and Rotterdam, have previously gone on strike. There was no great nuisance of odors and vermin.
The Amsterdam strike in 2010 lasted more than two weeks. Garbage was piled up all over the city, meters high in some places. As a result, many residents suffered from rats, which gathered around the heaps of rubbish.
In many places in the center of the capital there are no underground containers for household waste. The waste must be put out on the street there on fixed days. In 2010 and during a shorter strike in 2014, the containers that were there quickly filled up, because residents drove to other neighborhoods to throw away their household waste.
