"La Samar", the big wedding cake of a department store overlooking the scenic Seine, is a fire-trap*.
LA SAMARITAINE STAFF TO STRIKE OVER STORE CLOSURE
PARIS, June 13, 2005 (AFP) - Unions covering workers at the landmark Paris department store La Samaritaine announced a strike from Tuesday midday through Wednesday to protest plans to close the century-old building for renovations required to bring it up to fire safety standards.
That was Monday.
La Samar closed its doors this Wednesday for technical inspection preparatory to a six-year program of renovation and refitting the building to code.
PARIS, June 15, 2005 (AFP) - About 300 of its employees staged a sit-in on the last day of trading, amid fears that the store's owner, the luxury goods house LVMH, will decide not to re-open it after urgent renovation works are completed.Backed by some customers they refused to leave when the art deco structure beside the Pont Neuf bridge in the city centre closed for business at 7:00 pm.
But by 10:00 pm the last handful of protestors left the building.
But last Friday, before the closing:
PARIS, June 10, 2005 (AFP) - At a general assembly Friday morning, the 750 employees were told they will be retained on full pay, though only some 300 - mainly security and administrative staff - will be expected to turn up for work.
Madeleine Charton, union spokesperson for the CGT, crowed:
"We've been promised no redundancies [scil., layoffs]."
Who wouldn't protest the injustice? The full pay aside, we put it to you, which is more profoundly important, the public safety or maintaining at all costs a roost for indifferent sales clerks to have paid coffee breaks? Never mind. It's so obvious.
* Ironically, La Samaritaine takes its name from an old water pump near the Pont Neuf, showing the Samaritan woman giving a drink of water to Jesus.
Is this a department store like the old stores we used to have here? Downtown office-sized building, several floors, spend half the day shopping there, etc.? Even if so, at 700 employees, I'd wager there are no shortage of redundancies already.
