Less than ten days before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, bringing together some 3,000 dancers, musicians and actors, the announcement caused a stir. A union defending performing artists (SFA-CGT), a branch of the CGT spectacle, filed a strike notice on Wednesday, July 17, to protest against “glaring inequalities of treatment” andbetween the artists recruited for the show on July 26.
Also concerned “the next rehearsals of the opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games” August 28, announced in a press release this representative and majority union in the sector.
“Shameful conditions” of recruitment
One SFA member estimated that approximately “250 to 300 intermittent dancers from the show”, of the approximately 3,000 recruits for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (OPG), “were recruited under shameful conditions, without compensation, or without knowing the amount of the transfer of neighboring rights.”
The union is questioning the pay gaps in these salaries. “60 euros for intermittent workers in the entertainment industry – previously excluded from collective negotiations – to 1,610 euros for employees who have benefited from successful collective negotiations.”
And to continue: “Why are some non-Parisian artists being and will be reimbursed and housed, when the majority of them – the most precarious – will not be, even though they have the same work contracts?”
The union says it has “alert”Many times, “Paname24, the executive producer of the ceremonies, of contractual practices not in accordance with the collective agreement” artistic and cultural enterprises. “We also highlighted glaring inequalities in treatment and a lack of social dialogue during the preparations for the ceremonies.”he adds.
According to him, after a referral to the Olympic Social Charter committee, two negotiation meetings were held with Paris 2024 and Paname24 at the beginning of July, without any progress.
“A fee higher than the agreed minimum”
“We only discovered these provisions once the artists – mainly dancers – showed us their employment contracts and we discovered that some clauses were not normal,” said the former leader of the CGT, Bernard Thibault, president of the Committee of the Social Charter of Paris 2024, who said he had raised the alarm about this situation on June 10. “These are professionals who are known to be in precarious situations (…) Some will lose money working for the opening ceremony”he warns.
Paris 2024 responded to take “the subject of working conditions of people working for the Games very seriously”. “After verification, we were able to note that our service provider Paname 24 strictly complied with the law, by applying the collective agreements applicable to the profession of dancer”explained a spokeswoman for the Olympic organisers, arguing “a fee higher than the agreed minimum.”
Source: www.liberation.fr
