Workers on the Louvre museum in Paris staged one other strike on Monday (19 January)—the ninth such motion in a month. The sudden strike, held over considerations about pay, working situations and infrastructure, pressured the museum to shut and elevated stress on its embattled director, Laurence des Automobiles.
“The [workers’] motion doesn’t present any signal of weak point—the strike was voted unanimously by 350 workers,” Christian Galani, a consultant of the CGT Union tells The Artwork Newspaper. That is the third day the museum has been utterly closed since mid-December. On one other six events it remained opened for half a day for restricted visits.
The Louvre usually welcomes about 30,000 guests per day; in line with the union representatives, every day of full closure prices the museum about €400,000. The Louvre declined to remark when requested about its monetary losses since mid-December.
Negotiations between the union and France’s tradition ministry over wages are scheduled for subsequent Thursday (29 January), with unions demanding that employees pay is aligned with that at different nationwide museums and monuments. “There are variations [in salary] starting from €70 to €200 euros month-to-month,” Galani says.
The unions additionally demand that the venture to create a brand new €666m entrance to the museum, in addition to a subterranean complicated across the Mona Lisa and an exhibition corridor, is dropped, and precedence given to fundamental upkeep and restoring infrastructure.
The strikes come within the wake of the dramatic theft of the crown jewels in October. Additionally they observe a collection of damning experiences on the redevelopment plans and the administration of the Louvre.
The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Automobiles is below scrutiny for her model of administration. Curators inside the sculpture division have signed a petition criticising what they describe because the “unfair removing” of the division’s head, Sophie Jugie. “The times of Des Automobiles [as director] are numbered”, a supply near the French authorities, who wished to stay nameless, tells The Artwork Newspaper.
Responding to requires her departure at parliamentary hearings and in speeches to employees, Des Automobiles has remained combative, saying she “bears the accountability to launch” the plan for the brand new entrance, which has been 12 years within the making. The Louvre was approached for remark.
