Strike shuts doors of French landmarks

Tourists were shunned from the Louvre museum and other French tourist sites on Thursday, as striking staff voiced their opposition to job cuts in the public sector.

AFP - Striking staff shut down the Louvre museum and other French tourist sites on Thursday, cranking up their fight against public sector job cuts just as Paris prepares for the Christmas holiday season.
   
Strikers blocked the entrance to the Louvre, turning tourists away as Wednesday's strike in other venues spread to one of the capital's biggest attractions, whose art masterpieces draw eight million visitors a year.
   
The action also closed popular monuments including Notre Dame cathedral, the Sainte Chapelle -- a 13th-century chapel in the heart of Paris -- and the Arc de Triomphe war memorial, said the National Monuments Centre that runs them.
   
The open-ended strike was called last week by all seven unions representing culture ministry employees to protest government plans to drastically trim the civil service by replacing only half of all retiring employees.
   
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand met with union leaders late Wednesday, but there was no breakthrough and Mitterrand said the planned job cuts would go ahead.
   
"This reform is being enacted by a government that was duly elected. This reform will be implemented," he told France 2 television.
   
The strike looked likely to continue on Friday.
   
The Louvre had managed to stay open on Wednesday, offering half-price tickets, but the scores of visitors turning up there on Thursday found themselves shut out in the rain.
   
Katie Rowe, a 20-year-old student from Arkansas, complained of missing her chance to see the Mona Lisa and other artworks as she stood with her friends outside the Louvre's landmark glass pyramid.
   
"We were planning to stay all day here and at the Musee D'Orsay," she told AFP. "This was pretty much our last chance. I don't know what we'll do now."
   
The Musee d'Orsay, home to a collection of Impressionist art, remained closed after the strike began there on Wednesday. The spectacular Chateau de Versailles closed its doors for lack of staff on Thursday, a spokesman said.
   
Ranma Mo and her boyfriend Gavin Lam came from Guangzhou province in southern China on their first trip to Paris wanting to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo at the Louvre but had to leave on Thursday unfulfilled.
   
"There are some great paintings inside, some masterpieces," but the couple missed them, Lam said. "Some people come a long way -- if people are striking, surely they'll be disappointed."
   
The Louvre's directors blamed picket lines set up by strikers at the entrance for the closure and insisted that enough staff had turned up to work to allow the museum to run normally.
   
In Paris, visitors also found themselves locked out of the Rodin sculpture museum and the Gustave Moreau museum, and some chateaux outside Paris were shut down, including Azay-Le-Rideau in the Loire Valley.
   
Another major art venue, the Pompidou Centre of modern art in Paris, has been shut since staff walked off the job on November 23.
   
Unions argue the plan to slash state payrolls will severely undermine services at museums.
   
"How are we supposed to reconcile the desire to ensure Paris attracts more tourists with the reality that there will be fewer resources allowing the city of lights to stand out from the other capitals?" said Joseph Thouvenel from the CFTC union at the Pompidou Centre.
   
France is the world's top tourism destination, drawing tens of millions of foreign visitors every year.

Date created : 2009-12-03