Louvre, Notre Dame, Versailles face strike closure

The Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, Versailles chateau and a host of other top tourist attractions across France could shut next week due to strike action over planned job cuts, unions warned Friday.

A strike has already kept the landmark Pompidou modern art centre closed to since Monday, and unions have called for workers in museums, monuments and cultural institutes nationwide to down tools from Wednesday.

Strikers want President Nicolas Sarkozy's government to scrap plans to trim state payrolls and reduce the budget deficit by replacing only one out of every two retiring civil servants and reducing cultural subsidies.

Unions say French museums -- which draw in millions of French and foreign visitors every year and can expect to be busy as the Christmas shopping season brings daytrippers to the capital -- will be crippled by the cuts.

"There will be staff meetings in every establishment on December 2 ... and the personnel will decide whether or not to go on strike," Kamal Hesni of the CFDT union told AFP.

"All the major establishments are concerned -- Versailles, the Louvre, the national library, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, the ramparts of Carcassonne, Mont Saint Michel," he said, adding that the Eiffel Tower would not be affected.

Pompidou staff and security guards walked off the job on Monday and after meeting with aides to Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand the next day they decided against going back to work.

They fear 400 of the 1,100 jobs at the centre, known to Parisians as Beaubourg, will be cut over the next 10 years under the plan, which was a campaign pledge by Sarkozy in his 2007 election.

More than 40 percent of staff at the Pompidou Centre are over the age of 50. Legal retirement age in France is 70.

"It began in Beaubourg but we can see that in the other establishments the issue is very sensitive," said the CFDT's Hesni.

Named after the late president George Pompidou, the centre in the heart of Paris houses Europe's leading collection of modern art, a public library, a centre for music research, bookshops, performance halls, a restaurant and cafe.

The centre's modern design caused a sensation when it opened 30 years ago and helped to turn it into one of Paris' major attractions.

Last year it had 5.5 million visitors, which made it the fifth biggest attraction in Paris. The Louvre last year had 8.5 million visitors.

Hesni said that around 25,000 workers across the country will be taking part in the strike meetings.

The CFDT and six other unions representing culture ministry workers gave their strike notice late Thursday.

"No to job cuts, no to reducing subsidies for public establishments, no to the financial disengagement of the state, no to budget restrictions," they said in a joint statement.