THE Avignon theatre festival and France’s other summer arts festivals may not take place due to a strike threat by stage-hands and other arts-support workers. On Friday unions extended their threat to strike to the end of July.
The CGT-Spectacle union also called for a massive strike on 4 July, the opening day of the renowned international theatre festival in Avignon.
Under French law some 250,000 workers in the film, theatre, television and festival industry, known as intermittents, benefit from a system that pays them during periods when they do not work.
The measure was a recognition of the sporadic nature of their employment as well as the importance of culture in French life.
But many are unhappy with a deal reached between some unions, employers and the government in March which would increase their payroll taxes.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls has refused to go back on the deal but announced last Thursday that the state would pay the difference in the payments scheme until a final agreement was reached.
But the concession does not satisfy many of the intermittents and they are keeping up the pressure in what has been a long-running dispute that has seen performances cancelled or preceded by statements by protesting workers.
Meanwhile, a six-day strike by French air traffic controllers got underway on Tuesday with around one quarter of flights in and out of France set to be affected by the walk-out.
There was more misery for travellers in France on Tuesday as air traffic controllers began a six-day strike in protest at planned cuts in resources.
In response to the strike civil aviation authorities have asked airlines to cancel 20 per cent of scheduled flights from airports in the south of the country as well numerous flights leaving Paris in order to ease the pressure.
The airports in the cities of Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse, as well as the two Paris hubs – Charles de Gaulle and Orly, are all expected to be hit by the strike, which will continue until Sunday unless the Unsa-ICNA union backs down.
The National Federation of Commercial Aviation (FNAM) says the strike is ‘harmful’ and falls at ‘the worst time of year’ with the French holiday season set to begin this weekend.
In its latest statement on Tuesday budget airline Ryanair said the strike was causing worse disruption than they had feared, as it was forced to cancel further flights and accept delays of up to four hours for any flight that enters French air space. And the airline chiefs say they expect the situation to get worse throughout the day.
‘We expect that these delays will continue to build through the morning as the backlog of delayed flights rises,’ a company statement said.
‘In order to minimise disruptions on the rest of our network Ryanair has been forced regrettably to cancel another 70 flights today in addition to the 26 that were announced last evening, making a total of 96 cancelled flights out of Ryanair’s total of over 1,600 scheduled flights today.’
‘We expect the disruption to flights to/from France and Spain will worsen this morning as all airlines schedules are heavily disrupted by this unnecessary and regrettable French air traffic control strike.
EasyJet which was forced to cancel around 32 flights on Tuesday, said: ‘We are disappointed at this unnecessary strike action which has the potential to cause considerable disruption and cancellations for passengers and airlines across Europe.’
Air France said it would guarantee all of its long-haul flights on Tuesday and around 90 per cent of its short and medium haul services.
Passengers on all airlines are being advised to contact their carriers before going to the airport. Flights heading to southern European countries like Spain and Portugal as well as North African countries Tunisia and Morocco will likely be the most affected, Le Figaro newspaper reported.
A law that forces workers to provide a minimum service during a strike, means 50 per cent of flights have to be guaranteed. The strike comes ahead of a June 30 deadline for France to present its budget plans for the sector over the next five years to Brussels.
The strikers are protesting against planned cuts between 2015 and 2019 that they say will threaten the ‘necessary performance and modernisation needed to ensure an efficient air navigation service in France.’
Workers claim the equipment they are using is practically obsolete, some of it dating back to the 1980s. According to the SNCTA union, all screens used in the traffic control tower at Marseille-Aix-en-Provence airport had to be replaced recently because so many of them kept blacking out.
The cuts form part of a European Commission plan, called Single Sky Europe, to reduce air navigation costs by organising airspace into functional blocks, according to traffic flows rather than national borders. The strikers argue that the move will lead to a ‘forced low-cost’ ethos in air traffic.
l Ferries between mainland France and Corsica and north Africa are to be hit by a strike at the height of the summer season as unions accuse the SNCM companies, the government and new majority owners, of breaking their word and ditching a rescue plan.
Unions issued a call to strike from 6.00am on 24 June and say they are ready to prolong the action indefinitely. The strike is the third this year in a dispute that has dragged on for 17 months and could see the company close down.
The SNCM carries cars and passengers to Corsica, a popular Mediterranean holiday destination in the summer, and to north African countries, such as Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, which are the countries of origin of many immigrants to France.
But, with cumulative losses of 250 million euros, it has serious financial problems, which have been made worse by an European Commission order to pay back 440 million euros of state aid.
The strike date was picked to coincide with the annual shareholders’ meeting, which was set to hand effective control of the business to Transdev, a private transport company that owns 66 per cent of the business.
The meeting has been put off to 3 July but the strike was not postponed, the unions saying that they hope that it can lead to a rapid settlement.
Unions accuse the government, which holds 25 per cent of the company’s shares, of backing out on a rescue plan started by the previous management, which involved the purchase of four new ferries in exchange for the loss of 500 jobs out of 2,600.
Although the redundancies have begun Transdev has prevented the command for new boats, claiming that the repayment of funds to the state and the company’s performance have made it unviable.
l The Belgian supermarket chain Delhaize’s has announced plans to close 14 stores deemed ‘unprofitable’ and to lay off 2500 employees. Workers are shocked by the decision, given that the company is still well in profit.
On Monday 23 June, dozens of employees were still gathered in front of Delhaize’s head office in Brussels to protest against the restructuring plan imposed by the board of directors. The week before, a wildcat strike left nearly 40 supermarkets closed.
The disgruntled workers carry placards that read ‘We are all Delhaizians on sale’ as loudspeakers play the old pop song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, in reference to the brand’s emblem.
Anne, who has worked at the company for 15 years, is ‘very unhappy with the situation. Two thousand five hundred of my colleagues are going to find themselves out of a job. Sometimes they are couples working for the firm.’
The pill is even harder for the workers to swallow given that the company made 179 million euros in profits last year (US$244 million).
Myriam Delmée, head of the retail section of the white-collar union SETCa (Syndicat des employés, techniciens et cadres de Belgique), insisted in an interview with Equal Times that ‘the plan is unnecessary. Between the contracts that expire and are not renewed and the retirees that are not replaced, 500 jobs are already done away with every year.’
The vice president of the SETCa also fears that working conditions will be drastically driven down. ‘To offset these job cuts, the workers will be called on to be more productive, more polyvalent and more flexible with their working hours.’
Philippe, who has been working for Delhaize for 28 years, has seen these changes taking place at his store in Arlon over the last few years. Our superiors want us to imitate the hard discounters where the conditions are very harsh. The work is getting harder and harder. The level of sick leave is increasing every year.’
In a bid to justify the measures, Delhaize’s management argues that ‘the market is very competitive in Belgium, where there are six foreign players in addition to the two Belgian ones, which are Delhaize and Colruyt.’
As Christophe Vignon, a specialist in major retail distribution and professor at the Kedge Business School, explains, ‘It’s a sector with very low margins. Labour is the only adjustment variable. With low-skilled employees, the social impact is drastic, as they have great difficulty finding another job.
‘To reassure their shareholders, the big retailers make the mistake of basing their decisions on short-term objectives like Delhaize has done by announcing this plan following a fall in first-quarter profitability in 2014.’
