Open Letter by PinchukArtCentre Trade Union members
5th March 2020
TransitoryWhite is publishing an open letter signed by the former mediators of the PinchukArtCentre without any changes in support of their position.
We are former workers of PinchukArtCentre, one of the largest contemporary art centres in Eastern and Central Europe. By this letter, we are appealing to all artists, curators, art managers, museum workers, and other workers in the field of arts for solidarity and support.
We, 30 guides and mediators of PinchukArtCentre, were fired shortly after we created a trade union. We were fired without any explanations or notifications after a series of threats. We believe that our union activity was the reason for our dismissal.
PinchukArtCentre is the most popular art centre in Ukraine with nearly 2000 visitors per day. For 14 years it has been introducing the artworks of prominent contemporary artists to the Ukrainian audience: Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Marina Abramovic, Mauricio Catellan, Ai Weiwei, Luc Tuymans, Olafur Eliasson, Rachel Whiteread, Jan Fabre and others. The institution regularly participates in Venice Biennale presenting its own pavilion. Its contribution to the Ukrainian art scene is well known both inside the country and abroad.
While the institution has an established reputation in the art world, we, as workers, faced systematic violations of our labour rights. We did not have the right to take sick days, our probation periods lasted up to 6 months, the terms of our employment contracts usually did not reflect the real working conditions, some of us worked off the books, all of the workers had to provide unreasonably detailed personal information to the HR-office. In October 2019, we formed a trade union in order to establish a dialogue with the administration and to solve the existing issues.
During the first month, we achieved some success. We got the possibility to take sick days and paid leaves. These rights were guaranteed to us by labour law but were never secured earlier. Before that, we had to come to work upon pain of dismissal even when we were sick or got hoarse.
Yet, some of the management representatives became hostile to our intentions. When we asked the administration to employ our under-age colleague Nikita Bunin who was working off the books, our managers tried to fire him. Moreover, he was banned from entering the building of PinchukArtCentre. Only when the trade union declared the intention to appeal to the authorities, our colleague was employed officially. We consider this attempt to fire Nikita to be an act of intimidation.
After this situation, we were threatened several times with mass dismissal and extorted to provide the list of the union members. The chief of the union Anastasia Bondarenko was visited a few times by one of the management representatives conducting a check of her work in an importunate manner. Moreover, the administration tried to ban her and another union member, Maria Svyryda, from entering the building of the art centre.
Since we were threatened with mass dismissal, we tried to initiate the process of collective bargaining. We hoped to make a collective employment agreement which would establish reciprocal rights and obligations. Yet, for 2 months the administration ignored our intentions by the time our labour contracts expired.
Usually, during the period of exhibition change, we had meetings with artists, curators and managers and collected information of art pieces in order to get prepared for the work at the next exhibition. Yet, during the last exhibition change, which took place in January 2020, we did not receive any messages from our managers. Moreover, any attempts to address them were totally ignored. Our labour contracts were not prolonged.
All 30 mediators and guides were fired without any notifications and explanations. Some of us worked at PinchukArtCentre for more than 2 years.
The practice of mediatorship, which existed at PinchukArtCentre for 7 years, was abolished. On the opening day of the new exhibition, mass dismissal of mediators was explained to the journalists by the need “to experiment with the forms of interaction”. Yet, for us, it is obvious that we were “punished” for our union activity.
When the situation became public, PinchukArtCentre tried to explain its position within an open letter. In it, the administration declared the intention to replace mediators by “innovative means”, namely “audio guides” combined with guided tours. It claimed that such a decision was made in September 2019. Yet, the claim is beneath criticism. The letter did not explain why all of the guides were fired along with mediators. Moreover, during November-December 2019, PinchukArtCentre hired 3 new guides - Xenia Pereplotchykova, Sofiia Akhmed, Kostya Gumennyi - who were selected after the complicated examination process. During the interview, they were told that their intentions must be of long-term character. Besides, it is suspicious that the “innovative” idea to replace mediators by “audio guides”, which “appeared” more than half of the year ago, is still not fulfilled.
The open letter of PinchukArtCentre was written in a humiliating style. Within it, we were accused of “telling lies”. The mass dismissal was explained by the “incompetence” of former workers. After its publishing, some of the current workers of PinchukArtCentre and its sympathizers, including artists, started public mockery of fired guides and mediators.
Shortly after the letter was published, two nominees of PinchukArtCentre Prize, whose works are being exposed at the current exhibition, refused to participate in the artistic contest. In such a way, they expressed solidarity with all of the fired guides and mediators. We are immensely grateful to Pavlo Grazhdanskij and Valentina Petrova for their act of support!
We consider the open letter of PinchukArtCentre to be an attempt to discredit its former workers in order to keep attention away from the systematic violations of our labour rights. We are concerned about the humiliating style of the letter and the acts of public mockery performed by some of the current workers of PinchukArtCentre. We consider it to be an offence against all of the former mediators and guides, not only those fired.
During the conflict, we received a lot of messages from former mediators telling their stories of unethical treatment while working at PinchukArtCentre. We are grateful to them for trust and support! We realized that we were only a link in the chain of a long story of unethical approach towards workers. This story must come to an end.
On behalf of all of the former workers of PinchukArtCentre who signed on to this letter, we propose a way of resolution of the conflict. These are the conditions.
1. PinchukArtCentre apologizes to the fired mediators and guides for all of the violations of their labour rights, acts of intimidation, public allegations of lies and attempts of public defamation;
2. PinchukArtCentre restores the practice of mediatorship in a public dialogue with artists, curators, trade union representatives, former mediators and guides, media etc. All of the fired mediators must be prioritized in employment;
3. PinchukArtCentre creates conditions for the functioning of the trade union and concludes a collective employment bargain with the workers.
Until ALL these conditions are met, we call artists, curators, lecturers and visitors to BOYCOTT PinchukArtCentre.
List of former workers of PinchukArtCentre who supported this letter:
Nikita Bunin, Elza Zherebchuk, Ekaterina Volchok, Maria Buyalo, Dana Hordiichuk, Dasha Dakhnovskaya, Sofia Mostova, Lyusya Akhunova, Bogdan Moskalenko, Aliia Sakisheva, Ira Egizarova, Andriana Sabov, Nastya Dzyuban, Svitlana Bohdanets, Veronika Yadukha, Elizaveta Olijnyk, Anna Olizarowska, Andrii Myroshnychenko, Alina Oprelianska, Alyona Mamay, Anastasia Berezhetska, Tatiana Ogneva, Kostya Gumennyi, Julia Gordiychenko, Ollie Vasilevska, Maxim Soklakov, Xenia Pereplotchykova, Olga Kovalchuk, Maria Obesnyuk, Taras Fostyak, Yehor Semenyuk, Lilia Voytkiv, Sofiia Akhmed, Gleb Stepanov, Ksenia Isakova, Ksenia Korobkina, Alina Troyan, Diana Lyagutko, Igor Pastukh, Valeriya Zubatenko, Anya Wtikenwneider, Artur Mykhalevych, Yevgenii Kazak, Viktoria Yermolenko, Maria Svyryda, Kateryna Levchenko, Svetlana Vedeneeva, Margarita Marushevskaya.
