Nearly 10, tons of rubbish has piled up in the streets of Marseilles as French strikes and blockades continued. During the disruption French President Nicolas Sarkozy's opinion poll ratings have collapsed and he is now the least popular leader in the history of the Fifth Republic. Rubbish: Piles of garbage have appeared on the streets in Marseilles, southern France, as industrial action continues.
Around 70 ships including oil tankers are currently waiting at anchor off the coast of Marseille because militants will not let them dock and unload.
Up to a quarter of 12, fuel stations have run dry, with rationing introduced in area which are particularly popular with visitors from the UK, including Brittany and Normandy. Nearly 10, tons of rubbish has piled up in Marseille and its suburbs, and an incinerator outside Paris was shut by strikers. Nicolas Sarkozy scored a victory on Friday by getting his bill to make people work two more years for their pensions through the Senate, but striking refinery workers are putting a strain on businesses and daily life and show no sign of backing down.
Sarkozy sent in police last week to break up blockades at fuel depots and the government battled to get diesel and petrol out to motorway service stations before a flood of families hit the road this weekend. Two-thirds of French people oppose the pension law and have put up some of the fiercest resistance in Europe to austerity measures aimed at reining in huge deficits.
Strikers unblocked the town's fuel depot Monday after negotiations with regional officials. Workers at a large Paris waste incineration plant, in their fifth day of a strike, were catching up with colleagues who have let trash pile up in Marseille, the nation's second-largest city. An Ifop opinion poll published in the weekly Journal du Dimanche on Sunday showed Sarkozy's popularity slid three points from last month to 29 percent.
