Center Pompidou: social conflict bogs down

A meeting between the unions of the Center Pompidou, where some of the staff are on strike, its management and the office of the Minister of Culture ended in an “impasse” on Tuesday, we learned from reliable sources.

Inaugurated almost half a century ago, the Pompidou Center must close gradually from 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation work, planned until 2030. Its staff fear for their jobs and missions and have went on strike on October 16, causing, since then, eight days of closure of the large museum of modern art and the establishment which also includes a library and a number of cultural mediation spaces.

“After two hours of meeting, we note that the minister's office has refused to commit to four of the fundamental points of the protocol,” denounced the inter-union (CGT, CFDT, FO, Unsa, SUD) in a press release, calling for a new general staff meeting - a thousand agents - on Thursday "in the face of this impasse". A strike notice has been extended until December 15.

In question: a single site bringing together all activities and missions during the closure, maintaining the current employment ceiling, guaranteeing non-outsourcing of activities, missions and services until reopening, particularly with a view to forecasts of retirements which represent approximately 25% of the workforce. The unions also demand “a guarantee for each agent of the right to return to their initial position”.

In a telephone press briefing, the office of the minister, Rima Abdul Malak, recognized “two blocking points”: it excludes the redeployment of agents in a single location during the closure and any promise of non-outsourcing of missions, considering that it is “too early to predict the organization of the establishment when it reopens”.

He specified that the staff affected by the move, 480 in total, would be redeployed to the Grand Palais, to collection storage premises in the north of Paris, as well as to the library moved to a building in the center of Paris, then, for around fifty of them, on a new creation and conservation center in Massy (Paris region) scheduled to open in the summer of 2026.

He also assured that their remuneration would be maintained during the closure and that there would be no forced departure, each agent returning to “their position or an equivalent position upon reopening, adjusted in favor of the new cultural project”. The president of the Center Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, assured him that he would “work for a positive exit” from this social conflict. The cost of the work on the Center Pompidou is estimated at 260 million euros, that of its new cultural project at around 200 million euros.