Open letter on behalf of the UK Post-Production Sound Community
On the 21st August 2023, the Post-Sound subcommittee of the Post Production & Facilities Branch sent an open letter to 63 Post Production Facilities in the UK, highlighting the issues the post-production sound community experience working in television.
The majority of post-sound freelancers are not covered under the PACT/ BECTU Scripted TV Agreement. This is because of the common practice of “third party hiring”. Producers of television content engage the services of post production facilities, who in turn, engage post-sound freelancers to work on those projects.
Under the PACT/ BECTU Scripted TV Agreement, post-sound workers, if engaged directly by Producers, would receive deal memos outlining pay, working hours, and terms & conditions. This is a protection that BECTU members in the majority of other branches benefit from. As post-sound freelancers are not engaged directly by Producers, they do not receive the benefits of the agreement.
The open letter highlights and seeks to redress issues post-sound workers face in three key areas:
Written Particulars or Terms & Conditions.
Fair compensation for excessive hours.
Invoices to be paid on time.
The open letter has recently been published on the Broadcast website and has also been shared by Post Super via their newsletter and Linkedin page. Further publications are to follow.
The Open letter is available to read, in full, below and can be downloaded as a PDF.
Open letter on behalf of the UK Post-Production Sound Community
Dear Post Production Facility,
We are writing to all post facilities that engage members of the freelance post-sound community to raise awareness on several key matters that have been brought to our attention.
Bectu's Post Production & Facilities Branch held a meeting of the post-sound sub-division at the end of 2022. At this extremely well attended meeting the members highlighted several ongoing challenges that they regularly face: the absence of terms and conditions, the debilitating impact of last minute and sizeable shifts in schedule or outright cancellations, a normalised expectation of excessive and unreasonable working hours and failure to pay invoices within the legal timeframe.
1. We ask for Written Particulars or Terms & Conditions.
In April 2020 legislation changed to require all UK workers, including freelancers, to be provided with a written set of employment particulars on or before their first day of work. Not only is this best practice but it is now enshrined in law. When you or representatives of any company are not confirming these terms in writing upon engaging workers, then the law is not being complied with.
We are advising members to insist upon receiving written particulars during the negotiating period and always in advance of work commencing. You can find the full list of which terms should be included here, but for easy reference and as a minimum we expect this to include:
· The employer's name
· Job title and a rough description
· Start date and duration of the contract of work
· Details of payment (consideration) including whether a salary is weekly, daily or hourly
Furthermore, we now encourage all members and engagers to use the Bectu Post-Sound Ratecard here as a basis for both negotiating pay and guidance on more detailed terms of engagement. The terms and conditions on the rate card were agreed by the post-sound community, and the card itself will constitute a binding contract when it is provided to engagers and is either uncontested or negotiated further. We also encourage facilities to refer to the rates on the card during the process of putting bids together, if they anticipate needing to engage freelance crew.
Ensuring terms and conditions are confirmed in advance of work commencing and in good time creates clarity for both engagers and workers, as well as being legally compliant.
2. We ask for fair compensation for excessive hours.
Members also raised the matter of the unsustainable and excessively long hours expected due to ever-shifting schedules and last minute changes. This issue is exacerbated by a lack of clarity over working hours, overtime and time off in lieu (TOIL). Following the successful renegotiation of crew agreements with PACT and SVODS in Features and Scripted TV, this style of "buy-out" engagement has been virtually eliminated in most of the industry - but it remains a reality for members working for post houses. This reliance on freelancers to accommodate scheduling issues results in unreasonable workloads; excessive hours erode productivity and well-being, leading to burnout, talent atrophy from the industry, and impossible conditions for people with greater family, parental, and caring responsibilities. These responsibilities disproportionately affect women and people who give birth and those with disabilities, and sits at odds with our effort to address equity in post-sound professions.
3. We ask for invoices to be paid on time.
Finally we wish to address the matter of invoices failing to be paid within 30 calendar days. This requirement is enshrined in law, and we therefore encourage individuals to follow Government advice to charge interest after the 30-day limit has expired, in line with the default payment terms laid out in the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act 1998.
Overall we will continue to engage with producers and PACT to enable freelancers that are hired via a facility to be protected by the PACT/BECTU agreement, which will be the best possible outcome. We are also pleased to have the full support of the Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS), who share our expectation that the freelance sound post-production community must be treated fairly and equitably alongside other industry professionals.
The post-sound community is well connected, particularly as a new group with over 300 sound editors has been established on WhatsApp for discussing rates, terms and conditions, poor payment practices, and general facility behaviour, both good and bad.
