For three weeks now, workers from culture, live performance, events and tourism have risen up with a campaign occupying venues of culture.
I wish to express my own view here, confident that many members of the Union will recognise themselves in it, as will many readers of this site.
The demands are clear:
- The pure and simple withdrawal of the unemployment insurance reform
- An extension of the “blank year” (année blanche), and its widening to all precarious, casual and seasonal workers, among others, who are suffering the effects of both the crisis and employer policy, along with a lowering of the minimum hours threshold for access to unemployment benefits for first-time entrants or intermittent workers who have lost their entitlement
- Urgent measures to guarantee access, for all workers in discontinuous employment, and for authors, to paid maternity and sick leave
- Funding for the cultural sector through a massive employment support plan, drawn up in consultation with organisations representing cultural workers
- Resources to guarantee social rights — pensions, training, occupational health, paid leave, etc. — whose funds are being put at risk by the halt in contributions
At the Union des Chefs Opérateurs, despite a range of views on the approach, the methods and the stakes of this struggle, we feel concerned, and a large majority of us are sympathetic to these demands. While the very plurality that defines our association makes it difficult to offer open, collective support for a struggle, many of us individually support the intermittent workers now occupying more than 80 performance venues across France.
Since the start of the health crisis, and in keeping with his attitude throughout his term, the President of the Republic has chosen to shut himself away behind the closed doors of an obscure security council, stripping parliament of its role and showing more contempt than ever for consultation with intermediary bodies, not to mention other social and economic stakeholders. After the welcome announcement of a “blank year” that proved a lifeline for a great many workers, he decided, almost single-handedly, to sacrifice culture and the live arts by keeping these venues closed for nearly five months now, unlike other European countries, and despite the significant and costly efforts made by these venues to keep audiences safe and to show great rigour in applying health protocols.
Sociability, exchange and creation are possible without the irresponsible behaviour that would spread the virus. This has been demonstrated, but the security council chose to ignore it. This is therefore a deliberate political choice, one that will carry immeasurable psychological, societal and economic costs.
While activity in our own sector has partially resumed, sometimes under difficult conditions, other sectors such as music or theatre face an unprecedented crisis. Vast numbers of intermittent workers — not only in the live arts, but also among our colleagues, audiovisual technicians — risk finding themselves on welfare (RSA) after 31 August 2021, not to mention all those who were unable to gain intermittent status before the first lockdown of March 2020.
The government’s response, through the person of Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot — who first lent legitimacy to the movement by visiting the Théâtre de l’Odéon, only to then try to backtrack by criticising the occupation — has been lukewarm at best, contemptuous at worst. Neither we, nor our colleagues in live performance, events, and culture, are deemed essential in the “world after” as Emmanuel Macron imagines it.
This is why I can only fully support this struggle, and the methods behind it, which I consider indispensable in the face of such deafness — by relaying and backing it, for lack of being able to take part directly.
To stay informed about this struggle:
https://www.occupationodeon.com/
https://www.facebook.com/OccupationOdeon
https://www.facebook.com/collectiflacultureendanger
If you wish to support the strikers, there is a solidarity fund:
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/fnsac/collectes/occupationodeon
Photo credit ©Brice Legall
