Artists and performers voluntarily evacuated the famous “Odeon” theater in Paris, which was the starting point for a national movement that spread to cultural sites closed due to the Corona pandemic.
They left the place at about 6 o’clock Sunday morning, after their sit-in since last March 4, and removed all the demanding signs that they had been placing on the front of the theater, leaving nothing but an orphan sign with the phrase “Goodbye” on it.
The Secretary-General of a union supporting the protest movement, Donny Gravoli, said, “Staying in the Odeon theater has become a fuse for a confrontation with the administration, and this is what we do not want.”
He pointed out that “the idea is to continue the battle in another place for as long as possible.”
The movement to occupy theaters began from the Parisian Odeon before expanding to about a hundred halls in various parts of France, with demands to provide government protection for workers in the artistic performances sector intermittently due to the health crisis, and to withdraw the reform of the pension insurance system, which will take effect in July.
“The protest movement prevented the site from being reopened to the public naturally, similar to other French theaters on May 19,” said the officials at the Odeon theater.
The system of intermittent employees in the artistic performances sector is considered a French characteristic, and it includes about 12 thousand artists and technicians who receive annual revenues provided that they have worked 507 hours during the previous 12 months, and President Emmanuel Macron granted them a grace year ending in August in which these conditions are not applied. Due to the Corona pandemic, it was finally extended by four months.
Source: “AFP”