Cannes Festival Workers are going on strike

The Cannes Film Festival, the year’s most prestigious and most glamorous celebration of cinema, is set to kick off on May 14. But the event may face a serious setback, as over 200 French film festival workers (both Cannes employees and workers from other festivals across France) are calling for a strike, according to Deadline. These workers, whose employment is mostly through short-term contracts, are fighting primarily for better pay and unemployment insurance, as outlined by an open letter signed by Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma (which translates to, “Broke behind the screens: The Collective of Precarious Workers at Film Festivals”).

The festival workers argue that their pay is typically inadequate and doesn’t account for frequent overtime required by the demands of the job. These workers are also not included under France’s unemployment insurance for entertainment workers and technicians (“Intermittence de Spectacle”), despite the seasonal nature of festival employment.

“The latest reforms of unemployment benefits in France and the one scheduled for July 1st of this year, which will be passed by decree, are further hardening the benefit rules for employment seekers,” reads the group’s open letter. “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 which 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 to the unemployment benefit system, retroactive to the last 18 months.”

It’s unclear yet what strike actions the collective will take. However, the strike obviously has the potential to seriously disrupt Cannes, given that signatories on the open letter include workers involved in all events under the festival umbrella in roles ranging from projectionists to press officers to admin staff. The collective has been raising awareness for their cause for a year now. Though they have gained significant support from the French film industry (like Anatomy Of A Fall director Justine Triet wearing the group’s pin on the red carpet of last year’s festival, ahead of winning the Palme d’Or), they also haven’t seen significant changes.

“The festival heads are generally not against us and are concerned about this situation, but they are just turning around and saying they’re also in complicated financial situations and claim to have limited power,” one member previously explained to Deadline. “After one year, we’re now in a situation where everyone knows we exist and our requests. We are now hoping we can come to an agreement with our employers.”

You can read the full open letter below:

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
festivals.collectif@gmail.com