They were not convinced. This Wednesday, at the end of a general assembly of the inter-union (CFDT, CGT, FO, Unsa and SUD), the staff of the Pompidou center chose to extend the strike movement initiated on October 16.
After four days of strike and closure of the center, employees hoped to obtain guarantees on the sustainability of positions and missions during the closure for five years, from 2025, of the Center Pompidou. Missed.
“Fuzzy” proposals from management, which nevertheless claims to have “heard” the demands
“The staff voted overwhelmingly for the extension of the strike movement,” explains Smael Bendaoud, FO union delegate. The demands to maintain the workforce, the payroll, the non-outsourcing of services and missions and a single site under its own management to continue the exhibition activity of the Center Pompidou, have not really been heard according to the unions . “The proposals are quite vague,” explains 20 minutes the trade unionist who points out numerous contentious proposals in the text, for example they guarantee the non-outsourcing of services but not of missions. »
The management and the Ministry of Culture nevertheless confided, this Tuesday evening during a press point, to have “heard” the demands, by presenting a memorandum of understanding “which responds to the requests and concerns” of the strikers, with the exception of the single site. “A claim explored, but not accepted,” specifies the ministry.
Gray areas
“We are more determined than ever to find a positive outcome to this situation,” adds Laurent Le Bon, the president of the Center Pompidou who is committed to ensuring that all agents “have an activity during the gradual closure” of the center and that “no departure is forced, except for temporary workers and fixed-term contracts linked to the activity”. He also added that the amount of the payroll will cover the remuneration of all agents on permanent contracts, certain fixed-term contracts (CDD) and civil servants.
“We studied their text line by line,” explains Ollivier Melt, Unsa secretary, “but many of our requests are modified or ignored. On certain points, we even go back. » The union official regrets the vagueness maintained by management on many points and cites as an example the case of lecturers who work “incomplete hours”: “Their contract indicates around thirty hours per month. But in reality they make two to three times more in “additional hours”, but the maintenance of this remuneration is not provided for in the agreement protocol. And will the positions vacated by retirements or resignations be maintained? »
“A loss of confidence”
“We are committed to ensuring that each agent has a vision of what awaits them at least a year in advance,” explained Laurent le Bon this Tuesday. In addition, management ensures that all agents will return to their position, or a position of an equivalent nature, upon reopening after the work.
“Assurances” which do not convince the unions: “Workshop agents learned, a few days after the first day of the strike, that they would be relocated to the current reserves of the Pompidou center, where working conditions there are very difficult . They had not been informed of it and it was not recorded anywhere in the texts. This creates a loss of confidence. We want everything to be written exactly in the agreements,” specifies Ollivier Melt.
The agents of the library and the research institute already fixed
A concern that does not arise for the agents of the BPI (Public Information Library) who will be relocated to the Lumière building in Bercy, and those of the IRCAM (Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination) who will remain on their premises. current site. Also, according to Julie Narbey, general director of the Pompidou center, “only” 500 agents, out of the 1,013 (825 permanent contracts, 101 fixed-term contracts and 87 civil servants) in the center, should move, the others will continue their programming mission “outside the walls » in their offices near Beaubourg.
Some of these relocated employees, around 180 all dedicated to reception, ticketing and surveillance, will be redeployed to the Grand Palais, after its reopening in 2024 for the Olympic Games, and whose programming will be provided by the Pompidou center. Another part will go to the Massy site which will house the reserves dedicated to the collections, but not only since Laurent Le Bon assures that this site will also offer “cultural programming”.
“What we offer to agents is exceptional and unique,” explains Laurent Le Bon, who recalls that when the center closed at the end of the 1990s, some of the agents had been installed in what is today the basements. floors of the Leroy Merlin store located a few dozen meters from Beaubourg. “At the Pergamon Museum (in Berlin – Editor’s note), whose work will be spread over 14 years, no solution has been proposed to employees,” he adds as if to further magnify the memorandum of understanding.
More will be needed from staff who are planning new actions in the days to come, according to Ollivier Melt.