Portraits of Members: Mariia from the "Piana Vyshnia" branch

Who am I? At the moment I'm at war not only at home but in my daily life: in survival, integration, at work. It's just that life has been divided into before and after, and now we're all a little bit confused about who we are. We are in search of ourselves.

We came to Lithuania on the 11th of March, two years ago. I didn't want to leave then, I have two children and four cats. My mum said they had friends in Vilnius and they called us. I said, ‘Mum, I'm not going anywhere, I'll be here.’ And on the last night, when two rockets flew over the house, my nerves couldn't take it anymore.

I packed overnight. I did it in an interesting way: I collected embroidery, a book ‘History of male nude’, photos, gold, I collected all my perfume, shoes that my dad gave me (I have never worn them). Well, that is, I didn't really collect anything, just the things that I thought were the most precious to me.

And so we arrived, my mum went back, and I stayed. I feel so good in Vilnius that I don't want to go home. Everyone goes there and back, but I haven't been there once - I can't - I don't have the stomach for it.

And so I'm a bit of everything, a photographer, a mum, a friend. I ran an English school for a bit and worked in a school as a communications manager.

I started working in a bar last September. As soon as I saw that the Piana Vyshnia bar was opening, I immediately wrote and applied to be a bartender. I was a regular guest there in Kiev, and in Lviv - if I came to Lviv, the first thing I did was to take everyone to Piana Vyshnia. For me it is a part of home - our business card. So I was pleased with the idea that I could become a part of this structure. And it seems to me that nobody will show our flavour in a Ukrainian institution better than us, so I went there purposefully.If you consider a managerial position, there is no direct contact with people, it is very limited. But this way you are constantly standing, lots of acquaintances, lots of connections.

When we opened, everything was fine. Then, about three months later, everything changed upside down, and our relationship with the management went from friendly to something very oppressive. When you're constantly being told, ‘’If you don't like something, the door's over there.‘’ You say, ‘I like everything, but let's work according to the law’.

Every Friday, or Saturday, you're on your feet from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., you can't go out to get something to eat, or you're not allowed to take a smoke break, even though it's required by law. Well, yes, a smoke break is not specified in the labour law, but there is a physiological break, and it is our personal business what we spend this break on - eating, walking or having a smoke. Naturally, we started to tackle this.

There was one very good colleague, she helped everyone there, and we had very warm relations with her. In January, she came with a printout from the law that we were entitled to physiological breaks every two hours for 10 minutes. And it's a very strange coincidence that she was fired on the same night.

We spoke to the management, tried to make it clear that she was young and she was being given so much responsibility. No, and that was it. Plus, her manager told her, ‘Either you get fired or I do.’ We realised then that we were being manipulated. We still wish we'd stood up for her.

I started to say all the time that this is not normal. When you work with people, you can't be in constant tension. If they position that we should give people a good mood, joy, then the staff should be in such a state. And how? When the staff can openly shout at guests, accuse them of something, tell them that they have problems with upbringing? Then they started charging us minuses. That is, for what the guests stole, we all had to pay for it. Later we found out it was against the law. So we started saying that let's solve it somehow, let's have a meeting with the top management.

It came to the point that in April my manager told me that ‘our personalities don't match, so I'm giving you a month or a month and a half to find a new job’. They started assigning less shifts, I was required to go work at a second site to accumulate enough hours.

I thought I should then find out under what conditions I could leave. I was advised to go to the labour inspectorate, and they said that there was nothing to fire me for, and since a second facility was being opened, a reduction in work force was not possible. But even if it was a reduction in workforce, there would still have to be two months' compensation.

I am very lucky that I met a labour lawyer here and she is helping me a lot. I started to learn about all these inspections, what our rights are, what sanctions there may be against the employer. In general, it turned out that I now know the Lithuanian Labour Code better than our native one.

I came to the management with a recorder to protect myself, so that I would have proof that they wanted to fire me. I said here is the situation, if you really want to fire me, you must pay me the appropriate compensation. No no no no no no no, that's not going to happen. At your own will, they say, write it down.

