Marseille hires private garbage collectors as trash piles up

MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - Marseille has hired private companies to pick up trash two weeks into a strike by garbage collectors that has left the city with overflowing bins, rats running through piles of waste and rubbish being blown into the sea.

A third strike in four months by the garbage workers means Marseille faces a repeat of an environmental disaster during a strike in October, when torrential rains washed tonnes of uncollected garbage on to the beaches and into the Mediterranean.