Cannes Film Festival Workers Criticize Management & French Government Over Stagnant Salary Talks And Warn Of Max Exodus From Industry

deadline.com:

France’s Precarious Film Festival Workers Collective has warned that the Cannes Film Festival and France’s other major film events will be at “risk” due to a widescale exodus from the industry by festival staffers after plans they drew up to resolve their ongoing pay dispute were “rejected” by the French culture and labor ministries.

The collective, which includes staffers from the Cannes Film Festival alongside workers from other festivals across France met with Cannes Film Festival management, the CNC, the French Ministries of Labor and Culture, the CGT, and France’s other major entertainment unions this week in Cannes to discuss a plan to streamline the complex hiring and compensation process for French festival workers.

In a statement sent to Deadline, the collective said “Despite the urgency of the situation shared by all parties,” the French Ministries of Culture and Labor “rejected any hypothesis of exceptional or transitional measures to rapidly resolve the problem of festival workers’ living standards.”  You can read the whole statement from the collective below.

The group states that the French government and all the parties involved in the talk did, however, pledge to iron out a long-term plan to restructure their pay packages and include festival workers into France’s intermittence system, which ensures regular income for workers in the entertainment sector.