Contractual, Ethical and Legal Issues letter

                                                                                                                                              28/06/2016

To whom it may concern

I am writing this letter to you to go over an important matter regarding the job application form for the documentary job. Whilst reading the application form I noticed many issues such as Contractual, Ethical and Legal issues, the purpose of this letter is to point our and help you correct these problems. Throughout the letter I will covering all of the different issues in your job application form and the three main issues you need to take into consideration in the future i.e Contractual, Legal and Ethical Issues and how these are very important when it comes to recruiting for a job.

The first problem I encountered was the contractual issue of payment. The hours, along with the payment, is unclear. The form states that the hours can stretch from 10 hours to 45 hours per week and the payment varies from £15,000 to £35,000 per annum. This is very vague as if someone was to apply for the job they could work for 45 hours per week and only receive £15,000 as an annual payment. Whereas, someone else could apply for the job and work 10 hours per week and receive up to £35,000 for their time. This is a contractual issue as it is unclear and if someone was to sign the contract they would be involved in a very vague deal.

I also found a serious issue regarding the topic of the documentary and the job brief. I have found some points that goes against the Equality Act of 2010 and equal rights. The Equality Act states that discrimination against race, gender or age is illegal and needs to be considered when employing staff or crew. The point in the job brief that requests interviews with male offenders and female victims is being very biased when it comes to victims. Men aren't the only people to be offenders and females are not the only victims. There is another point I would like to make that also breach the equal opportunities legislation and that would be the section requesting that under 30 years of age apply for the job. This is again breaching the equality act as looking to hire people under a certain age for a job that wouldn't need a certain aged person to do is wrong and can be taken as discrimination against age. You would also need to consider employment liability, especially when they are filming a topic that they could find emotionally harmful as you are in charge of your employees physical and emotional safety. The Employers Liability Act states that each employee is entitled to a small level of insurance to cover any physical or emotional harm. The employers are in charge of caring for their employees while at work and if an employee was to become injured or become ill due to the workplace, if they truly feel that the employer, in this case you, are responsible they can claim compensation.

When it comes to ethical issues, there are Codes of Practice that need to be followed. Codes of practice are written guidelines that explain how workers or employees must behave in the work place. The codes are practice are not part of the law and are written up by the regulatory body with the purpose of protecting the consumer or employee in the work environment. If these Codes of Practice are written out it can be very helpful to protect the applicants, should they get the job, by keeping them aware of the rules and policies that would be involved with the job and to help to avoid legal issues further into employment. Another problem involving ethical issues would be how the representation within the re-creation video. It can be very easy to give off negative representations in any video or re-creation. In relation to the issue with male being the only offenders, it is important that the video doesn't reinforce this by representing women as the only victims. It is also very important that the video doesn't glorify rape which could also link to the choice of soundtrack. This is important as if the wrong kind of song is chosen it could change the tone and message of the video, for example if during the rape recreation video a happy and joyful song is played over top, the rape could be represented as a happy and joyful thing, which is far from correct. The sensitive issue of rape needs to be approached and recreated in the video with knowledge, care and firm ideas that would deviate from glorifying it.

Legal issues within the workplace are a serious matter. There are many laws that must be followed to avoid lawsuits. For example, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee in regards to their age, gender, sexuality etc. Ofcom has a collection of codes that must be considered when employing as they also set the standards for British broadcasting. Some of the main sections of the Ofcom codes are Protecting the under 18's and Harm and Offence. These definitely need to be considered when making the documentary and particularly the recreation videos. You must make sure you do not offend anyone with the recreation which also links back to making sure that your representations in the video do not offend anyone. When it comes to the protection of under 18's this doesn't just mean physically but also mentally. You must make sure that your recreation video doesn't cause any mental harm on the under 18's, or in that case anyone. These codes have been written up from the 'The Communications Act (2003)' and the 'The Broadcasting Act (1990)' and were written up for the purpose of creating guidelines to protect the public and employees.

Something that seriously needs to be taken into consideration is 'The Obscene Publications Act (1959)', which is a set of laws that ensures that the material that is shown to the public is not obscene and can't cause any harm to the public. However, it does depend on the time slot of the broadcasting and the age range of the audience that can change if the material can be thought of as obscene or is suitable to be shown to the public.

The age rating of your documentary will mainly depend on the recreation of the video and the material that is used in the documentary. You must ensure that your documentary has a suitable rating that can help protect under age audiences from the sensitive topics. In order to make sure your documentary has the right age rating you must check with the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) which is a regulatory body that helps to classify film and TV show ratings. The BBFC has several film classifications which are:

U-Suitable for all
PG-Parental Guidance
12-Viewer must be at least 12 years of age
12A-Viewer must be at least 12 or accompanied by an adult
15-Viewer must be at least 15 years of age
18-Only suitable for viewers over 18 years of age

The documentary must fit with one of these suitable ratings.

Finally, you must make sure you have all legal rights and ownership over your Intellectual Property (IP). Intellectual Property gives you ownership over your own work and in order to avoid copyright laws you must trademark your work. This will be important to consider if you do request that your employee's use a popular soundtrack for your documentary and I would also like to mention that £20 would not be enough money to pay for the royalty rights to use the music. To avoid copyright lawsuits you must either pay the royalty to the owners of the material or use your own copyright-free material.

These are all of the issues that I encountered whilst going over the job application and wish that in future applications you create that you take the legal, ethical and contractual issues and obligations into consideration and how they can effect the employees and employers in jobs. I hope that this letter has explained the issues that need be understood when it comes to employment.

Yours Sincerely,





Macaulay Moran