The element of the French arts scene likely to be squeezed the fastest is also the most incendiary: France's special unemployment benefits for actors, performers, musicians and technicians, reports The Guardian.
For decades it has been the envy of struggling artists across the world. French people working in the arts and entertainment – from circus clowns, choreographers, actors and musicians to camera operators and sound staff working at state TV – have a special dole system, designed to protect them in the downtime between jobs and sparing them the curse of out-of-work creatives elsewhere in the world: waiting tables or telesales.
Under the artists' unemployment insurance system, paid for by employers and workers' contributions, an actor or technician must work for 507 hours in 10-and-a-half months to gain benefits for the fallow periods between intermittent contracts. Known as the intermittents du spectacle system, it has sparked the French arts world's biggest strikes and most flamboyant street demonstrations whenever a government has sought to scale it down. In 2003, striking intermittents protesting against benefit cuts managed to shut down France's most prestigious theatre festival at Avignon, plunge the major Aix-en-Provence arts festival into darkness, secure the sacking of the culture minister, and then threaten to pull the plug on the Cannes film festival.
The benefits system is due for review again in 2013, with the prospect of another round of strikes if the government riles performers and technicians. Currently 100,000 creative workers benefit from the special unemployment system, but it is running at a huge deficit of around €1bn. The state auditor recently identified "massive and persistent" problems in the system, including abuse of it – often by employers – and warned it "is not sustainable in the current context of public finances".
Jean Voirin, a former cinema technician, and secretary general of the arts branch of the powerful CGT union, was among those who called the strike in 2003. "It's a system that guarantees people can live from their profession," he said. "Stars don't need it but not all actors are stars. There's a free-market offensive in European politics and a campaign by the right in France which says the arts are too expensive and this particular unemployment system is a luxury. We argue the opposite. If an employer wants to hire a worker for short periods but expects them to be fully trained to the latest requirements every time, it's totally normal there should be protection for them.
"The law of the market alone can't define the arts. Plus the arts and creative industries bring a lot of money into the rest of the economy. We saw that when the Avignon festival went dark during the strike; the loss for hotels and restaurants was very high."
Jimmy Schuman, of the Syndicat Français des Artistes Interprètes, the French equivalent of Equity, is a New York-trained actor based in France since 1969, specialising mostly in dubbing French films into English. He was in the intermittent system for decades. "This is unique to France, and it's a great system," he said. "It enables you to totally focus on your profession and not have to be a waiter. In New York every second waiter or bartender is an actor.
"It leaves its imprint; there's great number of live performances available in France and the biggest cinema industry in Europe. The other difference is that training schemes are covered. Between two contracts, you can do a workshop, develop skills."
Whether a costly special unemployment system that privileges actors and arts technicians can survive in an economic environment when scores of other professions are facing similar levels of job insecurity is the question political commentators in France are wrestling with.
Arts economist Françoise Benhamou said the system had become "the general way of working – everyone uses it, all arts technicians". To scrap it suddenly would not be possible in the short- to medium-term because "the entire economic equilibrium of the audio-visual world and theatre is based on it". For example, small theatre companies that can't pay for all rehearsals might pay the 507 hours and afterwards know the rest would be picked up in unemployment benefits. Those tiny companies would be at risk if the plug was suddenly pulled.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.