Cannes Film Festival Workers Going Ahead With Strike Action Over Pay Dispute
The strike is on.
After days of tense discussions, the potential strike action from Cannes Film Festival workers that we first reported last week is moving ahead.
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The group, known as the Collectif des précaires des festivals de cinéma (which translates to The Collective of Precarious Workers at Film Festivals), confirmed their plans this morning with an open letter sent to Deadline. Scroll down to read the full letter.
“In a context of extreme vulnerability and absolute emergency to protect our work, and after consultation and vote of the members of the collective, we call for a strike of all employees of the Cannes Film Festival and its sidebars,” the group said.
The collective includes up to 200 French film festival workers — a combination of Cannes workers, including those who work on the Official Selection, the festival’s Marché du Film, and parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week — and workers from other festivals across France. Potential strikers include festival projectionists, press officers, and admin staff. The group has yet to confirm how long or when their strike action will happen. But we understand they are consulting CGT Spectacle, the French Federation of Entertainment, Cinema, Audiovisual and Cultural Action Unions, on strategy.
The group’s strike action is the result of two central issues. They are first rallying against the pay packages they receive from their employers, which they say are inadequate and often do not account for arduous overtime hours frequently clocked due to the demands of their jobs.
The second bone of contention is France’s unique unemployment insurance program for entertainment workers and technicians. Known as Intermittence de Spectacle, the scheme supports entertainment workers on short-term contracts with an unemployment benefit when they are between jobs or projects. 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.
“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,” today’s open letter said.
Deadline has reached out to the festival for comment.
Cannes runs May 14—25.
Open Letter
For a year now, we, members of the Sous les écrans la dèche (Broke Behind the Screens) collective, have been warning about the growing precariousness of the people working in film festivals.
We go from short-term missions to periods of unemployment and despite the intermittent nature of our profession and our striving for the circulation of cinematographic work, our activity does not fall within the French intermittent status benefit plan for show business workers!
The latest reforms of unemployment benefits in France and the one scheduled for July 1st of this year, which will be passed by decree, is further hardening the benefit rules for employment seekers.
These reforms are throwing festival workers in such precariousness that the majority of us will have to give up our jobs, thus jeopardizing the events we take part in.
Therefore, we demand that the organizations that employ us be affiliated to a collective agreement allowing us to be hired under the status of show business worker’s intermittence and that our positions be integrated into the unemployment benefit system, retroactive to the last 18 months.
Our warnings and demands have been received with polite consideration so far, but no concrete measure has been offered by the CNC or the Ministry of Culture. That is why the upcoming opening of the Cannes Festival is leaving us with a bitter taste.
In a context of extreme vulnerability and absolute emergency to protect our work, and after consultation and vote of the members of the collective, we call for a strike of all employees of the Cannes Film Festival and of its sidebars.
Sous les écrans la dèche collective
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