Louvre workers vote to strike in another blow to the Paris museum

Workers at the Louvre Museum voted on Monday to strike over working conditions and other issues, a union said, dealing another blow to the Paris museum after an embarrassing jewellery heist in October.

The CFDT union said the vote was taken at a meeting of 400 workers on Monday and that they decided to strike for the day.

Striking workers with flags, banners and placards blocked the museum’s glass-pyramid entrance.

The world’s most-visited museum did not open as scheduled. A notice on its website advised would-be visitors that “the museum is closed for the moment”.

The strike vote followed talks last week between unions and government officials including culture minister Rachida Dati.

Union leaders said the talks had not alleviated all of their concerns about staffing and financing for the Louvre.

“Visiting the museum has become an obstacle course,” said Alexis Fritche, general secretary of the culture wing of the CFDT union.

For employees, the daylight jewel heist crystallised long-standing concerns that crowding and thin staffing were undermining security and working conditions at the Louvre.

Police arrests subsequently snared the four-man team alleged to have made off with 102 million US dollars (£76 million) worth of jewels. The gang used a basket lift to reach the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with pieces of the French crown jewels.

A senate inquiry released last week said the thieves escaped with barely 30 seconds to spare and pointed fingers of blame at broken cameras, outdated equipment, understaffed control rooms and poor co-ordination that initially sent police to the wrong location.

In a statement, the CFDT said employees wanted more staffing for security and to welcome visitors, improved working conditions, stable long-term budgets for the Louvre and leadership that “truly listens to staff”.

Yvan Navarro, from the CGT union, said that staff numbers had continually decreased while visitor numbers had increased.

“People come to Paris to visit the museums. So the visitor numbers go up, the tariffs and the prices go up, because everything is becoming more expensive but the salaries and the numbers of staffers don’t go up so obviously you reach a point like today, a day of anger,” he said.

Mr Navarro said the strike vote was unanimous. It was not immediately clear whether the work stoppage would last longer than one day. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Employees could meet again on Wednesday to decide whether to stay out or go back to work.

In their notice of open-ended strike action to Ms Dati last week, the CFDT, CGT and Sud unions said the Louvre was in “crisis”, with insufficient resources and “increasingly deteriorated working conditions”.

The culture ministry said on Sunday that it had tasked Philippe Jost, who oversaw reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral after its 2019 fire, with a mission to propose a deep reorganisation of the Louvre following the findings of an administrative inquiry.

It said Mr Jost would offer recommendations by the end of February. He would work with Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who previously described the heist as a “terrible failure.”