Russian president Vladimir Putin and local officials examine plans for one of the regional cultural centres in 2019 Kremlin.ru
Russian president Vladimir Putins 120bn ruble ($1.6bn) project to build a string of regional cultural centres with branches of leading federal museums and theatres has come under fire after staff of the foundation in charge of it were laid off and claimed they were not paid.
In a video posted on YouTube on 7 September, two dozen former staff members of the National Cultural Heritage Foundation, which is building the centres with funding from Russian state oil and gas profits, said that 120 contracts had been terminated in June with no notice, no severance pay and four months of salary arrears. The group appealed directly to the president to address the “mass dismissal of employees”.
Former staff members of the National Cultural Heritage Foundation said that contracts had been terminated in June with no notice or severance pay
President Putin has not visited any of the sites, in Kaliningrad, Sevastopol, Vladivostok and Kemerovo, since the Covid-19 pandemic began. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has declined to comment directly on the layoffs, saying only on 8 September that “a certain optimisation took place” at the foundation. He suggested that the workers should sue because the “non-payment of salaries contradicts existing laws”.
An investigation by the news website Meduza found that ex-employees filed scores of lawsuits against the foundation for back pay in July and August. Moscows Presnensky District Court partially upheld a claim from a deputy department head, ruling that he must be paid nearly 1.4m rubles ($18,700) in salary, compensation and other payments, though not the full damages he sought. The court is processing several dozen further lawsuits.
According to Meduza, the pandemic deepened existing problems with the foundations finances, which were solely underwritten by the secretive state oil and gas company Rosneftegaz. A bureaucratic approvals process obstructed spending and delayed salary payments even before Rosneftegaz imposed drastic cost cuts at the foundation in April, amid falling oil and gas prices. More than 80% of the foundations staff are estimated to have lost their jobs as a result.
Natalia Volynskaya, the foundations president, tells The Art Newspaper that staff were cut due to “the reduction of tasks assigned to the foundation”, leaving 21 current employees. As a non-profit, the foundation depends on sponsorship and all expenditure is “controlled by the donor”, she says. She insists, however, that the layoffs complied with employment law and that “there were no delays in wages at the time of downsizing”. The foundation is co-operating with a law enforcement investigation in Kemerovo regarding the claims of non-payment, Volynskaya says.
Meanwhile, construction workers are taking legal action against the projects contractor Stroytransgaz, a company owned by GennaRead More – Source
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