Center Pompidou: the library joins the strike movement

The staff of the Center Pompidou library, which is due to close for five years for work from 2025, have in turn voted to strike in solidarity with their colleagues at the Parisian museum of modern art, we learned from a source on Tuesday union. A rally in support of the museum strikers also brought together some 250 people on Tuesday at midday, near the building also called Beaubourg, noted an AFP journalist.

The demonstrators, mainly museum staff and their unions (CGT, CFDT, FO, Unsa, SUD), were joined by a few LFI and EELV elected officials, passers-by and employees of the Louvre museum and the neighboring Picasso museum, as well as of employees of the Eiffel Tower.

The striking staff, worried about their jobs and their missions in view of the closure, continued their movement until December 15, which they maintain by rotation between services (security, ticketing, speakers, etc.) and which caused a dozen days of closure since it started in mid-October. The employees of the Public Information Library (BPI), housed in the museum and frequented by many students, in turn voted on Tuesday to strike which they will begin on Thursday, according to the terms of their notice, it was announced learned from the SNAC-FSU union (FSU Culture).

They also demand clarification regarding the conditions for moving the library to another building in the 12th arrondissement of the capital during the closure and denounce the “ransacking” of their book collection with “the destruction of 100,000 books” out of approximately 350,000 recorded in total, according to Yannick Henrio of SNAC-FSU.

Inaugurated almost half a century ago, the Center Pompidou must close gradually from 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation work, planned until 2030. The staff affected by the move, 480 out of a thousand in total, must be redeployed at the Grand Palais (under construction and due to reopen in 2024), in collection storage premises in the north of Paris, as well as at 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 (Essonne) scheduled to open in the summer of 2026.