The unions of the Center Pompidou in Paris, “in breach of trust” with their management, will be received on Tuesday at the Ministry of Culture, while the employees’ strike has continued for almost a month, we learned on Monday from reliable sources. . The inter-union (CGT, CFDT, FO, Unsa, SUD) announced this meeting during a general assembly which brought together between 250 and 300 employees (out of the thousand who work in this large museum of modern art and approximately 400 directly affected by a move during its closure for five years from 2025), noted AFP journalists. The ministry confirmed this meeting to AFP, while management offered to receive the employees without their representatives a little earlier in the day.
Inaugurated almost half a century ago, the Center Pompidou must close gradually from 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation work, estimated at more than 260 million euros and at least double if the we include the cost of the new cultural project planned for this occasion.
The staff meeting on Monday voted overwhelmingly to renew their strike, due to lack of progress with management on a memorandum of understanding from which they expect “guarantees” on the future of their jobs and their missions. The strikers received the support of deputies Jérôme Legavre (LFI) and Julien Bayou (EELV), present at the AG, noted AFP. The Center Pompidou was closed again on Monday, like the day before.
The inter-union speaks of a “break in trust” with management, after the president of the Center, Laurent le Bon, who had agreed to receive her last week, did not honor this appointment on Friday, after the ’to have rejected “twice”. The unions unanimously believe that the memorandum of understanding “does not guarantee the future of jobs and missions, nor their non-outsourcing”. They also demand that employees affected by a move during the closure be brought together in a single location, just like the collections (more than 140,000 works, from Marc Chagall to Pablo Picasso, including Frida Kahlo and Joan Miro), which the ministry and management have repeatedly excluded.
During the closure, 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 ( Paris region) which is due to open in 2026.