By: Isabelle Wang
As Paris prepares for its groundbreaking Summer Olympics opening ceremony on the Seine, a high-stakes labor clash over dancer pay and safety could steal the spotlight from the city’s grand spectacle.
From July 26, 2024 – August 11, 2024, the Summer Olympics will take place in Paris, France. The opening ceremony will consist of dancers, musicians, and many other kinds of performers. This will also be the first time the ceremony is held outside, and not in a stadium. The opening ceremony will take place on the bridges and the riversides of Seine River.
Many of these dancers threatened to go on a strike, refusing to work until their employer complied with their demands. During a rehearsal about 200 of the dancers stood and raised their fists as a form of protest. These workers are unionized into labor unions. Labor unions are organized groups of workers who unite to make decisions about conditions affecting their work. They protested that the full-time dancers of dance/ballet companies were being treated better compared to the 250 to 300 dancers employed on temporary contracts.
The S.F.A.-C.G.T. Union is the organization that represents these artists and performers. On Wednesday, after a meeting with the organizers of the event, they announced that a deal that increased broadcast royalties for the temporary contract dancers had been made. Broadcast royalties are payments given to people or organizations when their work is shown on television, radio, or other media platforms. The S.F.A.-C.G.T. Union said that the dancers agreed to lift their strike threat after the deal. Although the payment of some dancers has been increased, the union was unsuccessful in their demand for money for housing and transportation that would help foreign dancers participating in the opening ceremony.
Another problem was that some dancers positioned on some of the French capital’s rooftops are not receiving adequate protection from lead dust that has accumulated there over the years because of erosion, or that was deposited there more recently by the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral. Ghislain Gauthier is the secretary general of the C.G.T.-Spectacle. C.G.T.-Spectacle is a union that represents workers in the spectacle and performing arts sectors. “Normally, an expert laboratory has to come to evaluate the toxicity,” Gauthier said. “We don’t know if that was done.”
The Paris 2024 Organizing Committee were relieved to come to an agreement and called their discussion constructive. The committee said in a statement, “The opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be a unique moment of celebration and unity, and we are delighted that it will be held under satisfactory conditions for all those involved.”