|
Dear Mr Cook,
My name is Ben Kippen and I am writing to raise a few problems
within your job advertisement for the ‘Apprentice Digital Video Productions
Producer’ Firstly I would like to bring up what the role entails; it seems it requires
a lot of work and I feel you should have a warning because the role is for an
apprentice so it seems too heavy for a new worker wanting to learn the
industry, By all means don’t make it easy for them but throwing them into the
deepest of deep ends seems too much. Secondly the work hours are too vague with too
big of a gap for little pay £15,000-45,000 is too vague especially for an
apprentice. Finally, the contract in
general confuses me, you are asking for them to be Christian and at least below
thirty. This conflicts with the Equality Act twice. It should not matter what
age or religious beliefs they hold, if they have the qualifications then they
can apply simply as that. Under the exclusivity clause in the small print it
states that “you must not apply for other position of this nature”
The Equality Act (2010) is a mixture of human rights acts
that combine to make on act that is law. However you have infringed this law
multiple times, you have infringed Employment Equality (Religion or Belief)
Regulation 2003 by asking the potential employee to be Christian. Also you have
infringed the Employment Equality (Age) Regulation 2006 by having a required
age to apply. As an employer you should aim to recruit fairly not just through
basic human rights but through the Equal Opportunities, after looking at this
job profile I think you need to show codes of practise that shows evidence that
comply with the Equality Act. Looking at the job description and the acts
already broken I feel that it may not stop there, I read onwards and saw the
brief and I was not wrong. You are asking the applicants to make a video, which
is fair enough but the content of the “No Means No Date Rape Campaign” is far
too graphic and conflicts with the Employment Legislation. The employers are
responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the employees but these applicants
making the video are not your employees yet therefore if they cause any
emotional or physical harm by making this video it is on their back not yours
which is a Russian roulette way of employing for a job. Trade Unions are unions
that are set up to protect members in that trade industry in this case it would
be behind your potential employees if something did go wrong. Some Trade Unions
such as BECTU would help members if they were employed by you; in this case
they are not because they are applying for the job. If something did go wrong
it would be on the individual’s back which is unfair and a risk in applying. Now
to touch on the ethical side to this, Codes of practise are in place as a
non-lawful object to simply protect the consumer or citizen and have a power
presence in television and film. You are breaching this with your application,
maybe you should have this attached at the bottom to warn and assist the
applicants when making the video to avoid any
legal issues that will come up. Codes of practise are designed to
promote good practise and stop legal issues post production. Back to your “No
Mean No Date Rap Campaign” brief, you say that “female victims and male
offenders” which is a partial misrepresentation of the issue. Yes mainly this
is true what you are saying but you are asking a video for teenagers contain a
massive stereotype that frankly is a misrepresentation of males, the poor teens
are going to assume that all males a rapist and females are victims which is
totally unfair for them, the way we represent men and woman within film and
television can affect the way many people view them you can and will manipulate
the audience into misrepresentation. I have covered how people get
misrepresented through the media and you have to now think of the social
concerns that follow. Audiences can favour a certain person or group of people
through your video and can blow things out of proportion and especially when
your target audience of the video is teenagers which can be swayed and
manipulated much worse than an adult. You are portraying all males as sex offenders
and females as victims which is plain wrong.
To contain and tax how the law is being broken and
manipulated in your job description there are regulatory bodies that exist to
enforce these rules based on law. They aim to protect the views and good honest
competition between organisations. The BBC has its own Codes of practise which
restricts the programmes it shows to the public. Ofcom is another British media
regulator and is required by the Communications Act 2003 and the Broadcasting Act 1990 and makes a code that will enforce if you do not comply. They set the
standards for broadcasting in the United Kingdom. You have infringed a few of
these for example protecting fewer than eighteens, harm and offense, religion
and fairness and many more. The Obscene
Publications Act 1959 needs to be checked in correlation to your brief because
I can guarantee you conflict with many of them, like the ‘Prohibition of publication of obscene matter’
which states you must not show scenes of obscene nature The BBFC is an independent body which
classifies film and television and the age suitability and you should check if
the video you want applicants to make will be suitable for thirteen to fifth
teen year olds, due to the seriousness and graphic nature of the film there is
no way to make a good educational awareness video without making it older than
eighteen plus, there are guidelines that need to be followed. You want to make
a video for fifteen year old if must not contain any portrayal of sexual
violence and instead reference, now you asking the potential employees to make re-enactments
which would come under and eighteen. Intellectual Property (IP) is an
expression of an idea it may be a brand idea or invention or a design of
something you can buy IP’s. Now in your job application you ask to edit the
video to a popular soundtrack and you will pay £20 for it, now I don’t know if
you know this but getting permissions to use a popular soundtrack is going to
cost a lot more than £20 which takes money out of the pocket of the applicant
which is wrong in itself. If the employee gets in trouble through copyright
material it is on their heads not the employers like it should be under your
employment. I think you need to reconsider your application
Yours Sincerely
Ben Kippen
No comments:
Post a Comment