The strike is on.
After days of tense discussions, we are able to affirm that the collective French movie competition staff we first reported final week have set plans to mount a widespread strike motion throughout this yr’s Cannes Movie Pageant over pay.
The group, referred to as the Collectif des précaires des festivals de cinéma (which interprets to The Collective of Precarious Employees at Movie Festivals), confirmed their plans this morning with an open letter despatched to Deadline. Scroll down to learn the complete letter.
“In a context of utmost vulnerability and absolute emergency to guard our work, and after session and vote of the members of the collective, we name for a strike of all workers of the Cannes Movie Pageant and its sidebars,” the group stated.
The collective consists of as much as 200 French movie competition staff — a mix of Cannes staff, together with those that work on the Official Choice, the competition’s Marché du Movie, and parallel sections of Administrators’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week — and staff from different festivals throughout France. Potential strikers embrace competition projectionists, press officers, and admin workers. The group has but to verify how lengthy or when their strike motion will occur. However we perceive they’re consulting CGT Spectacle, the French Federation of Leisure, Cinema, Audiovisual and Cultural Motion Unions, on technique.
The group’s strike motion is the results of two central points. They’re first rallying towards the pay packages they obtain from their employers, which they are saying are insufficient and sometimes don’t account for arduous extra time hours continuously clocked because of the calls for of their jobs.
The second bone of rivalry is France’s distinctive unemployment insurance coverage program for leisure staff and technicians. Often called Intermittence de Spectacle, the scheme helps leisure staff on short-term contracts with an unemployment profit when they’re between jobs or initiatives. As a result of distinctive laws, many staff at French movie festivals are excluded from the unemployment profit. As a substitute, they’re employed and handed flat short-term contracts. The collective is campaigning to now be included within the scheme citing the inherent seasonal nature of the work.
“We demand that the organizations which make use of us be affiliated to a collective settlement permitting us to be employed underneath the standing of intermittent present enterprise staff and that our positions be built-in into the unemployment profit system,” at this time’s open letter stated.
Deadline has reached out to the competition for remark.
Cannes runs Could 14—25.
Open Letter
For a yr now, we, members of the Sous les écrans la dèche (Broke Behind the Screens) collective, have been warning in regards to the rising precariousness of the folks working in movie festivals.
We go from short-term missions to durations of unemployment and regardless of the intermittent nature of our occupation and our striving for the circulation of cinematographic work, our exercise doesn’t fall throughout the French intermittent standing profit plan for present enterprise staff!
The most recent reforms of unemployment advantages in France and the one scheduled for July 1st of this yr, which will probably be handed by decree, is additional hardening the profit guidelines for employment seekers.
These reforms are throwing competition staff in such precariousness that almost all of us must quit our jobs, thus jeopardizing the occasions we participate in.
Subsequently, we demand that the organizations that make use of us be affiliated to a collective settlement permitting us to be employed underneath the standing of present enterprise employee’s intermittence and that our positions be built-in into the unemployment profit system, retroactive to the final 18 months.
Our warnings and calls for have been obtained with well mannered consideration to date, however no concrete measure has been supplied by the CNC or the Ministry of Tradition. That’s the reason the upcoming opening of the Cannes Pageant is leaving us with a bitter style.
In a context of utmost vulnerability and absolute emergency to guard our work, and after session and vote of the members of the collective, we name for a strike of all workers of the Cannes Movie Pageant and of its sidebars.
Sous les écrans la dèche collective
