A cleaning company rented on Airbnb recruited Ukrainian women in an irregular situation and underpaid them while imposing an infernal cadence.
It was another time, before war broke out in Ukraine, millions of refugees flee and the European Union decides to offer them protection worth authorization and the right to work in all states. At the time, between 2018 and 2020, Oksana, Yulia, Tetiana, Mariana, Ivanna, Galyna and others, all Ukrainian, were in an irregular situation in France. They were not allowed to work. All, however, were cleaning in apartments rented on the Airbnb platform in the Paris region. They hoped that the accumulated pay slips would ultimately request their regularization. This is what their compatriot and patroness promised them, Nataliya Kruchenyk, at the head of the VIP Services cleaning company.
Thursday, June 16, this 39 -year -old Ukrainian appeared before the Paris judicial court for “treating aggravated human beings”, “concealed work” and “employment of unknown foreigners”. Two other VIP Services employees were also continued to trade in human beings. Beside them, Quentin Brackers de Hugo, the manager of the Concierge Society Hostnfly, of which VIP Services was a provider, was prosecuted for knowingly resorted to the services of clandestine workers.
washing the floor on all fours
Of the twenty-eight victims identified by the Central Office for the Combat against illegal Work and Labor Inspectorate, only one had papers. It was she, Oksana Veykogne, Franco-Ukrainian, who alerted the CGT union in early 2020 and who testified at the helm. She told the untenable rates there, the salary penalties imposed in the event of a poorly evaluated cleaning, the times she had to wash the floor on all fours, buy maintenance products herself or pass the mop with a linen pyjamas. She says humiliation.
In a summary of the facts, the court added to this list the absence of paid leave, remuneration often reaching less than 50 % of the hourly minimum wage, delays of several months in payments despite supplicant sms, undeclared employees …
The main defendant is described by the court as “an influential person” within his community, who frequents the Ukrainian church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris and still presides over an association, the address, which offers Ukrainians of France administrative domiciliations or legal support for regularization.
“None [of cleaning women] has been regularized” thanks to their owner, nevertheless insisted Maxime Cessieux, the lawyer for civil parties, while Nataliya Kruchenyk defines himself as a bosses, “confidant”, “confidant”, “confidant” who considered his employees “as [his] family”. She cannot be explained in cascade complaints and feels “betrayed”. She recognizes that she knew that her employees were in an irregular situation and not having “declared every hour” but justifies: “I could not get out of it financially.”
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