Closed rooms: the Louvre investigates

The question of surveillance staffing levels at the Musée du Louvre is crucial, not only for the security of the artworks but also for the opening of its rooms. As we have often written, the Louvre is largely a closed museum. The rate at which rooms are open has probably never been so low. The “guaranteed opening plan” (an internal term, known by the acronym POG), which already provides for significant daily closures, is not even being respected. It is more of a “guaranteed closure plan”: rooms listed as closed are indeed closed, and some of those supposed to be open are, in reality, also closed.

This issue of room closures was addressed on Monday 20 October during the meeting in the auditorium where Laurence des Cars came to speak to Louvre staff. She began by discussing staffing levels, asserting — as she did before the Senate — that while numbers had declined since 2010, they had begun to rise again since her arrival in 2021. This claim was met with some incredulity from the audience (those in the Louvre auditorium). Laurence des Cars then referred to the Louvre’s social reports available on the website.
However, these reports, found on the museum’s server, only go up to 2023. The 2024 report has not yet been presented to the trade unions, although this should normally have been done in March. It will only be presented in December. Laurence des Cars therefore cited figures that no one can see except the management.

Above all, these reports are difficult to use. They never show the breakdown of “welcome and surveillance” staff between “welcome” and “surveillance” functions, although we know the breakdown by gender, by category of agent, or by status. What’s more, the scope can change from one report to the next — a common phenomenon in this type of report, which prevents any year-on-year comparison.
It is therefore difficult to determine who is right: the staff and the Senate, who highlight a decline in staffing levels, or Laurence des Cars, who claims that since her arrival, surveillance and security staff (a term that does not appear in the social reports) have increased by 5.5% thanks to direct recruitment permitted by the Ministry of Culture.

Regardless of this question, the issue of why the number of closed rooms continues to rise was raised by staff during the 20 October meeting. They rightly do not understand how increasing staffing levels can result in more rooms being closed.
The management’s response is utterly baffling and demonstrates, if further proof were needed, the erratic management of this museum. We transcribe here the responses given, under Laurence des Cars’ supervision, by her colleagues.

We learn that last week, they were working on this issue. “This is really a point we are currently examining, on which we need to be precise […] there may be issues of absenteeism, but there may be other issues. And that’s what we are working on. […] We’ve been looking into this for some time now. But why can’t we align a POG that, in terms of the number of rooms, hasn’t changed much, with staffing levels that, as we’ve just told you, haven’t changed much either? It’s a real issue for us.”

The Louvre management, which closes rooms to the public every day, is therefore asking itself: but why is it closing these rooms? It would seem to be questioning the reasons for its own actions. One might think this is a joke.
They nevertheless put forward a hypothesis: “when we look, day by day, at the reasons why certain rooms are not open, it’s not just a question of staffing levels. It’s also a question of work, of operations that have been delayed, whether major works or works on the collections.” Let us recall, as we have observed on many occasions (this was already the case under Jean-Luc Martinez’s presidency), that rooms are often closed under the pretext of purely imaginary work, as confirmed by the guards we interview during our visits.
This explanation did not seem to satisfy the staff. One of them spoke up: “You’re telling us that if sectors are closed, it’s generally because there’s work going on. That’s an explanation that’s hard to accept: if there’s work, those are closed sectors, so there are agents free to open other parts of the museum. So that really doesn’t seem logical to me.”
This agent suggested another explanation (in addition to the lack of staff): absenteeism. “Perhaps we should take into account absenteeism, which must have skyrocketed, I think, in recent years, given the deterioration of working conditions.”

Absenteeism does indeed seem particularly high at the Louvre… This is clearly a managerial issue. Staff motivation and their replacement in case of absence are issues that any organisation must know how to manage. Clearly, this is not the case at the Louvre, where staff continue to raise the alarm about the deterioration of their working conditions.
Whatever the case, the results are clear: in recent days, the number of rooms closed in addition to those already planned in the “guaranteed opening plan” has been constantly rising, to the point where it is impossible to be sure of seeing a particular object for which one has travelled specifically. The insufficient number of guards is a problem for combating theft, but it is also a problem for the service provided to visitors.