Working
Hours

Wherever a film or TV production is taking place, working hours must comply with collective agreements and national laws. Production companies must respect rest periods and breaks in collective agreements and national laws.

Overtime must be voluntary, not required on a regular basis, and must always be compensated at a premium rate. Work-life balance policies must be implemented to promote better reconciliation of work and private life and include measures such as flexible working and job-sharing.

Mental
Health

Long hours are responsible for many stress and mental health issues. Research has found that stress resulting from overwork is destabilizing a person’s mental balance and can lead to grave long-term illnesses such as depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Stress related illnesses are increasing in our societies. Workers who are subject to excessive working hours have a much higher risk to encounter mental health issues.

The film and TV industry must invest in and further develop adequate resources for the mental health of workers and fostering a healthy workplace. Workplaces need to provide safe spaces to talk about mental health issues. Unions promote mental health training on how to deal with anxiety, stress and other disorders and provide capacity building for members to support colleagues who face mental health issues at work. We engage with members and employers to reduce the stigma around mental health by creating open spaces to talk about stress management and to create a workplace culture where workers feel more comfortable about voicing their concerns and needs.

Gender
Equality

A holistic gender equality approach is a prerequisite for a sustainable and fair working time management for all workers. Role time-related policies reduce existing gender inequality. UNI campaigns for making gender equality an integral part of the culture of the global film and TV industry. UNI recommends that productions implement a gender equality policy plan that includes measures to improve gender equality and commit to monitor progress made. Gender equality policies set clear targets and indicators. Indicators are regularly monitored and reported on. Recommended key elements of gender equality policies include:

• Appoint gender equality managers and/or gender equality task forces;
• Design and implement equality-based recruitment and promotion policies;
• Improve workplace flexibility for men and women;
• Promote flexible working/job-sharing;
• Build childcare/support for careers;
• Design and implement mentoring and sponsorship programmes;
• Organize gender equality training and awareness raising programmes;
• Elaborate, implement, and enforce a prevention
of violence and harassment policy.

Bullying and
Harassment

Employers who impose excessive long hours on workers making the acceptance of this environment a condition to obtain future work are bullying their workforce. A long hours culture leads to higher number of aggressions. Surveys confirm that departments where longest hours are worked, have more incidents of bullying and harassment. UNI advocates for industry policies to tackle and address bullying and harassment. Productions must have bullying reporting mechanisms and must put policies in place that ban abusive behaviour from the workplace. Unions and their representatives are supporting workers with advice, training, and information campaigns to contribute to prevention and are helping victims and witnesses of bullying and harassment.