Stitched-up: striking Paris hotel chambre maids mount catwalk protest
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When the Paris Fashion Week opened this week to the usual glitzy catwalk shows of next year’s haute couture spring and summer designs for the happy few, just a mile away from the venue an unhappy group of sub-contracted workers serving the luxury Park Hyatt hotel held a counter ‘sidewalk show’ of their own, in a protest over pay and “deplorable” working conditions. On part-time contracts that they claim in reality bordered full-time working hours, they began an unlimited strike on September 20th to demand overtime payment, full-time working contracts and a yearly bonus payment. In this reportage of still photos, video and audio, photographer Patrick Artinian captured the anything-but-dull défilé outside the embarrassed hotel on the chic rue de la Paix.
September 24th, rue de la Paix in central Paris: the chamber maids turned up to give their own take on the Paris Fashion Week which had opened at the Carrousel du Louvre the same morning. They gathered in a carnival-like atmosphere close to the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme five-star hotel where they were working for a sub-contractor company called Française de services. In a statement issued by the CGT trades union, they described their working conditions as “deplorable” and denounced the hotel as the only one with an official top-rated ‘Palace’ designation in the capital to use sub-contracted staff.
