The staff of the Center Pompidou, who fear for their future due to its future closure for 5 years, voted on Monday to renew their strike, noted an AFP journalist.
This great muse of modern Parisian art, also called Beaubourg, who owns more than 140,000 works in its national collections and houses a library as well as several mediation services, is again closed for the day.
Inaugurated almost half a century ago, it must gradually close from 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation work, estimated at more than 260 million euros, to which will be added the costs of implementing a cultural project of an amount at least equivalent, according to a source close to the matter.
Unhappy with current negotiations with management on a memorandum of understanding which, according to the inter-union (CGT, CFDT, FO, Unsa, SUD), does not guarantee the future of their jobs and their missions, the staff a thousand people in total represented on Monday by around 200 people joined by service providers voted to renew the strike notice for one month. They voted for it on October 5 before starting their strike on the 16th in rotation between services (reception, security, curators, managers, etc.).
Questions about agent redeployment
Concerned about maintaining the cohesion of the multidisciplinary site and public access to national collections during the closure, They call on this public to sign a petition to support them. After the general assembly, around fifty agents, accompanied by the inter-union, took over the offices of the general management, in a building adjoining the museum, where they unfurled an On Strike banner.
When contacted, the president of the Center Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, undertook to receive the unions in the afternoon. The inter-union intends to maintain the pressure and speaks of a political battle, until management commits in writing to several points, including the redeployment of agents to a single location during the closure of the Center, which was refused by management and the Minister of Culture.
The unions are also demanding guarantees on the non-outsourcing of missions and services, on the maintenance of the payroll and on the rights of agents, in particular those part-time, to return to their position upon reopening. During the closure, agents must be partly redeployed to the Grand Palais, which is undergoing restoration work and which is due to reopen in 2024, to collection storage premises north of Paris and then to a new center of creation and conservation in Massy (Essonne). ) which is due to open in 2026.