As of: February 25, 2024, 6:45 a.m
By: Kathrin Reikowski
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Strike at the Paris landmark and the Eiffel Tower as a milk cow: Employees are worried about their tower © dpa/ Michael Evers
A taste of the Olympic Games in Paris?
Eiffel Tower employees go on strike.
They want their tower to be better protected.
Paris - There is no end in sight: the employees of the Eiffel Tower are not working for the fifth day in a row, but are demonstrating.
However, they are not interested in higher wages or better working conditions, but rather in maintaining their tower.
The employees' accusation: Rust is eating away at the Eiffel Tower, while the city of Paris is making millions of dollars from ticket sales and saving on maintenance.
Even advice from the builder is said to have been ignored.
The city denies this.
Eiffel Tower workers go on strike – Paris attraction closed to tourists
The operating company tried to mediate between the strikers and the city - but apparently without success.
Written assurances are expected from the city of Paris, a representative of the CGT union said on Friday after hours of negotiations, as the newspaper
Libération
reported.
These only got underway after France's powerful CGT union leader Sophie Binet called on Mayor Anne Hidalgo to negotiate on Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, Culture Minister Rachida Dati., an arch-rival of the socialist mayor Hidalgo, has intervened in the debate about the Eiffel Tower: The Eiffel Tower must finally be placed under monument protection, then the state can take over technical and scientific control.
This would mean that France's most famous building would become their responsibility.
“It has been standing for 135 years, but for how much longer?” - Employees worried
“It has been standing for 135 years, but how long?” read a poster in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Thursday.
Specifically, it's currently about the Eiffel Tower's new coat of paint.
According to the strikers, the important advice of architect Gustave Eiffel was no longer followed.
Eiffel stipulated that the tower had to be painted once every seven years, then the most popular attraction in Paris would last forever.
Instead of new splendour, there is now rust and the tower is in a worrying condition.
“The building is in very good condition,” emphasized the mayor’s first deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, in an interview with the
France Info
channel .
The city didn't miss anything, just postponed the final coat of paint because of the corona pandemic.
And then, while removing old layers of paint, toxic lead was discovered, which delayed the work.
After all, it involves applying 60 tons of paint.
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Paris tourists sometimes take the Eiffel Tower situation with humor – “you would only see fog anyway”
Negotiations are set to continue on Saturday, but the Eiffel Tower will remain closed for the time being.
And if the “dame de fer” (“lady of iron”), as the Parisians affectionately call the landmark, does not reopen by Sunday lunchtime, it will be the longest strike in the history of the tower, which was completed in 1889,
Libération
has already calculated
before.
Five months before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris, the strike at the Eiffel Tower is also raising concerns about wider protests that could paralyze the city and the Games.
There could also soon be a strike among the owners of the book stalls on the Seine.
The tourists are partly angry, partly relaxed.
One of
LeParisien
's social posts says humorously about the fact that you can't access the upper platforms: “It doesn't matter.
With the weather we've had for days, you would only see fog from there anyway." (dpa/kat)