Cannes Movie Competition employees are amongst a collective of French cultural employees who’ve launched a contemporary name to motion over what they’ve described as their precarious and unfair working circumstances.
In a press release shared at the moment, and accessible to learn in full under, advocacy group Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma (which interprets to Below The Screens, The Waste: The Collective of Precarious Staff at Movie Festivals), writes that their makes an attempt to realize contractual rights like unemployment and retirement advantages have been “abruptly blocked.” The group is looking on all French employees to arrange and demand motion at subsequent week’s Cannes Movie Competition.
The group’s principal goals are the identical as we reported forward of final yr’s Cannes Movie Competition, throughout which they executed a collection of small demonstrations. They need to be included in France’s distinctive unemployment insurance coverage program for leisure employees and technicians. Referred to as Intermittence de Spectacle, the scheme helps leisure employees on short-term contracts with an unemployment profit when they’re between jobs or initiatives. The funds are funded via taxes paid by employers. Because of quirks within the rules, many employees at French movie festivals have lengthy been excluded from the unemployment profit. As an alternative, they’re employed and handed flat short-term contracts. The collective is campaigning to be included within the scheme, citing the inherent seasonal nature of the work.
Following final yr’s Cannes demonstrations and a yr of organizing, France’s 4 main unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and FICAM, which represents the administration of France’s movie pageant, drafted a pact to lastly embrace pageant employees within the scheme. Nonetheless, the unions failed to succeed in a last settlement with UNEDIC, the French authorities company that regulates unemployment insurance coverage.
“After a yr of intense efforts, we’re baffled and indignant,” the group writes of their name to motion. “Many people had eked out a meagre residing all yr, stretching skinny salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was within the technique of being solved.”
The letter continues: “A whole bunch of us are ready for the executive course of to be accomplished. Likewise, dozens of festivals are ready to have the ability to provide workers who work for them solely intermittently an acceptable job contract. It is a second name to motion for all employees. If employees can not earn an honest residing from the roles they do at festivals, how will the festivals hold going?”
Sous Les Écrans La Dèche consists of 300 movie pageant employees from throughout France, together with employees who work on the Cannes Official Choice, the pageant’s Marché du Movie, and parallel sections of Administrators’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.
The Sous les Écrans la Dèche motion has some high-profile supporters. French filmmaker Justine Triet wore the group’s vibrant purple pin on her go well with lapel as she walked the purple carpet for Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall at Cannes in 2023. Payal Kapadia was carrying the identical pin as she debuted All We Think about As Gentle on the Croisette in 2024.
Reall the total Name To Motion under:
One yr in the past, we mobilized to acquire higher working circumstances and, notably, to regain “intermittent worker” standing for hundreds of French film-festival employees. We want we may announce that our voices had been heard. True, step one in the direction of organizing our department has been taken. However the “intermittent worker” standing that may entitle us to unemployment and retirement advantages stays out of attain
Final yr, after the Cannes Movie Competition, the Ministries of Tradition and Labor and the CNC notified us that our demand for “intermittent worker” standing had been denied. They stated that we may receive the best to this kind of job contract solely after we drafted an acceptable collective bargaining settlement and submitted it to the federal government.
An official was appointed to expedite issues. He mediated six months of negotiations between pageant employees, commerce unions, pageant organizers, and authorities companies.
The 4 main commerce unions (the CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and the administration of the festivals, represented by FICAM, utilized themselves to drafting an modification masking “Movie and TV Festivals,” to be appended to the collective bargaining settlement present for ESCE (Entreprises au Service de la Création et de l’Événement: Providers Required for Staging Occasions and Reveals).
After 6 months of talks, the modification was signed in December of 2024 by the entire events involved. Administration was represented by the FICAM, the SYNPASE, and LEVENEMENT; labor, by the next unions: F3C, CFDT, CGT Spectacle, SPIAC – CGT, SNRT- CGT Audiovisuel, and SNAJ – CFTC.
The targets sought by all of the events have been to outline and construction the movie and TV pageant sector, and to determine job definitions and pay scales. These specs would make it potential not solely to control durations of employment, but additionally, and particularly, to arrange unemployment compensation for momentary or “intermittent” pageant employees.
An inventory of the job titles eligible for intermittent standing needed to be outlined. These titles would then be built-in into Checklist 4 of companies required for the staging of creations and occasions (Prestation au service de la création et de l’événement), a part of Appendix 8 of French unemployment insurance coverage laws. Our livelihoods, endangered by 2021 unemployment insurance coverage reforms, would not be so precarious.
On April 5, 2025, the Basic Labor Authority permitted the department settlement, with a publication within the Journal Officiel legislative document. All through the method, we had been assured by unions, administration organizations, and authorities representatives that modifying the listing of job titles would merely be an administrative formality. On Might 1st, the modification was due to this fact prolonged to all movie and TV festivals.
At this level, just one hurdle remained. Movie and TV pageant employees would regain their “intermittent employee” rights as quickly as Checklist 4 of Appendix 8 of the unemployment insurance coverage legal guidelines was up to date.
On April 23, the listing of trades was submitted to the UNEDIC, the French authorities company that regulates unemployment insurance coverage. Nonetheless, at this assembly, the events concerned failed to succeed in an settlement. In consequence, pageant employees’ entry to intermittent standing was abruptly blocked for the foreseeable future.
After a yr of intense efforts, we’re baffled and indignant. Many people had eked out a meagre residing all yr, stretching skinny salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was within the technique of being solved.
A whole bunch of us are ready for the executive course of to be accomplished. Likewise, dozens of festivals are ready to have the ability to provide workers who work for them solely intermittently an acceptable job contract.
It is a second name to motion for all employees. If employees can not earn an honest residing from the roles they do at festivals, how will the festivals hold going?
