The Guggenheim appears to have lost all patience with the Gulf Labor Coalition, the watchdog group of artists and others concerned with the welfare of migrant workers who are building museums on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island. Instead, the Guggenheim should lose patience with the slow and still inadequate progress that’s been made in implementing essential labor reform.
In its latest report, issued at the end of last month, GLC summarized its on-site researchers’ new findings regarding the progress (or lack thereof) in safeguarding construction workers’ rights.
In its testy response to GLC’s allegations of “underpayment,” “chronic problems with food” and unspecified “deteriorating work conditions” on other Abu Dhabi projects, the Guggenheim (which has not yet begun its own construction, beyond preliminary site work) stated the following [emphasis added]:
The Gulf Labor Coalition’s research continues to single out the Guggenheim for attack among the cultural institutions planning projects on Saadiyat Island and others already established in the Gulf. We believe this treatment is unfair. [Actually, the GLC report says that “we must extend our campaign to include the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and other Saadiyat projects by calling for broader support from the artworld.”]
….Gulf Labor’s research also makes it clear that the group and its affiliates will use the Guggenheim as a vehicle for media attention, no matter the reality of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project on the ground. This is irresponsible and inconsistent with the dialogue in which we have engaged with leaders of Gulf Labor for more than five years now.
These attacks also disregard the significant curatorial and programing work underway that is advancing the goal of the future museum to foster dynamic cultural exchange [worthy goals, but not if achieved through unfair exploitation of workers].
GLC’s latest report renewed its call for: reimbursement, through a debt settlement fund, of recruitment fees improperly charged to workers; establishment of a living wage; worker representation in mechanisms intended to safeguard laborers’ rights.
Notwithstanding what the Guggenheim, in its response to the report, said was “measurable progress” in addressing workers’ rights issues, GLC maintained that “despite repeated assurances that the Guggenheim Foundation and TDIC [Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Company] shared our goals, they have yet to deliver any tangible results on behalf of workers.”
Neither side backed up its broad claims with hard facts or statistics.
Evidence that TDIC is continuing its efforts to address concerns about workers’ rights is its upgraded Employment Practices Policy, issued last month. What caught my eye was this section on “Women’s Rights” (emphasis added):
By UAE Law, a female employee’s remuneration shall be equal to that of a male if she performs the same work [a big “if”].
Women Employees are entitled to:
—Maternity leave with full pay for a period of 45 calendar days following a delivery; and
—During the 18 months following the delivery date, a female Employee nursing her child shall be entitled to two additional nursing intervals each day for this purpose, neither of which shall exceed half an hour.
Notably missing: any pledge of non-discrimination in hiring.
It seems to me that it’s high time for the Guggenheim and TDIC, which have repeatedly postponed construction, to fish or cut bait. In its response to GLC’s latest salvo, the Guggenheim has once again offered assurances that “a building contract has not been awarded for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and construction of the Frank Gehry-designed building has not yet begun” and that “the Guggenheim and TDIC have held ongoing discussions about TDIC’s plans to safeguard conditions for workers.”
One can only guess that the apparent stalemate might be due, at least in part, to Abu Dhabi officials’ continued inability to satisfy Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong that the workers’ rights principles enshrined in written documents can and will be honored in practice. Past history is not encouraging.
What’s more, TDIC’s response to the latest GLC report, obtained by the Art Newspaper‘s Julia Halperin, seems to admit that the problem of exorbitant (and prohibited) recruitment fees charged to migrant workers in their home countries is beyond Abu Dhabi’s (or the Guggenheim’s) control: “We would encourage Gulf Labor to focus its efforts by approaching the governments of the workers’ home countries to tackle the issue at its source.” (New York University retroactively “tackled the issue” by promising to repay shortchanged construction workers at its Abu Dhabi campus.)
It is now increasingly clear that good intentions are not, in and of themselves, adequate antidotes for deeply entrenched, unconscionable practices. It may be time to consign Frank Gehry‘s Arab agglomeration to the Guggenheim’s long list of unbuilt satellite museums.