Tuesday, May 25, looked like an uneventful day in a slowly reopening Paris. The third lockdown had only just come to an end, with customers flocking back to “nonessential” businesses like clothing stores, cafés, and restaurants. On Rue de Rivoli, a central artery running from east to west through the capital, the doors of the fashionable department store opposite city hall were newly unpadlocked. Yet the bikers on the street’s recently expanded car-free lanes had a different reason to rubberneck — the sight of squadrons of riot police grouped around city hall.

By lunchtime, shield-holding gendarmes were kettling some 250 municipal workers. The crowd of garbage collectors, sewage system employees, and other rank-and-file public servants had assembled to protest the dismantling of contract norms for public functionaries. The protesters’ main target are changes that will see municipal workers lose at least eight days of paid leave, in order to allay the need for fresh hires. With key services increasingly farmed out to private businesses, such moves seek to bring labor standards down to the levels offered by contractors.

Earlier that same morning, hundreds of these protesters’ coworkers had stormed the sumptuous Renaissance-revival palace across the street, the main seat of municipal government in Paris. Garbage bins lingered on the sidewalk in districts where garbage collection is still handled by public employees — though roughly half have already seen this service contracted out to private firms like Veolia.