Impossible to open a park like Disneyland Paris without a minimum of nurses… So the management of the attraction giant must watch with great interest the strike of its nurses which rebounded this week in the middle of the summer season .
“On Wednesday, the management had to urgently mobilize firefighters to maintain the activity”, assures Laurent Burazer, elected CFTC at the CSE. “We fell below the number of nurses essential to be able to be open. “ That day, eight of them declared themselves strikers out of the 12 supposed to work, while the minimum gauge is five people.
Shortage of nurses
“Internal organizational measures allow us to cover the needs provided for in the safety report”, nevertheless reassures the company, which also employs 200 firefighters.
Initiated in the spring due to a change in the pace of work in this profession, the movement regained momentum this week and, on Friday, nurses were still on strike. “Almost all of them went on strike at one time or another,” confirms Djamila Ouaz (CFDT).
“The First Aid service only has around twenty nurses, but around 90% of them are mobilized”, assures Laurent Burazer. Given the park’s specific safety regulations, this could be enough to paralyze Disneyland Paris, fears another trade unionist who cries “irresponsibility”.
What ignited the powder was a change in the work rhythms imposed on nurses who, until 2021, benefited from five consecutive days off every 15 days. From now on, their cycle is more spaced out.
Minimum applicable service?
“With the new organization, they realized that they couldn’t recover,” continues Laurent Burazer. “They have a real need to cut and they feel more and more tired. »
For another employee, this new organization, however, calls into question the functioning of the nurses, some of whom took advantage of these five days off to do vacations outside the park.
Threatened by this handful of strikers on whom their 18,000 colleagues depend, the management gave three strikers a letter on August 3, which AFP obtained.
She invokes in particular a minimum service which is imposed on them and recalls that any breach of obligations “may lead to disciplinary sanctions which may go as far as dismissal”. A response that bristled the strikers, who requested the labor inspectorate while the company assures Friday “regret” this tone.
“Except in cases listed by specific texts, the employer cannot impose a minimum service on his own, even if the interruption of the activity would be likely to compromise public order”, assures the administration, in a letter sent to AFP, in response to a request from the strikers. “A company that imposes unjustified notice or minimum service would infringe the right to strike, which is a constitutional right”.
Discussions continue
“In view of the possible disturbance to public order that a strike on the First Aid service would have in an establishment receiving a volume of public equivalent to yours, the Prefect could himself by prefectural decree resort to the requisition of striking employees “, continues the labor inspectorate. According to Mr. Burazer, however, this device has not been activated so far.
“This minimum service is voluntary. Disneyland Paris is very attached to the respect of the right to strike and no sanction has – or will be – taken against the employees concerned, ”still assures the management while the exchanges continue with the strikers.