It was another time, before war broke out in Ukraine, millions of refugees fled and the European Union decided to offer them protection equivalent to residence permits and the right to work in all states. At the time, between 2018 and 2020, Oksana, Yuliia, Tetiana, Mariana, Ivanna, Galyna and others, all Ukrainians, were in an irregular situation in France. They weren’t allowed to work. All of them, however, were cleaning apartments rented on the Airbnb platform in the Paris region. They hoped that the accumulated payslips would allow them, in the long term, to request their regularization. This is what their compatriot and boss, Nataliya Kruchenyk, head of the cleaning company VIP Services, promised them.
Thursday, June 16, this 39-year-old Ukrainian woman appeared before the Paris court for “aggravated human trafficking”, “concealed work” and “employment of foreigners without title”. Two other employees of VIP Services were also prosecuted for “trafficking in human beings”. At their side, Quentin Brackers de Hugo, the manager of the concierge company HostnFly, of which VIP Services was a service provider, was prosecuted for having knowingly used the services of illegal workers.
Wash the floor on all fours
Of the twenty-eight victims identified by the Central Office for Combating Illegal Labor and Labor Inspection, only one had papers. It was she, Oksana Veykogne, Franco-Ukrainian, who alerted the CGT at the start of 2020 and who testified at the bar. She recounted the unsustainable pace, the salary penalties inflicted in the event of a poorly evaluated household, the floor washed on all fours, the cleaning products she had to buy herself or the old T-shirt to pass the swab. 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 pleading text messages, undeclared employees …
The main defendant is described by the court as “an influential person” within his community, which attends the Ukrainian church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris and still chairs an association, L’Adresse, which offers Ukrainians in France administrative domiciliations or legal support for regularization.
” None [des femmes de ménage] has not been regularized” thanks to their boss, however insisted Maxime Cessieux, the lawyer for the civil parties, while Nataliya Kruchenyk defines herself as a benefactress boss, “confidante”which considered its employees ” as [sa] family “. She cannot explain the cascading complaints and feels ” betrayed “. She acknowledges that she knew that her employees were in an irregular situation and did not have “not declared every hour”, but justifies: “I couldn’t get by financially. »
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