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Full Time, Permanent
·
Part Time, Permanent
·
Fixed Term and Freelance
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Shift Work
·
Office Hours
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Irregular and anti-social hours pay
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Salaried
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On Completion
Full Time, Permanent
If
you were employed on a full time permanent contract you would usually have to
work 39 hours a week. A permanent contract means that you will be regularly
paid each month or week depending on the pay roll system. Being on a permanent
contract you will also gain company benefits such as paid sick and holiday
leave each year.
Job
roles most likely to be on a full time permanent contract are editorial,
managerial, financial, creative and sometimes sales and marketing roles.
Part time, Permanent
Being
on a part time permanent contract means you will work a fraction of a full time
contract but once again you will have a set amount of hours to work each week.
Being on a part time permanent contract you will also as well as the full time
contracts receive the benefits from the companies such as pensions and paid
leave but things like the holiday are reduced because you work fewer hours on a
part time contract.
The
job roles most likely to be part-time, permanent are financial and sometimes sales
and marketing.
Fixed Term and Freelance
Both
types of these contracts are similar because they are both flexible and do not
last a great amount of time. If you have a fixed-term contract you may still
gain company benefits if it is highlighted in your contract whereas, freelance
you will not get company benefits because you will be coming in to do a single
job for them, get paid and then move on to your next job. Freelance is a very
risky way of earning a living because you cannot judge when you are going to
have more work or less work to do for different companies. Also with freelance
work, if you don’t have any work, you will not get paid. This is the main
problem for that kind of work. There is a plus side to freelance because you
can choose your own hours and holiday leave which is a great plus side because
you would be so flexible.
Shift Work
Shift
work is when you are contracted to work certain hours in a day. This can mean
you work from early mornings to the middle of the afternoon, or early evening
through to the middle of the night. In my opinion there are not many advantages
of shift work, but the main one would be that you have set regular hours that
you know you will have to work. The disadvantages are that it can take up
awkward times during the day and also mess up your body clock.
Office Hours
Traditionally
when you work office hours you would work 9 – 5 between Monday and Friday.
There are many advantages to this, the main being that it is sociable hours and
its regular work and pay. Disadvantages are you may not feel free enough but
trapped in an office working like a robot.
Irregular and unsocial hours
Irregular
hours would involve your employer asking you to work different hours constantly
each time you go to work. This can be a big disadvantage because you will not
have much notice and it could turn out to be very unreliable. There are also
good advantages to this because the employee will probably get paid more due to
the irregular pattern in their work.
Confidentiality
A
confidential agreement in a contract is when the employee has to agree to sign
a contract which means they are not allowed to say anything about the company’s
product before it is published. This would include agreements like not telling
people the plot or endings of films. This is a legal contract and cannot be
broken.
Exclusivity
The
employees will be asked to keep secrets from the general public and anyone who
isn’t working on the film or production. These secrets will include not saying
what the film is called, plots and your own involvement in the production. This
also applies if you are writing or creating a video you cannot mention anything
to do with the production, until the company allows you to.
Employment Legislation
Employment
Legislation is more commonly known as ‘Employment Terms and Conditions’. These
terms and conditions are set to stop employees suffering and being put in a
dangerous or unhealthy environment.
Health and Safety
Health
and Safety is very important and every company, on the recruitment process,
should go through and train their new employees on how to keep good health
standards and follow the right safety procedures. By doing this, in the event
of a fire, the employees will be able to evacuate safely and deal with the
situation at hand calmly.
The
BBC has requirements to follow if one of their employees is injured at work. “All
accidents and incidents must be reported to BBC ORM on the BBC Accident Report
Form. Serious accidents and incidents must be reported to BBC ORM by the
quickest possible means. Where doubt exists about what constitutes a serious
accident BBC ORM must be contacted for clarification.”
Codes of Practice
Codes of practice
are set by the company to their employees so they know how to act when they are
at work or maybe even out of work. They specifically set out orders of how to
behave and stop certain unethical actions. Codes of practice however are not
legally bonded by the law like regulations of the law. For example the BBC has codes of conduct, “We expect independent producers to apply the highest professional
and ethical standards in their dealings with BBC staff.” Having codes of
practice, especially at a company like the BBC is very important because they
are on show to the whole country.
Policies and Procedures
Film
and TV companies will also have policies and procedures to follow to ensure
that their movies and TV shows are ethically correct. The policies and
procedures will also link to recruitment and how their staff is managed. The
staff are frequently shown this by legalisation in health and safety and equal
opportunities. The BBC has a very interesting policy, it states that
advertising is not allowed on the channel; therefore it keeps the station clear
from commercial pressures and influences. The BBC also protect children from
viewing any potentially disturbing images or shows, this is the watershed
policy. The watershed policy means that no violent, disturbing, frightening
shows will be aired before 9pm.
Emerging Social Concerns
Broadcasting
companies may also extend their ethical policies and procedures to dealing with
emerging social concerns. These emerging social concerns might concern the
discrimination of disabled and the elderly. Channel 4 however is dedicated to
highlight people with disabilities. Channel 4 broadcasted the Paralympics in
2012 and they also have TV shows like “The Undateables” which involves showing
people with disabilities such as Down-syndrome and Asperger’s syndrome. This
show has a lot of different opinions flowing around it, the main concern is the
title is given because the audience may see this and think that it is comical
and will laugh at the people with disabilities.
Representation and its Ethics
In the TV and
film industries it is extremely important how something is represented and put
across to the audience. One slip up in this department they could be labelled
for something that they might not have intended to show. All of the different
companies will want to express their own views and ethics, but they will not
mean to show the wrong views. This could lead to viewing figures dropping and
plenty of complaints from the public. A lot of religions are represented in
films, and a lot of the time stereotyped. For example the Muslim religion is
constantly portrayed as terrorists in films. This is because of a minority of
extremists have made numerous terrorists attacks around the world. Muslim
people should not be stamped with being terrorists! Stereotyping can be a very
dangerous act, it could lead children who watch and take in these views, to
believe them and act on them potentially with violence and racial abuse.
How Producers Remain Ethical and Objective in
their Representations
Producers have a
pretty simple way of following ethical and keeping objective in their shows and
films. The simply require the experience of analytical lawyers, textbooks and
previous examples of legal action. This will determine which is the best and
preferable route to take in order to avoid subjectivity. From doing this, they
can decide what to show, in terms of content, representation, story lines and
even avoid and specific issue or group.
Channel 4 has had
a heavy load of complaints for their shows “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” and “The
Undateables” because they show unethical views on gypsies and discriminate
people with disabilities.
James Cameron’s
film “Avatar” was accused of being racist. People complained that only African
American and American Indian actors played the Avatars. Their point was that
because the Avatars are primitive, they believe that the producers are being
racist and showing their opinion on these ethnic groups.
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