Home Office consultation: Prevention of illegal working - BECTU response

24 May 2007

I write on behalf of BECTU, the trade union for workers (other than performers and journalists) in the film, television, new media and live entertainment sectors [on the Home Office consultation].

While we certainly oppose exploitation of illegal migrant workers in the UK, our concerns are about incidents of illegal short term working, which are, we believe, essentially non-exploitative. The issue is rather the displacement of resident labour. Our concerns fall into 2 main areas:

1. The widespread tendency for producers of Bollywood films to bring in large numbers of film crew from the Indian sub-continent for location shoots in the UK totally outside of the work permit system and therefore unlawfully. These are skilled technicians working on films geared to a home (Indian) audience but also to a large Asian diaspora in the UK (whose box office receipts are - in relative terms - large). The working language of the actors will not usually be English but it is common throughout the film industry for crew to work in a different language from that of the screenplay. Our argument is that such productions should be subject to normal work permit procedures so that they will not, without justification, displace resident labour who can undertake much of this work.
2. The growing tendency for producers of TV commercials to bring in non-EU crew (eg from the US) to work in the UK totally outside work permit procedures. The key characteristic of commercials is that shoots are very short (eg 1 to 2 days) so that such crew can be in and out of the UK before anyone can properly log their presence. Our concern is again about the displacement of resident freelance labour, especially because the reciprocal situation would never be allowed to occur in the US or other countries such as Australia.

In both of these cases, we believe that the use by employers of illegal workers is an abuse of the system which has a serious and negative impact on what is already a casualised and vulnerable freelance workforce in film and television production.

We accept that this falls outside the usual areas of concern about illegal working but we believe it is an issue which should be addressed - not least in the context of the current Home Office proposals for a Points-Based Managed Migration system. We therefore hope you will take note of our concerns.