Dutch waste collectors on strike

It has been a mess for over a whole week in the streets of Amsterdam and Utrecht. The waste collectors and street sweepers decided to go on a strike for better wages. The start of the strike was well chosen as it was the first of May directly after the national holiday Queensday, which both in Amsterdam and Utrecht are days in which everybody is on the street to celebrate Queensday.

On the first day the waste was already piled up high, mainly remnants of the party. In some cases the pubs took over the cleaning of their street as they wanted to stay open.

The municipality asked the people to keep their waste inside as much as they could, but some streets had bin bags piled up high.

The 17th of May the strike in Utrecht was over and the street sweepers and rubbish collectos went back to work, cleaning the city.