Pending measures to “calm the social climate” the city of Marseille withdraws from the Mucem board of directors

The City of Marseille has suspended its participation in the Mucem board of directors pending measures “to calm the social climate” after the contested return of its president Pierre-Olivier Costa, we learned on Monday, November 9 from a municipal source.

In a letter sent on November 5 to the Minister of Culture Catherine Pgard, of which AFP had a copy, the deputy mayor in charge of cultural facilities expressed surprise at the return of Pierre-Olivier Costa “without prior information to the administrators and other stakeholders of the museum”. Gwenaël Richerolle further notes that “no information has been communicated, on the one hand on the follow-up given to several internal reports, and on the other hand on the measures taken to resolve, in dialogue with the trade union organizations, a crystallized social conflict”.

Suspended from his duties at the end of June after accusations of toxic management and moral and sexual harassment which he refutes, Pierre-Olivier Costa announced that he would resume his duties on November 1 at the head of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (Mucem). This announcement provoked the anger of the staff who voted the next day for the principle of a renewable strike. In the absence of Pierre-Olivier Costa, who, according to union sources, had not appeared within the walls of the museum, the agents had decided to suspend their movement, threatening to resume it as soon as he “set foot on the site again”.