Dancers Among Several Labor Groups Threatening to Strike During Paris Olympics

The Olympic opening ceremony is just three days away. On Wednesday, Olympic opening ceremony dancers filed a strike notice for Friday night’s festivities and the rehearsals leading up to it.

“While the slogan ‘Doing better together’ is displayed today everywhere in the streets of Paris, we note that our employment conditions have not been discussed together, nor for the better!” the union representing the artists, SFA-CGT, said in a statement.

The union cited vast differences in payment for union and nonunion workers and issues with housing and understudies.

On Monday, those artists stood on the banks of the Seine with fists in the air during the filming of the opening ceremony, refusing to dance.

The dancers are far from the only labor group who has threatened to strike due to working conditions leading up to the Games.

On Tuesday, the union representing a little more than one-tenth of airport workers at major hubs Orly and Paris Charles de Gaulle filed a strike motion for Friday, both day and night. The airport group and unions agreed last week for bonuses and lifting a strike planned for July 17, but want bonuses increased from roughly $325 to $1,085, according to the French English-language news outlet The Connexion. Paris will be a no-fly zone for six hours during the opening ceremony.

The CGT, a large public union, filed strike notices in April for the entire Olympics and Paralympics for about 5.7 million public workers in health care, local authorities, and the state. Amid political changes in the country earlier this month, union leaders of the CGT and the more center-left CFDT have continued to push for or threaten strikes.

Some of the other industries where workers have been striking or issued a strike notice during the Games:

• Police officers demanding bonuses and better working conditions threatened to disrupt airports in January and the torch relay in April.
• Train workers successfully went on strike in May to get Olympic bonuses.
• Garbage collectors lifted their strike notice for the Games in May after negotiating better pay.
• Private security guards had a one-day strike in June for better pay and working conditions. The Games have a massive security shortage, which led organizers to scale down crowd capacity for the opening ceremony.
• Taxi drivers are set to go on strike Friday through Monday for better pay, working conditions, and agreements with rideshare apps.

Though the opening ceremony is Friday, competition at the Olympics actually begins Wednesday, with tournaments kicking off in men’s soccer and rugby.