Louvre Staff’s Work Stoppage Shutters Museum for Hours

On Monday morning, when droves of visitors lined up to enter the Louvre Museum to see some of the world’s most revered art, like the Mona Lisa, they were met with disappointing news. The famed tourist magnet was not open, and did not open for several hours because of a “social movement” started by staff, a museum spokeswoman said.

Throughout the morning and under the blaring sun, lines of tourists snaked over the museum’s plaza and beneath the giant glass-and-steel pyramid designed by the architect I.M. Pei. But inside the museum, workers were meeting to discuss issues including workplace conditions and crowd management.

Christian Galani, a spokesman for the C.G.T.-Culture labor union, which includes workers at the Louvre, said in an interview that at the end of their monthly meeting, the staff members decided to perform a wildcat strike — an unauthorized work stoppage without a vote by union membership.

“We didn’t plan to go on strike, but the people are so exhausted, they can’t support the conditions getting worse and worse,” Galani said.

A spokeswoman for the museum said in a statement that the staff members’ actions were not a strike but a “social movement” that caused the Louvre to close for about four hours.

A strike, according to French law, has to be announced.

Galani said that in the last 15 years, some 200 jobs at the Louvre had been lost, and that despite President Emmanuel Macron of France’s promise to overhaul the museum in January, so far “nothing had changed” and the average worker was stressed.