Rachida Dati announces the “end of social conflict”

Some of the staff began a strike in October, fearing for their future in the perspective of a planned five-year closure of the Parisian institution.

In a press release, the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati announced Monday the “end of social conflict at the Pompidou Center”in the heart of Paris. “I am pleased to announce, today, the signing, between the Center Pompidou and the trade union organizations, SPCP-FO and CFDT-Culture, of the memorandum of understanding relating to the support of the teams during the work which it will carry out “object between 2025 and 2030 thanks to state support”, writes the minister in her text, without specifying the content of this “protocol”. Some of the staff had been on strike since October, fearing for their future during this closure scheduled for five years.

“This agreement provides guarantees to Center Pompidou agents in anticipation of the closure of the main building for work from mid-2025”, assures the minister in her text, without specifying what guarantees are in question. “One hundred days of strike is unprecedented in the history of the Center Pompidou”, underlined the minister.

According to the CFDT, in the majority with FO, “the protocol provides that management and the ministry undertake to request the maintenance of the current employment ceiling (around a thousand agents, Editor’s note),” Alexis Fritche, head of the union, told AFP. Questioned by AFP, he specified that management “left the door open to those who would like to sign later”, except SUD, deemed unrepresentative by management. The inter-union included CFDT, FO, CGT, Unsa and SUD.

The CFDT denounces the method

If it signed the protocol, the CFDT denounced the “method” used by the ministry and management to put an end to the social movement, “certain trade union organizations (CFDT and FO, Editor’s note) having been invited to the signature on Friday and no others (CGT, Unsa, SUD, Editor’s note)”.

“It’s a strange way to get out of a social conflict that has lasted for more than three months while we were all together”regretted to AFP Nathalie Ramos (CGT), deploring having been put “faced with a fait accompli” and having “not been able to discuss the latest proposals with the staff at a general meeting“. “We still see that this activation of things falls on the day of the minister’s wishes, coincidence or not ?“, she asked.

Several reasons for concern for staff

The staff of the establishment, also called Beaubourg and which houses one of the most important modern and contemporary art museums in the world as well as a library very popular with students, are worried about their future. They asked for guarantees on the maintenance of the employment ceiling and the non-outsourcing of their missions during the closure of the place, inaugurated almost half a century ago and which must remain closed until 2030 for important asbestos removal and restoration work. They were also worried about the “dispersion of collections”, particularly abroad, during the museum’s closure.

Some of them went on strike on October 16, causing around twenty days of closure of the Center Pompidou, which was closed daily during the Christmas school holidays. The agents had massively voted back the strike during the last general assembly on January 11 and the inter-union extended the strike notice at the beginning of January until February 15.