But when I asked the owner about it, he wrote that nobody wants to fire me. I said, but if the situation is such that if I do not go out on my own, you will give me two warnings to fire me legally and without compensation? Well, eventually, that's what happened.

Plus, when we were opening the second place, I hurt my back and got a cold and ended up with a pinched nerve. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. And it's very frustrating when things go wrong like that. I mean, I didn't know that if I was injured at work, they should have reported it to SoDra and I would have been paid sick leave as wages. No one reported it. Well, it turns out that's how much they don't care about all of us.

So no concrete decision was made, and the whole situation dragged on for five months. People started to be fired for the fact that they got to our chat room without management, that someone there wrote something bad about management, they took a grudge against a 19-year-old guy and fired him. I mean, this kind of nonsense started happening. We have such a tense situation at work that there are people who lied that they were leaving for another city, just not to explain why they were quitting. In July, we had five people quit.

When everyone's nerves just gave out, there came a moment when everyone decided that something had to be done, that we had to defend ourselves. We all went to the inspectorate together, got counselling and invited the counsellor for a peaceful conversation with the management. Naturally, it was all taken completely hostile thinking that we were acting behind their backs.

The Labour Inspectorate also recommended your trade union to us. I immediately read everything, learnt everything and filled in the form on the same day. So my colleagues did it within a week. We met Tomas, got to know him, he explained to us what it was all about. We said, ‘yes, it suits us, we want to be protected so that no one has to face this situation’.

In mid-August we formed a union. Three days later we informed the employer and the next day I received a notice of gross misconduct and was fired another week later.

However, I was sacked for being drunk in the workplace and for stealing, allegedly pouring myself a drink and not paying. First of all, it's ridiculous because they said it now and the video is supposedly from 28 June. So one guy was fired for being half an hour late, and I was kept on the job for two more months as an alcoholic thief.

Anyway, it's all very nasty, very distasteful. As soon as I was removed from work chats, they wrote to the staff that I was fired for drinking on the job, that there were three such cases. While no video or other evidence was provided.

There is a perception that I persuaded the whole staff. It was me who forced everyone to form a union. Although everyone is very indignant that they are considered so opinionless that one person is able to persuade so many people. The letter to the inspection was written by 11 people, if I'm not mistaken, and that's almost the entire staff. Two of them had already quit. I don't think that if we were doing so well, it would have come to this.

When there was an online meeting without me, the entire staff was told ‘if you go behind our backs, we will treat you exactly the same way you treat us. If we had the opportunity, we would fire you all today, and hire new ones.’

What is that supposed to mean? We're people who earn you money, and this is how we're treated. That's you who are breaking the law. It's not us breaking your rules, it's you breaking our rights.

Nothing's changed so far anyway. The only thing I've achieved is that we'll be paid for cleaning after work. But you have to prove that you cleaned. What's there to prove when we have a lot of video cameras?

Now, of course, the workers are very angry. They want to get justice. It's understandably scary. But I told them, I'll stay in the union and I can still get involved and help you.

Well, I mean, it's not normal for people to be in constant tension. It's even more abnormal when they're willing to put up with it for money. I said: there is a million jobs, there is nothing to be afraid of, I am going to the employment agency, and I will receive an allowance for three months, which means that I already have time to take a break and think about what I will do next - to ask for help from the trade union, to write all the applications and so on.

Unfortunately, the article they used as an excuse for my dismissal does not entitle me to claim this benefit for the next three months. Which means that they have screwed me over here as well.

It's such a tremendous experience, because of that situation, we are now quite savvy. The plan is as follows: we will write a statement to the inspectorate about illegal dismissal and everything else, a lawyer will help us, and we will file an application on the issues with GDPR. And plus, I'm ready to go anywhere: media, TV, newspapers, radio. I realise what I'm going for and that I'm going up against people who have a lot of money and connections. But I know that I'm not guilty of anything and that I've worked honestly.

I guess that's the kind of strong-man rule, you know, like from the ‘90s. That's not the way it should be. Because then all the things that we're fighting for now, our values, not only at work but in the situation in general, are all for nothing. So I want the truth, I want them to realise that behaving like this to people is, at the very least, expensive financially.