After days of discussions and negotiations, it can now be confirmed that French film festival workers who we first reported last week have set plans in motion to stage widespread strike action during this year’s Cannes Film Festival over pay issues.
Collectif des Precaires Des Festivals De Cinema has confirmed their plans through an open letter addressed to Deadline this morning; you can scroll down and read it below to access its entirety.
“Given our current dire situation and to safeguard our work, as per consultation and vote of all collective members of Cannes Film Festival employees and its satellite events, we call on them all to join together for a strike action on Monday,” stated a collective.
The collective is composed of around 200 French film festival workers – both those working on Cannes’ Official Selection, Marche du Film and parallel sections like Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week — as well as from festivals across France. Potential strikers could include projectionists, press officers and administrative staff from such festivals – though when or how long any strike action may occur is yet to be determined; consultation with CGT Spectacle (The French Federation for Entertainment Cinema Audiovisual Cultural Action Unions) on strategy is ongoing.
Striking workers have two primary grievances against their employers that motivate this strike action: inadequate pay packages and not accounting for overtime hours logged during job tasks, as well as lack of recognition from these employers for overtime worked by staffers in demanding jobs.
France is famously well known for their unemployment insurance program for entertainment workers and technicians known as Intermittence de Spectacle, providing them with short-term employment contracts with unemployment benefits when between jobs or projects. Unfortunately due to regulations many workers at French film festivals do not qualify for unemployment benefits and instead hire themselves with flat short term contracts instead; due to seasonal nature of work however this collective campaigned hard in favor of inclusion into this scheme as soon as possible.
Today’s open letter asserted: “We demand that organizations which employ us be bound by collective agreements granting intermittent show business workers status and that our positions be included into unemployment benefit systems.”
The festival has yet to comment on this strike action.
Over the last year, members of our collective Sous les ecrans la deche (Broke Behind the Screens) have warned about the increasingly precarious working conditions at film festivals.
As cinematographic professionals who frequently switch from short-term missions to periods of unemployment, our profession does not fit within France’s intermittent status benefit plan for show business workers!
France’s recent reforms of unemployment benefits, with one scheduled for July 1st which will be approved via decree, have further tightened up eligibility rules for employment seekers.
These reforms are placing festival workers in such dire straits that most will likely need to abandon our jobs, thus jeopardizing events we organize and participate in.
Therefore, we request that the organizations employing us sign a collective agreement enabling us to be employed under show business worker intermittent status and that their positions be included into the unemployment benefit system retroactively for at least 18 months.
So far, our warnings and demands have been taken in good grace by CNC or Ministry of Culture officials; however, no concrete measures have been put forth as solutions; so the Cannes Festival’s imminent debut leaves us feeling disillusioned.
Due to extreme vulnerability and absolute emergency to protect our work, and in consultation and vote by collective members of Cannes Film Festival employees and sidebars. we call for a strike.
Under their protection is collective deceit.
