More than 600 people, representing the entire mountain ecosystem, demanded Wednesday, December 2 in Bourg-Saint-Maurice in Savoy the right to work from the Christmas period, despite the government veto.
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The crowd, massed in front of the station - symbol of the public facilities necessary for the life of the valleys - brandished broken red hearts to express "
the feeling of not being listened to
", explained Jean-Luc Boch, mayor of La Plagne and President of the Association of Mayors of Mountain Stations (ANMSM).
The inhabitants of the towns and resorts of the Haute-Tarentaise valley made the trip: Sainte-Foix Tarentaise, Val d'Isère, Tignes, etc. In total, some 16,000 inhabitants per year.
"
Our economic activity depends largely on tourism and here we feel an injustice to have been the only ones put aside for the recovery in mid-December
", confided Guillaume Desrues, mayor of Bourg-Saint-Maurice / Les Arcs .
An attendance without skiing as recommended by the Prime Minister?
“
We don't even know what we are allowed to do!
Will we be able to open the ski area even without a lift for tobogganing or snowshoeing?
"Asks Desrues, who calls for"
clear rules and a fixed date for the ski lifts
".
Independent ski instructor, Dominique Pistre had 14 days of commitments with clients for the holidays which were canceled after the government's latest announcements of a ski-free Christmas.
“
I am worried.
If I don't ski at Christmas, I'm in the open next month and we don't even know when we're going to be able to work,
”denounced the 60-year-old.
Next to him, five friends aged 18 to 20, who were planning to launch into working life.
For Baptiste, Adrien, Tom, Léo and Ilan, the season is blocked.
Their contracts for snow plows, ski lift employees, catering extras or ski instructor training are all frozen.
"We
'll have to train in something else, guys!"
".
A similar event was taking place at the same time in Bourg d'Oisans, in Isère, on the same demands for the stations of the neighboring department and its massifs of Oisans, Belledonne, Vercors and Chartreuse.
It brought together 1,200 people, according to the prefecture.