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Exclusive: CGT-Spectacle, the main trade union for people employed in France's entertainment and cultural sector, officially supports the planned strike action by festival workers to be held during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival I'm ready to do that.
Earlier this week, film festival officials from the Cannes Film Festival, parallel divisions of Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Fortnight, and many other French film festivals, attended the festival during the 81st Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25). announced that they had voted to go on strike. ) Requests for salary and employment status were ignored.
“CGT Spectacle supports the demands and strike movement… and we are also in close contact with these employees,” a spokesperson tells Deadline, formally confirming the union’s support. It added that a statement was likely to be issued in the coming days.
Groups representing festival workers plan to hold several public protests during the two-week event, and this week launched an online petition in support of their cause, with French industry figures posting on social media sites. was widely disseminated. The petition is private, so we cannot confirm how many people have signed it at this time.
Officially supporting the CGT and Spectacle unions would be a coup for festival workers, who have yet to make clear what form their strike action will take.
This umbrella union includes nine different guilds representing professionals working across the entertainment and cultural sectors, including performing arts, music, and fine arts.
He is also traditionally a member of the Cannes Film Festival Board of Directors. A spokesperson for CGT Spectacles said the fact that the union has members on the Cannes board does not influence its stance on the festival workers' movement.
Earlier this week, Le SPIAC-CGT, a member of CGT Spectacle, which represents the interests of audiovisual and film production staff, became the first union to express official support for festival workers.
The French director's guild La SRF (La Société des Réalisatrices et Réalisateurs), which organizes Directors' Week and is also a member of the GCT Spectacle, has not yet issued an official statement on its position.
United under the banner of the Precarious Film Festival Workers' Collective (Le Collectif des précaires des Festivals de cinéma), festival officials have two demands.
First, they want better pay packages that allow them to work long hours when events are at full throttle.
Second, they want to be officially classified as temporary entertainment workers, known as intermittents du spectacle. This status gives them access to France's special benefits system for people working in the entertainment sector. This benefit is in keeping with the fact that they are often employed on temporary contracts and receive income throughout the year.
People working at the French film festival, which spans around 600 individual events, are currently employed in a variety of statuses and have traditionally relied on general unemployment benefits to survive between contracts.
They say future unemployment benefit reforms will likely make them ineligible for support, and they will be forced to exit the sector as a result.
