Since July 21, like other cultural and leisure establishments, sports halls have the obligation to control the health passes of their customers.
However, the application of the measure is restrictive for professionals who see a wave of subscription cancellations looming and require more time to prepare.
Read also: Is it legal to fire an employee without a health pass?
From the first day of application of the pass, last Wednesday, some users of French sports halls expressed their dissatisfaction on social networks but also directly with places complying with government announcements. The gyms had to deal with many questions about the practical application of the measures. The operational and technical set-up is also complicated because the teams are "
understaffed
" after confinement. And some employees also refuse to control the famous sesame.
Some answers were given this Friday by the director of the cabinet of the Minister of Sports to the Active FNEAPL union.
Identity checks should, for example, be carried out at random by sworn officers and not by operators.
The sanitary pass is also put in place if the capacity of the room is greater than 50 people without the possibility for the operator to decide himself on the introduction of a gauge to bypass the obligation, as has however been done. done in several sports halls in France.
A similar debate arose for cinemas.
And the government finally allowed cinemas to adopt a gauge of 49 people without a pass.
A wave of terminations in a tense climate
In a sports hall in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, the manager deplores a "
surge of termination requests on the day of July 21, with sometimes a lot of aggressiveness
". "
We are called collaborators
". Some customers have also chosen to suspend their subscription until September as offered by several gym chains. "
We try to satisfy everyone
" explains the manager. The long-term impact, however, remains “
difficult to measure
”.
Fitness Park also confirms having received "a
lot of termination requests following the implementation of this pass
". At the national level, the unions observed an immediate effect of the government measure. Virgile Caillet, general delegate at Union Sport & Cycle - a union represented in 1,500 fitness rooms - evokes "
escalations of incidents from the very morning
". He notes "
an extremely strong aggressiveness on the part of a screaming minority
" in a day of "
great confusion
".
In some gyms, the figures are alarming. Thierry Doll, president of the Active FNEALP union takes the example of a fitness club in a rural area in eastern France “
Before the health crisis, the room had 700 members, when the number reopened in June. had already fallen to 120 and since the introduction of the health pass, the room has further deplored 12 terminations on the first day
”. In addition to these cancellations, customers ask to be reimbursed, citing the fact that the health pass "
was not included in the general conditions of use".
Cash flow problems could then arise even though the operators had made "
substantial investments
To ensure the respect of barrier gestures and which they had only reopened for a month and a half.
For Lilia, a member of a Lyon sports hall who does not want to be vaccinated, the health pass is "
aberrant
".
For now, his club manager has set up a 49-person gauge for now, while indicating that he would start controlling the pass even from below 49 people by July 31 at the latest. .
If she recognizes that it is "
not the fault of the rooms
", she intends to cancel her subscription or suspend it if the situation does not improve, with the hope that "
everything can change with the anti-pass demonstrations
".
Many Internet users seem to share his opinion.
Professionals on the front line
On site, employees are also confronted with recalcitrant.
The manager of a Parisian sports hall is however reassuring.
At the entrance rare are people who do not have the health pass.
"
Failed to represent only 5 to 10% of our customers, it is a small minority
".
It must be said that in Paris 70.42% of inhabitants have already received a first dose according to the CovidTracker site, against only 57.61% nationally.
Differences could therefore appear between the territories.
Those who are refused entry are sometimes disappointed but above all surprised: "
Members do not understand why we are starting to control now when restaurants can wait until the beginning of August
".
Professionals had very little time to prepare clients, and the time it took between the first dose and getting the pass caught athletes off guard. Sports halls are "
on the front line in the face of the tension of the French
" explains Thierry Doll, president of the Active union. The situation can then quickly escalate because "
employees do not always know how to react
". Faced with clients who sometimes let their anger erupt, the president of the union asks himself: "
What do you want to do when people
who are two meters high come in front of our reception secretaries and refuse to present their pass?"
".
To read also: Robin Rivaton: "The health pass is the best way to find a normal life"
The unions therefore ask for an alignment of the time limits for the establishment of the health pass with the restaurants and have filed an interim suspension with the Council of State.
They hope in this way to be able to contain the losses of operators in a sector already hard hit by the crisis.
