Olympic bosses paid £18m for their luxury Paris hotel. Now staff are on strike

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Workers at the Parisian hotel that is hosting the International Olympic Committee’s delegation have walked out on strike just one day before the opening ceremony for Paris 2024.

Staff at the Hotel du Collectionneur have gone on strike after claiming they have not received a pay rise for seven years, with chefs, waiters and technical staff staging a two-hour protest at 7am on Thursday morning.

A video posted by Union Départementale CGT Paris (UD CGT), a trade union representing the workers, shows hotel staff lined up in a corridor, with some holding signs that read “Luxury hotel, poverty wages” and “Give us back our social benefits”.

The CGT claims that the International Olympic Committee paid the hotel around £18m for exclusive use during the Games. It added that staff were demanding a pay increase, with the latest round of negotiations failing the day before. The CGT alleges that there have been no improvements to the financial situation of the hotel staff despite the fact that around £8m in dividends have been paid to hotel shareholders this year.

Reports suggest that a two per cent salary increase offer was rejected, leading to Thursday’s strike. One of the staff’s main demands is a ‘13th month’ salary addition: a common standard payout in the luxury hotel sector, this is essentially a bonus, paid in December, of an extra month’s salary.

The hotel management released a statement saying that “negotiations with the unions are underway, without affecting the operation of our hotel”.

“Our teams remain mobilized and committed to ensuring that our services run smoothly.”

This incident is the latest in a list of problematic events ahead of the Olympic Games opening ceremony on 26 July, with 200 performers refusing to take part in a rehearsal along the Seine on Monday, 22 July.

And on the morning of the ceremony, tourists and fans woke up to the news that parts of the rail network, including sections of the Eurostar rail link, had been sabotaged overnight.

Read more: Best hotels in Paris