Strike renewed at the Center Pompidou, the museum closed again on Monday

2023-11-06 16:15:39

Staff at the Center Pompidou, who fear for their future due to its future closure for five years, voted this Monday to renew their strike. This large Parisian modern art museum, also called Beaubourg, is therefore closed again 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 implementation costs. implementation of a cultural project of an amount “at least equivalent”, according to a source close to the matter.

Due to a social movement, the Center Pompidou and the @Bpi_Pompidou are exceptionally closed today Monday November 6.
Today’s tickets remain valid for one month.
For any questions, we are at your disposal at [e-mail]
We… pic.twitter.com/TcpRefHo4c

— Center Pompidou (@CentrePompidou) November 6, 2023

The strikers are unhappy with the ongoing 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.).

Guarantees on “maintenance of the payroll”

Concerned about “maintaining the cohesion of the multidisciplinary place and public access to national collections” during the closure, they call on this public to sign a petition to support them. This museum has more than 140,000 works in its national collections and houses a library as well as several mediation services.

After the general assembly, around fifty agents, accompanied by the inter-union association, took over the offices of the general management, in a building adjoining the museum, where they displayed a “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 “keep up the pressure” and speaks of a “political battle”, until management commits in writing to several points, including the redeployment of agents in “a single location” during the closure of the Center, which was refused by the management and the Ministry 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, the agents must be partly redeployed to the Grand Palais, under restoration work and which must reopen in 2024, to collection storage premises in the north of Paris then to a new creation and conservation center in Massy ( Essonne) which is due to open in 2026.