Friday, December 04, 2009

Workers continue to strike at French museums

AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere

The Louvre Museum and the palace at Versailles were closed yesterday due to a workers’ strike that began in November at the Pompidou Center for modern art; other workers joined this week.

 

Yesterday, workers blocked the tourists outside the pyramid of the Louvre courtyard. Versailles usually has thousands of visitors each day but didn’t have enough workers to open. The Pompidou Center and the Musee d’Orsay were closed as well. Workers at Francois Mitterrand National Library in Paris voted to join in today.

 

Union leaders met with Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand earlier this week and did not win concessions. The culture minister said that “France could not make an exception for museum workers in a government-wide cost-cutting measure affecting all public servants, and that museums had many ways to reorganize to deal with shrinking staff members.” Labor leaders then decided to continue the strike today. 


Check out our earlier blog post by clicking here.

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