The relentless downpour that fell on the world’s biggest film festival on Friday did not stop Cannes “essential workers” from staging a protest outside the Riviera’s most iconic palace hotel, ahead of a larger rally scheduled for Sunday.
“Cannes is not just about glitz and glitz. It’s also about the workers, people without whom the festival wouldn’t even take place,” said Céline Petit, a local representative for the CGT union, which is leading the resistance against a reform that Macron has already made in law.
Protests on French soil against pension reform, some of them violent, have led local authorities in Cannes to ban demonstrations in a wide perimeter around the Palais des Festivals and the Croisette, the city’s palm-fringed boulevard.
After failing to overturn the ban on protest in court, the CGT found a way around it, organizing a small rally of hotel workers on private land, in front of the front porch of Cannes’ best-known palace hotel, among whose guests this year is film icon and festival favorite Martin Scorsese.
The use of a private hotel meant that the gathering was technically permitted, provided the protesters – a mix of union representatives and workers in the hotel and restaurant sectors – numbered no more than a few dozen.
Braving the rain, they unfurled a large banner reading “No to pension reform.” The elegant setting, with the entrance to the newly refurbished Carlton in the background, made up for the lack of people.
“Hotel staff often don’t have a voice,” said Ange Romiti, a CGT member representing staff at the Carlton hotel. “This is our chance to get our message across when the eyes of the world are on Cannes.”
Without workers, there is no Cannes
Macron’s controversial pension reform raises the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and toughens requirements for a full pension, a move the government sees as necessary to balance the books amid changing demographics.
Unions, however, say the changes are profoundly unfair, hitting mostly women with unfinished careers and early-starters in physically demanding jobs: the same “essential workers” hailed during the covid pandemic.
Without the Carlton’s 680 staff, and the thousands more who work in the Riviera’s crucial hospitality sector, “absolutely nothing would happen in Cannes,” says Romiti. “But cleaners, porters, waiters, cooks…they’re all exhausting jobs, it’s impossible to continue until you’re 64,” he added.
The government has also faced harsh criticism for the timing of the reform, after the pandemic and in the midst of an inflationary crisis.
“Of course, it was not a timely move, let alone an elegant one,” Romiti said. “Neither was it democratic,” he added, referring to the government’s use of special executive powers to bypass Parliament, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Frenchmen rejected the reform.
“Our democracy has suffered a serious blow,” said the union representative. “It’s important that people keep fighting and remind the government that this is not right.”
job insecurity
Protesters gathered outside the Carlton claimed the government’s pension scheme threatens to exacerbate structural problems in a sector already suffering from severe shortages.
“Young people are leaving these professions,” Romiti said, noting recruitment difficulties. “They will be even less willing to do it if it means lifting mattresses and carrying heavy trays at age 64.”
The film industry itself is facing a job hemorrhage, says Mathilde, a festival worker who came to the Carlton protest in solidarity with hotel staff. She is a member of the ‘Collectif des précaires des festivales de cinema’, which has launched an awareness campaign on the growing job insecurity in the sector.
Mathilde says the government’s recent cuts in unemployment benefits have made life miserable for the seasonal workers that film festivals rely on, while the latest pension review will make it harder for workers with interrupted careers to qualify for A Hostel.
“It’s not worth working at festivals anymore, and festivals can’t do without us,” he said.
It is a message that the CGT also sent before the festival, when it threatened to cut off electricity during the 12-day film show, as well as at Roland-Garros and the Monaco Formula One GP, in protest of the pension reform. So far, the union has not pulled the plug on Cannes, but the threat remains.
France has been rocked by months of mass protests – the biggest in decades – against a deeply unpopular pension reform that the government of President Emmanuel Macron pushed through parliament without a vote.
stop in hollywood
This year’s Cannes festival is being held against the backdrop of labor unrest on both sides of the Atlantic: American screenwriters have called a rare strike.
The Screenwriters Guild of America is calling for salary increases, new contracts for the streaming era and safeguards against the use of Artificial Intelligence in screenwriting, a demand that Hollywood studios have rejected.
The work stoppage has been a recurring topic of debate during the numerous press conferences in Cannes, and the members of the jury have supported the strike on the opening day of the festival.
“My wife is currently unemployed with my 6-month-old son strapped to her chest,” said Cannes jury member Paul Dano. “I’ll be there when I get home.”
On Thursday, Ethan Hawke wore a T-shirt reading “Pencils Down” during a press conference following the screening of “Strange Way of Life,” Pedro Almodóvar’s 31-minute queer western, which garnered rave reviews. .
The following day, veteran actor and activist Sean Penn described the studios stance on AI as “a human obscenity” during a press conference for his new film, “Black Flies,” a gritty drama about New York paramedics directed by Jean -Stéphane Sauvaire.
“The first thing we should do in these talks is change the Producers Guild and title them as they behave, which is the Bankers Guild,” he said. “It’s hard for so many writers and so many people across the industry not being able to work right now. I guess we’ll have to do some soul-searching and see which part holds up.”
Adapted from its original in French
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