Rio’s Carnival cleaners get police escort

RIO DE JANEIRO: Rio de Janeiro's cleaners got a police escort Thursday as they pursued their post-Carnival sweep up after some striking colleagues reportedly threatened them, in some cases with guns, authorities said.
Some 300 trash collection trucks had police protection overnight, Brazilian media quoted Mayor Eduardo Paes as saying.
Paes said the majority of the city's cleaners had shown up to work despite some walking off the job Saturday to protest conditions and pay, but had been "prevented from working," leaving the streets overflowing from five days of Carnival detritus.
Paes added that some buses carrying cleaners to the city's famed Sambodrome had been intercepted by men wielding pistols. Streets around the venue have been awash with garbage since the weekend.
City authorities initially announced that 300 strikers were being fired but Paes indicated the decision would be overturned if they returned to work Thursday.
Wednesday evening, some 150 cleaners demonstrated outside the offices of municipal sanitation agency Comlurb, which told AFP the streets would be cleaned and back to normal "by Friday," following the drafting of an unspecified number of reinforcements.
The strikers, who said some 70 percent of cleaners joined their protest, complained not only of poor pay and conditions but also of the extra work caused by the Carnival, which saw some four million people take to the streets to party.
Their union, however, distanced itself from the strike.
Comlurb said Wednesday that agreement had been reached earlier in the week to give 15,000 city cleaners a nine percent raise, while starting dismissal proceedings against a small group of holdouts who downed tools Saturday.
With bonuses, the deal gives cleaners 1,224.70 reais ($530) a month and overtime benefits on Sundays and public holidays. The strikers had demanded 1,680 reais ($728).