Thank you for Tara Conlan’s excellent article about the working conditions of television crews (‘I fell asleep driving around London’: TV workers on fear, danger and fatalities in an industry in crisis, 3 October). Recently, as a freelancer still trying to recover from the financial catastrophe of Covid-19, I worked two seasons of a reality TV series back-to-back. It was three months’ work and, frankly, I desperately needed the money. The terms were 12-hour days, six days a week. With travel time, that was an 80-hour week. For three months. It took weeks for any of the crew to receive money; and the wage slips took even longer.
Under their whistleblower policy, I contacted the production company’s HR department to report, among other things, the alarming and widespread drug use by the crews, my concern as a supervisor of female staff and them potentially being in an abusive working environment, and the unsafe working hours and conditions. Ironically, we were given compulsory Covid tests each day before being allowed on site. If this had been applied to testing for cannabis and cocaine, I seriously doubt that the show could have operated each day.
I reported my concerns at the time to my on-site supervisor, but subsequently wrote a multi-page, highly-detailed report for the production company’s HR that resulted in a cursory, disinterested and short Zoom interview that produced no further action, other than me learning from an insider that my services would never be used by them again. Subsequent correspondence to the production company has been ignored. I have been “ghosted”.
This is why people have died. It’s a catastrophe wrapped in glamour, and the industry calculatingly feeds on the hopes, dreams and needs of aspiring professionals, making a cruel and complete mockery of these companies’ “modern day slavery” declarations.
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