‘The last bastion before collapse’ – Louvre museum closed as workers begin strike

Original article by Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

The crisis-hit Louvre museum in Paris was closed on Monday as workers began a strike to demand urgent renovations and staffing increases, and protested against a rise in ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, including British and American tourists.

The world’s most-visited museum – which has had a difficult few months after a jewel heist, a damaging water leak and safety fears over a gallery ceiling – could face days of partial or total closure at one of its busiest times of the year if many of its 2,100-strong workforce vote to continue striking this week.

The Louvre is still reeling from the theft on 19 October, when a four-person gang raided the museum during daylight hours, stealing an estimated €88m (£77m) of French crown jewels in seven minutes before fleeing on scooters. Four men have been arrested and placed under formal investigation, but the jewels have not been found.

In November, a water leak damaged 300 to 400 journals, books and documents in the Egyptian department. A gallery housing nine rooms containing ancient Greek ceramics was then closed because of fears about ceiling safety.

All three trade unions at the Louvre – the CGT, Sud and CFDT – announced a rolling strike, saying: “Staff feel today like they are the last bastion before collapse.”

At a general meeting, 400 employees voted unanimously to begin the strike on Monday morning. At the picket line, one night security guard who said he had been working at the museum for 20 years said: “I’ve never seen staff this angry.” Another daytime security guard, who had worked for 14 years checking visitors entering the museum, said: “The pressure in our working lives is extreme.”

The unions said the jewel robbery had shed light on years of difficulties, staff cuts and state underinvestment at the museum, which had 8.7 million visitors last year.

Many staff and union representatives said it was discriminatory that the Louvre was raising ticket prices by 45% for visitors from outside the European economic area to raise revenues to fund structural improvements.

People from countries including the US, Britain and China, which represent some of the highest numbers of visitors to the museum, will have to pay €32 to get in from January.

On the picket line, Vanessa Michaut-Valora of the Sud Culture trade union, who works in security in several wings of the Louvre, said the price increases for non-Europeans were unacceptable. She said: “For example, how can you charge Egyptian visitors extra when they are coming to see their own works in our Egyptian collection? And the same goes for our Mesopotamia collections and other works.”

She called for a stop to the major project announced by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, last January to build a new museum entrance and give the Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous portrait, its own room.

“Money should be put into restoring and consolidating the building instead of building a new entrance to bring in even more people,” she said.

Christian Galani, a CGT union official representing Louvre workers, said it was “unacceptable discrimination” to raise ticket prices for some nationalities. “Worse still, these visitors would have to pay more to see a dilapidated museum, where they can’t access the whole collection because we are chronically lacking staff and rooms are regularly closed off.”

He said it was an “absolute scandal” to make visitors from certain countries “pay for years of accumulated failings” at a museum whose collection was made up of works from across the world.

“It goes against the universality of culture and the idea of equal access,” Galani said. “For example, this will impact British tourists, yet if I go to the British Museum, it’s free.”

Unions are concerned about staffing and working conditions after 200 jobs have been cut since 2015 – many in security.

Galani, who works in the museum’s security control room at night, said of the strike action: “We are so exasperated; this is the only way left to make ourselves heard. Problems have accumulated for years and the robbery has brought it all to light. There has been neglect of both building renovation and security measures to protect the collection.”

Last month, France’s state auditor said security upgrades had been carried out at a “woefully inadequate pace” and the museum had prioritised “high-profile and attractive operations” instead of protecting itself.

Guy Tubiana, a senior police officer and security adviser, who took part in an investigation ordered by the culture ministry after the jewel robbery, told senators he was “stunned” by what he had discovered at the museum.

“There was a succession of malfunctions that led to catastrophe but I never would have thought the Louvre could have so many malfunctions,” he said.

The preliminary investigation ordered by the government revealed “a chronic underestimation” of the risks of a break-in and “underinvestment in security measures”, the culture minister, Rachida Dati, said.

Philippe Jost, who headed the rebuild of Paris’s fire-damaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, is to undertake a study next month into a “deep reorganisation” of the Louvre.

The Louvre director, Laurence des Cars, as well as unions, had warned repeatedly before the break-in about conditions inside the museum and the cost of maintaining the vast former royal palace. In January, she said visiting the overcrowded building had become a “physical ordeal”.

A general meeting on whether to continue the strike is scheduled to take place on Wednesday morning. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.