Contractual, Legal and Ethics

To whom it may concern,
I am writing to you to point out a number of contractual, legal and ethical  issues in your job advertisement. Firstly I would like to draw your attention to the job description given in the first paragraph. You begin to bullet point various different roles the job will involve, many of which are unrelated in terms of actual duties such as 'writing proposals, pitching to clients'. You need to be more precise in exactly what the job will entail. I understand it is a broad job but some more information to go on would be useful.

You have talked briefly about exclusivity in the advertisement however this is the only part of the contract you have mentioned. It is good practice to mention a confidentially clause, as in if they are allowed to discuss what is going on and what is happening or not. This can make the difference for some people in applying for the job.

Under The Equality Act 2010 you are not legally allowed to discriminate against someone based on their age, gender or religion. This leads to an equal opportunities in the workplace based system. Your advertisement has broken this law in the following ways. Firstly you have specified that you would like a person with Christian beliefs. This breaks the law as no matter what their beliefs are they can still do the job in question, it is irrelevant to specify it. There are very few circumstances in which being a christian would prevent them from doing the job, the only that comes to mind is the role of a vicar. As this job is unrelated to religion, this is not legal. The second violation of this law is where you ask for someone "aged below 30". This is also not legal because someone over the age of thirty is capable of doing the job you have advertised. Another issue is that employers' liability may be an issue in making the video requested for the application. As you may know employers' liability ensures that there is an insurance cover against claims. This will not cover applicants to the role as they do not classify as employees as they have not signed a contract of employment. This also questions the employees rights as the basics rights need not apply as they are applicants. This all links to health and safety. If an applicant gets injured in any way while trying to get footage for the piece you will not be responsible legally. A further point is about the well-being and protection of employees is the existence of trade unions. A trade union, as you may be aware, is where employees in a sector join together to protect their collective rights. There are a number of unions in the media sector, the biggest of which being BECTU. If your employees are members of BECTU, or any other union, their rights will be protected.

Another point that I would like to raise is that codes of practice and policies and procedures should be handed to applicants to help to avoid legal issues arising. Codes of practice are not part of law but are important as they set out guidelines on how employees should do certain tasks and fulfill certain roles ensuring that jobs are always completed to a high level. It would be important to ensure that an applicant receives this so that they can follow the correct company protocol to obtain the footage and create the piece. This would help to avoid legal issues as for example if you clearly set out that they must receive permission to use third-party content they would avoid legal trouble in not using copyrighted music or images. There is a further issue with your job advertisement. There is a line that states "including female victims and male offenders". This line already throws a stereotypical, almost biased light onto the topic as it can, and often does, happen the other way round.  This shows an issue with the social concerns portrayed as by the use of this line you as a company are denying that males can be victims and females can be offenders - thus making this an issue of social concern. This brings me on to the topic of representation. The applicants should be informed about representation and that they should create the video in an unbiased manner as one of the participants could complain with the way that they have been show and this could lead to legal troubles for the company.

As you may already know, Ofcom has set a broadcasting code that involves the protection of under 18s from harm and offence. This issue arises as the video that is created by the applicant is going to be shown to "children at high school". This may be quite problematic as children at high school range from around 11 to 16. You have not specified as the majority of high school students will be below the legal age of consent. Another issue is that you intend for the applicant to include "re-enactments" and "dramatisations". Depending on how graphic these are made they may cause harm and offence to the children, all of whom will be under 18. This will break Ofcom's rules and will therefore not be allowed. Another issue is that it may break the Obscene Publications Act 1959, or its later amendment. This says that publications deemed to be obscene should not be published unless they are for public good. As this is for the No Means No campaign this could be seen as for the public good. Another issue to consider is the BBFC, British board of film classification, who will give an age certificate to the publication. They have a wide range of certificates ranging for young children, such as the U and Uc ratings, to adults with their 18 ratings. What rating this receives will highly depend on how graphic the content is. It is most likely to receive a minimum of a 15 rating due to the accounts from victims however with graphic re-enactments this will push it up to an 18 rating, meaning the intended target audience of high school children will not get to see it. Finally you have failed to mention rules on third-party content. This is very important as you have specified that a "popular music soundtrack" must be used but only compensate up to £20 of the actual filming budget, not allowing money for third-party content such as popular music. You should have said whether or not third-party content is allowed to be used, indicating that if theirs is chosen you will pay for the copyright, or if the cost of this is to come out of the £20 budget which would not be enough to license a popular song.

The issues I have outlined should be corrected before continuing the job advertisement.

Yours Faithfully,
Poppy Browne