Bectu and the freelance community fully understand the financial pressures felt by facilities, due to ever-increasing rental rates coupled with the downward pressure from the commissioners and productions to offer more competitive bids. However, the business model of the industry should not rely on the issues outlined being absorbed by individuals who have their own financial pressures, which also includes the not insubstantial cost of maintaining professional studio equipment, libraries and software.
We believe that there are many facilities who wish to operate equitably and responsibly, and others that are perhaps unaware of the impact these normalised conditions have on many freelancers. To communicate the scale of this matter we have undertaken a member survey. Please take a moment to read the following selection of the most recurrent issues. The survey revealed that these practices are common virtually across the board, and exist on a near-permanent basis where a facility/freelancer relationship exists.
We look forward to seeing the nature of engagement between facility and freelancer become more positive, consistent and productive. In particular we look forward to news of facilities engaging in discussions that establish sustainable, clear and mutually agreeable terms of engagement with freelancers.
We warmly welcome conversation between the union and facilities in order to support improving the experience of freelancers, and are happy to answer any questions facilities have about the issues raised in this letter.
Finally, where organisations are already following these best practices we would like to hear from you, we can be contacted on the details below.
Many thanks,
Stefan Vassalos, Organising Official, and the Post Production & Facilities Branch Committee
A SELECTION OF COMMENTS FROM OUR RECENT SURVEY
“All of us honour the informal pencil system when being booked by facilities but this is in no way reciprocated. We’re frequently dropped at the last minute or mid job if an in house editor becomes available. We’re systematically expendable, a tool that they hire to pick up and put down when it suits.”
“I’ve never signed a contract or agreement with the production or a facility, so legally we’ve not signed over ownership of any of our work to either party. To me this means that neither the production or facilities own the rights to our work.”
“I’ve been cc’d into email chains showing facilities taking an enormous cut (£1000 per week) from what they were charging for me. Producer had no idea.”
“My CV had been put forward for a job and then I was used as a trainer for one of their staff. They then gave me half the allocated schedule as they used that in house editor for the other 50%. Fine, except this was his first real dialogue editing job so I was expected to help him through it and be there for ADR sessions for his episodes to keep the client none-the-wiser.”
“I was pretty much forced to work 6 weeks without a day off to accommodate a massive shift in schedule. No help or money was ever offered, and it felt clear that I had to do it or risk being blacklisted by the company”
“A 12 week job ended up being 6 weeks which was delayed by 3 weeks. The delay was on a weekly basis so I kept hanging on for the start.
This was blamed on their production client not locking. No compensation as agreement was word of mouth.”
“I frequently have to pick up the slack due to badly managed schedules by working long days and weekends. Expected to give maximum flexibility at all times.”
“I was asked to work on a job for which they didn’t send the media despite my repeated requests. I was then told the job was delayed by a couple of weeks. Still no media. The day I should have started, I was told as the schedule had slipped, they could now work on this in house, so I wouldn’t be needed.”
“Having to absorb significant schedule slips at the last minute and feel like if you complain you’ll be blacklisted!”
“Recently finished a six part drama with a post house. Every single invoice so far has fallen significantly overdue, beyond the 30 day limit, and required chasing, often several times, and with little joy”
“It’s common to be hired for a certain amount of weeks for an ADR job, which then stretches to more weeks, sometimes double, because of scheduling issues. It’s expected we absorb the hit and also still available every day as if we’re full time.”
“I was dropped from a job on the day I was due to start as an in house sound editor became available”
“With a facility it’s always a sewn up deal made prior to offering us work. It would be good to have them consult us about the rate while doing the deal.”
“I've seen freelancers hired through a facility for a project on behalf of a different facility, but where it’s supposed to be hush hush that this secondary facility are even involved. This puts them in very awkward situations when internal politics start to rear its head.”
“Email chain stating the facility charged the production £2700 per week for editor but paid the editor £1800. They also charged for an assistant editor (who would be paid around £1500 on a lower budget job), but there was no assistant. Means the amount of work the production could rightly expect to happen was about double than what they should get, and it’s us that pick up the slack.”
“ Consistently being told what the rate for the job is - that it’s a “done deal”, that "that's all there is in the budget" - annoying enough as we’re expected to pick up the shortfall, but also a few instances when that initial dreadful budget/schedule, 1 week per ep say, is magically doubled to 2 weeks. It’s still nowhere near enough, but it’s an example of the fluidity of the budget when it suits those higher up, rather than them using common sense to determine what’s actually needed.. "
“Regular instances of not being paid within the 30 day limit, and I get aggressive emails when I chase.”
Comments