Metropolitics

Who Cleans Paris? Garbage Collectors in Their Own Words

Coline Ferrant & Marie Mourad & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-06-21T05:00:00Z

Who are Paris's garbage collectors? Coline Ferrant and Marie Mourad highlight the diverse working conditions covered by this job title, which includes both municipal and private-sector employees.
“Paris City Hall has an image to convey on a global level. France too, of course, but on a global level,” says Ahmed, a garbage collector employed by a private contractor that provides waste-management services to the city of Paris (hereafter “the city”). From “zero-waste” objectives to its “Paris du

- From the Field / waste, waste management, urban public service, garbage collectors, Paris, civil service, public services

Swept Away: Public Work and the Politics of Employment in New York City's Parks

John Krinsky & Maud Simonet — 2017-09-06T04:36:46Z

Upwards of 4,000 unionized civil-service workers once cleaned and maintained New York City's parks. Today about 1,800 such workers share this task with volunteers, employees of nonprofit organizations on contract with the city, community-service sentencees, and former welfare recipients doing temporary parks work in hopes of obtaining permanent positions. John Krinsky and Maud Simonet trace the evolving political economy of parks work in New York, demonstrating its impact on workers. They also

- From the Field / parks, civil service, green spaces, employment, work, New York, sexual harassment, trade unions, community service, volunteers, workfare

Building cities without young urban planners?

Jean-Philippe Gallardo & translated by Claudio Cambon — 2011-02-02T08:12:46Z

The National Collective of Young Urban Planners (CNJU) is sounding the alarm bell about the discrimination that university degree-holding urban planners have faced in accessing the competitive examination for local-level civil service engineers since 2009.
The regulations for local-level civil service urban planners were never clearly defined after decentralization. Announced preliminarily in 1984, their category was combined with the one for local-level civil service engineers in 1990

- Debates / urban planning, civil service