Louvre Museum Partly Closed Due to Unplanned Staff Strike
On Monday, June 16th, in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris, tourists unexpectedly found the famous museum closed. The reason for this turned out to be a staff strike. The strike was caused because of the staff’s discontent with the workplace conditions, such as overcrowding and a shortage of staff, leaving many of them exhausted. They responded to this on Monday with a sudden work stoppage leading to a forced closure.
At first, the visitors were told that the museum was going through a staff “social movement” since strikes have to be announced in advance by French law. Christian Galani, a spokesman for the C.G.T.-Culture labor union, later confirmed that this was an unauthorized strike or a wildcat strike. He stated that the staff were so exhausted that they couldn’t stand the worsening conditions getting even worse. Overcrowding is mostly responsible by tourist groups that take up a lot of space. Some effects of these conditions are reflected in the fact that over 200 jobs have been lost over the past 15 years. Galani says that “There are too many tourists, and the rooms are in very bad condition.”
Furthermore, despite President Emmanuel Macron promising an loosening of workplace regulations, “nothing had changed.”
The museum was later reopened at 2:30 pm after 4 hours and closed at 6 pm. The Louvre has yet to confirm which of the staff members decided to return to work. This strike impacted thousands of visitors, who waited in long lines under the scorching sun.
The Louvre has always struggled with overcrowding of tourist traffic. Before the pandemic, there were up to 45,000 visitors per day, though it was lowered to a limit of 30,000 people at the start of 2023. Later in the same year, the entrance fee was raised from 17 euros to 22 euros to offset the energy costs and support the free admission programs there. However, the biggest headache for the staff was the painting of the Mona Lisa, with thousands of visitors crowding to get a selfie or to just admire the centuries-old piece of art.
To solve this problem, Macron announced on January 28th that the Mona Lisa would be moved to its own separate exhibition space that is connected to the museum, which requires a separate ticket.
This incident follows the protests in Italy, Portugal, and Spain against mass tourism. Because of concern for rising housing costs and quality of life aspects that can be disrupted by tourists, protestors held up signs that said “Go Home Tourists!” They claim that these effects are all brought on by tourists
