The strike vote followed talks last week between labor unions and government officials including Culture Minister Rachida Dati. Labor leaders said the talks had not alleviated their concerns about staffing and financing for the museum that welcomes millions of visitors each year.
“Visiting the museum has become an obstacle course,” said Alexis Fritche, general secretary of the culture wing of the CFDT union.
For employees, the brazen daylight jewel heist crystallized long-standing concerns that crowding and thin staffing are undermining security and working conditions at the Louvre.
In a statement, the CFDT said employees wants more staffing for security and to welcome visitors, improved working conditions, stable long-term budgets for the Louvre and leadership that “truly listens to staff.”
Yvan Navarro of the CGT union complained that staff numbers have continually decreased while visitor numbers have increased.
“People come to Paris to visit the museums. So the visitor numbers go up, the tariffs and the prices go up, because everything is becoming more expensive but the salaries and the numbers of staffers don’t go up so obviously you reach a point like today, a day of anger,” he said.
He said the strike vote was unanimous. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the work stoppage will last longer than one day. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Employees could meet again on Wednesday to decide whether to stay out or go back to work.
In their notice of open-ended strike action to Dati last week, the CFDT, CGT and Sud unions said the Louvre was in “crisis,” with insufficient resources and “increasingly deteriorated working conditions.”
The Culture Ministry said Sunday that it has tasked Philippe Jost, who oversaw reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral after its 2019 fire, with a mission to propose a deep reorganization of the Louvre following the findings of an administrative inquiry.
It said Jost will offer recommendations by the end of February. He will work with Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who previously described the heist as a “terrible failure.”
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