Staffers on strike since October 20 over working conditions at the new Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris settled November 3. A union representative said the government had made enough concessions to allow staffers to return to work; the strikers won their demand that the scholars area and public reading area be closed Mondays through January 31 next year and on Monday mornings through June 30.
The strike began just 11 days after the national library went into full operation October 9. Picketing the facility, which overlooks the Seine in southeastern Paris, the 800 strikers (of 2,800 staffers) complained of a below-standard work environment, an inadequate automated system, and a flood of untrained temporary workers hired to rush the facility into service. A November 6 Reuters report said the coup de grace was the breakdown of the library's new computer system, which jammed after only a few hundred entries.
Posted November 16, 1998.