A sign announcing a strike at the Eiffel Tower, February 19, 2024 (AFP/Kiran RIDLEY)
Unions “worried”, and tourists “devastated”: the closure of the Eiffel Tower on Monday, due to a renewable strike relating to the management of the site, aroused anger and incomprehension from visitors who came from far away for the Iron Lady.
“My dream is shattered.” Sitting on a barrier missing from her queue, Lyra cannot recover from finding the door closed at one of the entrances to the famous monument.
“It’s my birthday today and I really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower,” explains to AFP this little Londoner, of Russian and Ukrainian origin, who is celebrating her tenth birthday this Monday.
“There was not a single message” to warn visitors, laments her mother, Irina Goncherenko, an author of children’s books who was “really annoyed” for what was to be her daughter’s “big day”… their last day in Paris.
“If we had known that there was a problem with the employees, we would have changed the date,” adds Gabriel Mimica, “surprised” by the social movement even though he had “scheduled everything for today”.
Discovering Paris for the first time with his family, this 42-year-old Argentinian still has three days to try his luck, but that would require “giving up another site”, he says.
Coming from Pau for a long weekend, Elie Bou-Khalil and Chama Ghaiti are “disappointed”, especially since they will “soon be over 25”, and therefore see the youth half-price – 14.70 euros instead of 29.40 to reach the summit – escape them.
– “Worrying deterioration” –
The result of a strike notice filed on February 13 by the two monument staff unions, the CGT and FO, in order to obtain a “viable and realistic economic model” for the monument.
The two unions are targeting the Paris town hall, an ultra-majority shareholder, which according to them imposes an “untenable” model on the Eiffel Tower operating company (Sete), leading it “straight” into “the worst difficulties”.
In question, a balance between revenue and expenditure undermined by the Covid-19 crisis, generating a deficit of around 120 million euros over 2020 and 2021.
To cope, Sete, which employs nearly 360 employees, has already been recapitalized to the tune of 60 million euros, and a 20% increase in ticket prices is planned.
But “the basic model” which provided for an increase in the fee for the town hall “has not been changed,” Alexandre Leborgne, CGT representative, told AFP.
On the preservation of the site, the unions emphasize that despite 128 million euros of work invested since 2019, “numerous points of corrosion are visible, symptoms of a worrying degradation of the monument” which is 135 years old.
The current painting campaign which is ending in view of the Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11) “has seen its production costs soar”, with “100 million euros invested” for “only 3% of the monument stripped “, criticize the unions.
– Contract redefined by summer –
These grievances are set out at a time when these financial parameters – fee amounts, entry prices and work budget – are being renegotiated in the amendment to the public service delegation contract with the town hall (2017-2030), before be completed by summer.
Asked by AFP, the president of Sete Jean-François Martins did not wish to make “any comment in order to preserve the quality of social dialogue”.
Inaugurated in 1889 for the Paris Universal Exhibition, the Eiffel Tower received some 6.3 million visitors in 2023, more than in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.
In spring 2023, strike movements during the mobilization against pension reform led to closure for ten days.
And on December 27, the hundredth anniversary of the death of the creator of the tower, Gustave Eiffel, it was already to denounce “unrealistic” management that the striking staff had forced the monument to close.
For the same reasons, the tower will “probably remain closed all day” on Monday, while negotiations begin, indicates Alexandre Leborgne.
A new general assembly should decide on Tuesday morning whether or not to continue the movement.
© 2024 AFP
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