Trade unions at the Louvre Museum called on Monday for a rolling strike next week to demand urgent renovations and better working conditions, piling more bad news on the beleaguered Paris institution.
The announcement came a day after the world’s most visited museum admitted to a major leak in late November and nearly two months after an embarrassing heist in which French crown jewels were stolen from its permanent collection.
In between those two incidents, it had to close a gallery containing ancient Greek ceramics over fears for the safety of a ceiling.
Three unions — the CGT, Sud and the CFDT — called for a rolling strike starting Monday December 15 which was voted for at a staff meeting of around 200 employees “with unanimity”, CFDT official Valerie Baud told AFP.
Museum staff “feel today like they are the last bastion before collapse”, the unions warned in a joint letter addressed to Culture Minister Rachida Dati.
If followed widely by the Louvre’s 2,100-strong workforce, the stoppage could lead to the closure of the institution in the run-up to the Christmas holidays when Paris is full of festive holidaymakers.
The Louvre was forced to shut temporarily on June 16 this year after gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel walked out to complain about understaffing and overcrowding.
In their joint letter, the unions wrote that parts of the Louvre were being regularly closed because of “insufficient staff numbers as well as technical failures and the building’s ageing condition”.
The unions are asking for 200 new jobs to be created for security and visitor services “the equivalent of what we lost between 2014 and today”, CGT union representative Christian Galani said.
The museum and the culture ministry did not immediately respond to the union claims when contacted by AFP.
– Break-in –
On Sunday, the museum’s deputy administrator, Francis Steinbock, said that an open valve in the heating and ventilation system had caused water damage to 300 to 400 journals, books and documents in the Egyptian department.
The damaged items date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are “extremely useful” but are “by no means unique”, Steinbock added.
On October 19, a four-person gang raided the museum in broad daylight, stealing jewellery worth an estimated $102 million in just seven minutes before fleeing on scooters.
The incident has highlighted major security vulnerabilities and heaped pressure on government-appointed Louvre boss Laurence des Cars.
She has called it “an immense wound that has been inflicted upon us”.
A preliminary investigation ordered by the government into the heist has revealed “a chronic under-estimation” of the risks of a break-in and “under-investment in security measures,” according to Dati.
The conclusions of the probe are set to be discussed on Wednesday in the French Senate.
Des Cars and unions had warned repeatedly before the break-in about conditions inside the Louvre and the cost of maintaining the vast former royal palace.
The home of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” welcomed 8.7 million people last year, with around two in three of them foreign.
It announced last month that it will hike the entrance fee for non-EU visitors by 45 percent from next year, in part to help finance its long-term investment plan.
Unions are opposed to the measure which they view as discriminatory.
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