Louvre faces fresh test as staff weigh strike after jewel heist and June shutdown

PARIS (AP) — Workers at the Louvre in Paris will on Monday vote to go on strike or continue talks with the government after months of mounting pressure on the world’s most visited museum, which unions have described as being “in crisis.”

Hundreds of employees will gather behind closed doors in a 500-seat auditorium inside the Paris landmark where unions will present the outcome of recent talks with Culture Minister Rachida Dati before voting by a show of hands.

The outcome could again bring the vast institution to a standstill.

The crunch vote comes as the museum struggles with the aftermath of a daylight jewel heist and an earlier staff strike that abruptly shut the Louvre and stranded thousands of visitors beneath I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid. Last month, the Louvre also announced the temporary closure of some employees’ offices and one public gallery because of weakened floor beams.

During the robbery on October, thieves used a basket lift to reach the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with pieces of the French crown jewels. A Senate inquiry released last week said the thieves escaped with barely 30 seconds to spare, citing broken cameras, outdated equipment, understaffed control rooms and poor coordination that initially sent police to the wrong location.

For employees, the high-profile incident crystallized long-standing concerns that crowding and thin staffing were undermining security and working conditions at a museum that welcomes millions of visitors each year.

Those tensions spilled into public view in June, when striking workers brought the museum to a halt. Visitors with timed tickets waited in long, unmoving lines outside as the doors failed to open — an image that rippled across social media and underscored how fragile operations at the sprawling institution had become.

Unions say talks with the government have made progress but remain incomplete.

Separately, the Culture Ministry said Sunday it has tasked Philippe Jost, who oversaw the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris, with a mission to propose a deep reorganization of the Louvre following the findings of an administrative inquiry.

Three rounds of discussions last week produced “quite important progress” on promises of additional full-time hires and increased state funding, Alexis Fritche, general secretary of the culture wing of the CFDT union, told The Associated Press. But the proposals must be confirmed in writing and do not yet meet all demands, he said.

“It’s not completely satisfying,” Fritche said. Employees are “quite determined,” he added, while noting their strong attachment to keeping the world’s most visited museum open to the public.

In their strike notice to Dati last week, the CFDT, CGT and Sud unions said the Louvre was in “crisis,” with insufficient resources and “increasingly deteriorated working conditions.”

If workers vote to strike, the action could last just one day — the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays — though the strike notice is open-ended.

The result of the closed meeting is expected to emerge later on Monday morning. Lawmakers are due at the museum shortly afterward, as France watches to see whether its most famous cultural institution can stay open under growing strain.

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John Leicester in Paris contributed