Striking festival workers threaten Cannes 2024
If there’s one thing the French love more than rich desserts, it’s going on strike. A labor action is brewing on the Riviera this week, and it just so happens to be during the most high-profile event of the season: the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival.
The Festival workers—the fine folks that ensure no one dares bring une petite bouteille d’eau into the Palais de Festivals, a building that seems immune to air conditioning—are mounting a strike action, as per a report in Deadline.
The Collectif des précaires des festivals de cinéma, which includes those connected to the principal Cannes slate as well as sidebars like Director’s Fortnight, are demanding higher pay due to “arduous overtime hours” and for employment benefits following the short-term gig. “Due to unique regulations, many workers at French film festivals are excluded from the unemployment benefit. Instead, they are hired and handed flat short-term contracts. The collective is campaigning to now be included in the scheme citing the inherent seasonal nature of the work,” their statement read.
“We demand that the organizations which employ us be affiliated to a collective agreement allowing us to be hired under the status of intermittent show business workers and that our positions be integrated into the unemployment benefit system,” the statement continued. (The full open letter is here.)
This year’s festival, with Greta Gerwig leading the jury and a competition slate including new work from Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, David Cronenberg, Sean Baker, Paolo Sorrentino, and others is due to kick off in one week. Will labor and management be able to come up with a solution in time? Let’s hope the negotiators aren’t all on strike!
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