Rien ne va plus: casinos face jackpot night strike by croupiers

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The Independent
By John Lichfield in Paris
31 December 2004


Croupiers and other workers in France's booming casino industry are threatening to go on strike tonight - traditionally a jackpot night - unless their wages and working conditions are improved.

Negotiations were under way yesterday to avert the strike but scores of the 188 casinos in France, including some of the largest ones, seemed likely to be closed or disrupted. Behind the unrest, there lies a profound social and cultural change in the nature of casinos in France during the past 16 years.

The received image of the French casino is a white-stuccoed building on the Riviera, resembling an enchanted palace from The Arabian Nights , in which supermodel lookalikes and James Bond wannabes look on while a croupier warns: " Rien ne va plus !" before setting a small ball tinkling in a roulette wheel.

The truth is more prosaic and depressing. The glamorous outsides of the casinos remain the same but the nature of the business, and the customers, has been transformed since machine à sous , or one-armed bandits, were first permitted in 1988.

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