In place of our usual editorial piece this week, I wanted to highlight a debate that has been going on in the PB Watercooler discussion forum this past fortnight. It’s an extremely interesting thread from experienced freelancers within the TV industry discussing how working life is now very different than in the past. And not always for the better.
Below are some extracts to give you a taster but please take a look at the Watercooler for the entire thread. It’s well worth a read, particularly for our less experienced members…
Martyn Day – (Producer/Director):
“When I first got into this business nearly 50 years ago employment was governed largely by The Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians, the ACTT. They controlled wages, contracts, working conditions and health and safety. Their strictest rule was you couldn’t get a job without a union ticket and you couldn’t get a union ticket without a job, which is about as Catch 22 as you can get!
Therefore, in order to enter the industry newcomers had to find one of the very few jobs that didn’t necessarily require a ticket, for example working in the Film Process Laboratories or taking a job that the union wasn’t able to fill from within its own ranks, a Trainee position for example. Once you had got a job you could then get a union ticket. Yippee! My own early career path went 1) Junior Wages Clerk at M.G.M Studios (wrong job – wrong union) 2) Trainee Laboratory Technician at M.G.M studios (wrong job – right union) 3) Assistant Film Editor (right job – right union, and so on).
The effect of the ACTT’s draconian ruling was the number of people coming into the industry was very small indeed. Few could be bothered to go through this mill. The advantage of the ruling however was once you were in the union looked after you very well indeed. They managed the employment market, helped you to find work and determined your pay and conditions of contract. ‘No pay-low pay’ jobs just didn’t exist and neither did the current ‘work experience’ scam…”
David Chaudoir – (Motion Graphics Designer):
“I too remember the all powerful ACCT but it didn’t work for all of us – I couldn’t get in and therefore couldn’t get a job. On the flipside there were rumours of editors working at LWT on “golden time” 16x their salary because they had been working for eighteen hours straight. Apparently they had Porches and Ferraris parked outside the Southbank tower.
So there were obvious problems with the set up as it was then. Now with little or no manufacturing, technology and craft jobs around and Britain becoming a service industry nation ‘Meeja’ Studies looks attractive.
I’m amazed by the number of graduates attempting to clamber up the greasy pole of the industry but this is the probable reason. Also, the entry level technology is so damned cheap. For about five grand you can have a camera and an edit suite in your bedroom (doesn’t mean you can make anything watchable though). Back in the day you wouldn’t get change out of two hundred grand for a camera and fully appointed edit suite.
There were also other barriers to entry. The BBC used to run a director’s course of which about a dozen people were trained every year. And every year more than half of them were Oxbridge graduates – not a very healthy state of affairs.
So what’s to be done? Should the old timers actively discourage the young and feckless from joining this industry?…”
Benetta Adamson – (Producer/Director):
“Martyn’s description harks back to a time when a closed shop was legal – and for those of you who have no idea what that might be, it meant that you could not work in an industry without a “ticket” – or membership of the relevant union. It meant that entry to the industry was very restricted, and it did certainly run along nepotistic lines much of the time. However the closed shop only applied to ITV (there were only two broadcasters then, who commissioned virtually all of their own stuff). The BBC wasn’t a closed shop, but it was still quite difficult to get into, with very rigid career paths. Many were the frustrated programme makers who discovered that moving from an admin to a production role was virtually impossible.
I started at the Beeb, joined the ABS (Association of Broadcasting Staffs – frightfully genteel…) and, by virtue of that membership, was allowed into the ACTT when I left. In those days, both ITV and the BBC were responsible for training the next generation: they ran training courses at all levels, not just the TAPS course (Trainee Assistant Producers) that David described. That training was thorough and very valuable: the expectation was that your employer would teach you everything you needed to know about your work now and in the future. The TAPS courses were frighteningly Oxbridge, I’d agree, and were fiercely competitive. The BBC (and probably ITV too) were a job for life: you could join on leaving education and expect to stay until you retired with a good pension, looked after by a rather paternalist (and inflexible) institution. I got stifled (not least by not being allowed to change career paths) and left.
I’d say that there was quite a bit wrong with the old system: it tended to favour jobs for the boys (and girls) and the closed shop system was very open to abuse. The upside was that no-one got shafted and you did get proper rest breaks, overtime, holiday pay etc etc.
I’d also say that the free-for-all that exists nowadays is equally destructive. There are far too many people trying to find a way in at entry level, and the whole notion of “career” is just a fond memory. Most of us will just have a succession of jobs for the rest of our working lives. There isn’t any proper training, and employers don’t value their workforce at all: we’re all disposable…”.
David Tuck – (Writer/Director):
“I love to hear the old timers talk about the gold rush years. There were nuggets in every edit suite and on every shiny studio floor!
Sadly it was abuses, that I feel ultimately led to the demise of a strong television union. Rules put in place to stop bad employer practice were eventually utilized to charge more to do less work. An unusual example of the fat cats being at the bottom rather than the top, although the bosses were doing all right as well, thank you.
I worked with quite a few guys from Teddington Studios, who were there ‘back in the day’, and they all report , with a pirates glee, the near illegal double dealing they dabbled in to vastly inflate their take home pay.
It’s that same greed spread across all unions, nationwide, that gave the Conservative Government the ammunition to neuter them all.
Thus we now have graduates who are both runners and DV directors on the same show, all for minimum wage or less. (Thank God for ‘work experience’! But surely if you actually work during this experience, it should just be called ‘work’ shouldn’t it? My local restaurant offers the ‘Italian Experience’ but, trust me, I never actually get to leave East Cheam…”