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Moulin Rouge fined for racist hiring policy
A court has fined management of the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret 10,000 euros for racial discrimination in refusing to employ black people outside of its kitchen.
The court also slapped a 3,000 euro fine on Micheline Beuzit, an employee who told a Senegalese-born job seeker "the Moulin Rouge doesn't take blacks in the theatre, only in the kitchen".
An investigation by state prosecutors found the Moulin Rouge, whose scantily-clad can-can dancers are a huge tourist draw, had not hired a coloured person as a performer or waiter for 40 years, although many are employed as kitchen staff.
Abdoulaye Marega, who was turned away when he applied for the job in January 2001, was awarded 4,500 euros in damages.
French anti-racism group SOS Racisme, which helped Marega bring the case, was awarded 2,300 euros.
Mr Marega says the judgment "showed that France, a country of human rights, was not a racist country".
The Moulin Rouge started out as a bawdy music hall in the 19th century and its distinctive neon-edged windmill arms poke out above the rooftops in the seedy Paris district of Pigalle.
It was most recently depicted in a film starring Nicole Kidman.
Growing tamer with age, the club now draws coachloads of foreign tourists and groups of well-dressed executives to its nightly dinner and dance shows, famed for their lines of chorus girls with ostrich-feather headdresses and racy high-kicks.
Staff manager Andre Poussimour told the court since the case was opened, the Moulin Rouge had taken on two coloured people in its auditorium.
The ruling comes as dancers last Saturday local time, staged a walk out at the equally famous Paris Lido nightclub, complaining over shoddy working conditions they say have left them too exhausted to do the high-kick.
Nine of the club's 44 dancers, famed for their towering ostrich feather headdresses, barely-there costumes and can-can dancing, announced they were going on strike some 30 minutes before the curtain lifted.
The Lido, which goes back to the 1920s and started its dinner shows in 1946, found replacements and says it hoped the walk-out was a one-off.
http://abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-23nov2002-23.htm
