Job Letter Complaint

Dear Flipside Media

I am writing to you to complain about your recent advert for applying for a job to become an apprentice as a digital video production producer. I believe that your application is very unacceptable and is conflicting with many major laws. A contract is meant to be a legal arrangement which your needs and the employee's needs are met. Many aspects of this job advert aren’t legal and violate employee's rights to an exclusivity clause and confidentiality clause when signing a contract. An exclusivity clause is the right for an employee to seek other work other than the job he is applying for. A confidentiality clause is the right for your information inside work to be kept confidential from people outside the workplace. In this advert it is overtly clear that your contract doesn't offer any of the sorts and should be changed unless you don't want any organisations attempting any legal actions.

To do this you will need to read The Equality Act (2010) http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents to understand your rights and the employee's. Your current job advert conflicts with a lot with the employee's rights. When you mention your age limit for the job from age 30 and below this is illegal as The Equality Act states that the persecution of age within work is banned and is unlawful to do so. For example within the BBC Miriam O Reilly the presenter of CountryFile was sacked by the BBC for apparently being too old, she took action and was awarded with £150000. If this isn't rectified you could face the same action from an applicant. Furthermore The Equality Act (2010) states that people of any religion can apply for any job without being favourably or discriminated for the job based on their religion. This shouldn't be advertised on your job advert because everyone should have equal opportunities when the candidates are perfectly trained for the job no matter of any differences in skin colour, gender or religious views. However you do still have your own rights, you do have the right to insurance to cover claims from any employee's if they feel you are responsible for an injury or any discrimination they may believe you have committed against them, this insurance is compulsory for all companies that offer work and this insurance is called the employers liability legislation http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1969/57/contents. So you must understand that your employee's and applicants have rights and you should respect them or you could face be faced with legal action due to your employer liability insurance. To avoid this action I suggest that you read the film, TV and broadcasting health and safety legislation as it contains the ways in which everyone must abide by a health and safety legislation. Also if you take the necessary measures e.g. monitor any risks that a production project might have, you could reduce the risk of any further legal actions caused against you. If an employer was to injure him/her badly this led them to still being affected by it after they have left your employment you are still held responsible. Another reason why your application is improper is because of the lack of safety and employers interests your job advert has with its applicants. As applicants can't join a trade union this means that if they were injured they can't be protected. BETCU is a trade union that offers this protection however this trade union only offers this protection to the employee's not non employed people.

Within this job advert the issue of the project you wish the applicant to make is very controversial. You must make codes and practises for the applicant in which to avoid any legal complications that could occur while producing this documentary. This will include in making the victims sign any talent release forms and their parent’s written permission. Also within this job advert not one code of practise is mentioned which would put the victims in danger of any offenders. Again these codes and practises are vital when producing a controversial documentary which in my opinion is very unprofessional. You must mention these to protect the victims and make sure any information about them shouldn't be mentioned to anyone. Your Job advert has many ethical issues that need to be addressed. Firstly you are promoting a very bias point of view on rape how it is always a male who is the criminal however you forget that this isn't always the case. You putting this label on this stereotype are only forcing a much manipulated view on to its audience. There have been many other cases in which this was apparent as well. For example the Amy Winehouse was very well approved of by the media as she was first becoming famous however when she started to take drugs the media demonised her. The reason I use this example is because if one of your applicants were to direct this onto a specific gender or group of people it could cause a lot of social problems and harm. With the media's past portrayals of youth it had created this idea of "stranger danger" that people should be afraid of youth as this stereotype implied by the media that all youth were involved in crime which was not the case however it was still created and arguably is still believed today.

Nevertheless if you still wish to continue to use this job advert you should also be aware of regulatory body's that actually monitor and give permission to be able to be broadcasted to people. Ofcom operates under the Broadcasting Act (1990) and The Communications Act (2003) which make guidelines in which a media product must follow or they won't be able to be shown to people. For example when you say that the applicant must include "female teenage victims" in the documentary you must make sure that the teenagers our over the age of 18 because in section 1 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (Protecting under 18s 1.1) it states that "Material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of people under 18 must not be broadcasted" http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/protecting-under-18s/. If you don't follow this code very carefully it could lead to legal action against you. Also as I have already mentioned that you shouldn't create any social concerns when the job advert  mentions that the applicant must "Compliment the interviews with re-enactments, dramatizations and a popular music soundtrack" this conflicts with Ofcom’s code when they state in section 2 (Harm and Offence 2.2). It states "Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience" which means that the audience shouldn't be lead to believe that the offenders of rape are just male as this is not the case. Furthermore as your job advert shows that you intend to show the applicants the documentary to "children at high school" it also conflict with another act called The Obscene Act (1959) this act enforces the law that if content is not suitable for a particular audience it shouldn't be viewed by them. So when you say that children would be viewing this documentary this collides with this act. As the topic of the documentary is on rape the age certificate in my opinion would be a 15 certificate. These certificates are given to these contents to show there age suitability by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). This means that children in high school would be unable to view this because of the content. Finally you should also be aware of intellectual copyright laws. In your job advert you specifically mention that you want a popular movie soundtrack implemented in the documentary. The problem is that you need to buy these copyright licences to include this popular soundtrack. As these laws are expensive and are becoming more and more popular in media content they get very expensive as many people want the rights. When say that you will “recompense up to the value of £20" this price is very unlikely to buy the rights to a "popular" soundtrack let alone the other costs the applicants will have to make. Overall I implore you to either change this job advert or remove it or your interests will never be met.

Yours Sincerely

Duncan Whyte