New Workers’ Rights Concerns for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Left to Right in Abu Dhabi: Lee Tabler, CEO of Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company; Richard Armstrong, director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; architect Frank Gehry; Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Guggenheim's chief officer for global strategies and director, Guggenheim Bilbao; Frederick Henry, former Guggenheim trustee

I know you're all waiting for tomorrow's NY Times special "Museums" section to hit the stands. (Pieces are already online, but strangely, when I hit the Museums Special Section link tonight at the bottom of the "Arts" page, I got some strangely familiar stories---the ones that appeared in last year's "Museums" section!) On Twitter, I found this year's link.

But there's fresh story on the Times' Arts homepage tonight that caught my eye and sparked my concern.

Nicolai Ouroussoff reports:

A group of more than 130 artists, including many prominent figures in the Middle Eastern art world, says it will boycott [my link, not his] the $800 million Guggenheim museum being built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, unless conditions for the foreign laborers at the site are improved....The artists asked the Guggenheim to pressure the government to force employers to reimburse workers for recruitment fees and to appoint an independent monitor to ensure that international labor standards would be met during the museum's construction.

Wait a minute! What ever happened with the detailed Employment Practices Policy (EPP), signed last September by the Guggenheim and Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC)? Ouroussoff doesn't mention that agreement in his piece.

The issues now being raised by the protesting artists were directly addressed in the summary of that EPP agreement. On the subject of "recruitment fees," that summary (on P. 2) states:

The contractor shall be solely liable for and shall pay all recruitment fees for an employee. No one involved in the construction of TDIC's projects shall utilise the service of any agent or agency charging an employee any recruitment fee.

Was all of this this just "lip service," as one of the protesting artists declared? One of the concerned artists is Emily Jacir, who two years ago had an exhibition at the Guggenheim.

Ouroussoff got hold by phone of Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim's director, who is in Dubai. The Times' architecture critic learned this:

Mr. Armstrong said that the Guggenheim has been working with the development agency [TDIC] to address these issues, and last week the agency announced that it was strengthening regulations to make contractors reimburse recruitment fees, and that it was appointing an outside monitor to address workers' complaints.

Why is this still a work in progress, not an accomplished fact? This seems to be an issue that just won't go away.

UPDATE: More on this issue, including statements by the concerned parties, here.