Younger staff who have lost their jobs at galleries, museums and auction houses risk having their careers derailed by having to sign non-compete agreements to get a pay-off Credit: Grant Rooney / Alamy Stock Photo
The mass job losses triggered by the pandemic have exposed the art sector’s lamentable approach to human resources, with reports of poor redundancy procedures, pressure to sign stringent non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), paltry pay-offs and unsafe working conditions.
“We’re going to be living with litigation from the pandemic for many years to come,” says Simon Gorham, the head of employment at the London-based law firm Boodle Hatfield. He sees a “big increase” in unfair dismissal cases, particularly those linked to whistleblowing and health and safety. “People feel unsafe going into the work place so they’ve stopped going in, then been sacked or made redundant,” he says.
The rise of aggressive tactics against employees hrmagazine.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hrmagazine.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
From the NS Archive: The Rackets of Chicago 3 May 1930: Chicago cracks down on its gang crime
By 1930, president Hoover’s mission to sort out Chicago’s gang problem primarily that led by boss Al Capone was beginning to pick up pace. Here, in May 1930, our anonymous correspondent outlines the state of organised crime (or racketeering, as it was known), something that had grown rapidly in the past few years. There were still 60 rackets at work in Chicago in 1930, each of which would attempt to monopolise a certain trade and offer illicit protection to its people. But the problem, our writer thinks, was gradually being tackled: not least because Bill Thompson, “the racketeers’ mayor” and still the most recent Republican to serve as mayor of Chicago, was coming to the end of his tenure.