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Guides to monuments and museums on the sidelines with the health crisis

2020-04-07T15:27:30.360Z


Unable to exercise their activity, the speakers deplore not being eligible for the aid fund created by the Ministry of Culture.


Some 10,000 tour guides, most of whom are self-employed or on short-term contracts, are not eligible for short-time working. They are therefore penalized by the coronavirus pandemic well beyond the confinement period, Hélène Norlöff, president of their national union, told AFP on Tuesday.

Read also: Franck Riester creates a support unit for festivals threatened by the pandemic

Bringing together categories with very different tax statuses - lecturers in museums, guides for tourists in the summer - this profession, "scattered" and poorly known, deplores being outside the radar screens, not having been eligible for the aid fund of 22 million euros created by the Ministry of Culture.

Even in the unlikely event that the museums reopen in May, our customers will not come. We lose our income from May to September

Hélène Norlöff, president of the national union of tour guides.

Home conference guides do not receive any per diem, while the spring months are their peak season. “Our situation is all the more tragic since, throughout 2019, we suffered the yellow vests and then the transport strike. We arrived at the confinement point of view, without cash reserves , says Hélène Norlöff.

Read also: MoMA, Whitney, MoCA ... Closed due to coronavirus, American museums are firing

“We normally work 9 to 10 months a year (periods outside of school holidays). Even in the unlikely event that the museums reopen in May, our customers will not come. We lose our income from May to September, ”she says. A large part is not salaried: temporary workers, fixed-term contracts, independent self-employed workers. Guide-lecturers and tourist guides form the two branches of a profession united under the same name in 2012. The former know their low season during the summer, their activity being concentrated on an associative audience or active seniors.

Eligible for the solidarity fund

Questioned by the Arts Journal , Armelle Villepelet, secretary general of the National Federation of Interpreter and Speaker Guides, confirms that "the seniors who constitute a significant part of our clientele will not be there . " For tourist guides, it is the absence of tourists, Chinese and others, which should slow down their activity considerably.

Thanks to the National Union of Liberal Professions (UNAPL), guide-lecturers have made a place for themselves on the list of sectors that can benefit from the solidarity fund created by the decrees of March 30 and April 2 in favor of companies having suffered a 50% drop in their turnover in March, compared to 2019.

Read also: Franck Riester, "The future of our cultural model is at stake"

The Minister of Culture Franck Riester announced at the end of March an "emergency aid" of 22 million euros for several cultural sectors "hit hard" by the confinement (music, spectacle, book and plastic arts), promising " other specific measures ” for the most fragile cultural structures.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-04-07

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