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French bus drivers slip into skirts for work to denounce shorts ban amid sizzling heatwave

Bus drivers in the western French city of Nantes have sported skirts to work to show bosses their anger over being banned from wearing shorts despite the punishing heatwave.

Published: 21 June 2017 13:24 CEST
French bus drivers slip into skirts for work to denounce shorts ban amid sizzling heatwave
Photo: Screengrab Presse Ocean

UPDATE: French bus drivers win right to wear shorts after pulling skirt stunt

 

A sweaty bus in any big city in France is not the place to be right now, given the heatwave that is currently baking much of the country.

So spare a though for drivers, particularly those in the western city of Nantes, which have had their request to wear shorts to work turned down.

The bus drivers denounced unacceptable conditions of work and made their point by wearing skirts for the day on Tuesday.

“Our uniform is not appropriate for these high temperatures. We envy women at moments like this,” said Didier Sauvetre a driver from the CFDT union told the local Presse Ocean news site.

“Given that skirts are an authorized outfit in the company, we are wearing skirts,” he said.

“A modern outlook would allow us to wear long shorts from time to time. This is a form of discrimination. Women drivers can wear skirts, but not the men,” said Gabriel Magner, another union rep.

“In this heatwave, the temperatures are reaching close to 50C behind our windscreens. And given we have no air conditioning on our buses, it’s unbearable,” he added.

Although there is nothing in France’s labour code that bars workers from wearing shorts, the decision often comes down to the company and depends on the type of job. The labour code does say workers can down tools if they believe their health is in danger due to working conditions.

The bus company Semitan however believes shorts are not appropriate for the work of a bus driver.

However drivers say once they are locked inside the driver’s cabins no one can see them anyway.

Semitan did take a step towards a compromise in summer last year when it rolled out a new line in “summer trousers” for drivers, that were lighter. But there’s still no sign of them agreeing to shorts.

This is not the first time bus drivers in France have complained about their uniforms.

In April 2013 The Local reported how bus drivers in Marseille were set to strike because of restrictive working conditions – in other words their trousers were too tight.

“I won’t be wearing them,” one Marseille bus-driver said at the time. “You’d think we work for [car repair company] Speedy! The shirts are alright, but these pants are far too tight,” he added.

“We reject the bottom half of this uniform,” added a union chief.

 

 

WORK

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Switzerland's prestigious Bejart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues.

Published: 13 June 2021 12:07 CEST
Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil
Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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