Improving freelancer conditions
Consensusisnotaconsolationprize.Consensusmovescultures.
You often hear that freelancers don’t have much leverage.
Directors feel this as sharply as anyone in film and TV: short contracts, fragmented teams, employers who have strong cards to play when you’re agreeing terms – it can make it feel like you’re operating alone, without the protections others take for granted.
But it’s important not to be too defeatist. Yes, you can’t organise a strike in the way BBC staff can. But that doesn’t mean you’re powerless. Some of the most meaningful improvements in professional life haven’t come from walkouts or negotiations at all — they’ve come from something quieter and far more transformative: the deliberate creation of shared principles, and ways of working.
When directors collectively decide that certain practices are unacceptable — or that better ones are both possible and expected — the industry shifts. Culture moves long before contracts do.
We’ve seen this across sectors. Clinicians in the NHS built a “safety culture” by normalising speaking up about dangerous practices. Laboratory workers reframed refusing unsafe work as a professional obligation. Journalists at the BBC defended editorial independence by asserting it as a shared value after the Iraq war.
In our own industry, many of you — supported by Bectu, Equity and the Writers’ Guild — helped embed antibullying principles simply by insisting that dignity at work was a baseline, not an aspiration. Directors UK backed this work by developing the Bullying and Harassment Handbook to help directors tackle this issue in their craft. Our board member Delyth Thomas helped pioneer the CallIt app so problems could be flagged the moment they arise.
Directors collaborated with the then-emerging craft of intimacy coordination to establish new working practices that have made production a safer place to work.
The Principles for Mentally Healthy Productions that were published in February may have been completed and got over the line by a cross-sector working group of over 45 organisations, but the impetus for this work came from a growing grassroots consensus that emerged during the pandemic (with plenty of harbingers beforehand).
None of these changes began with cruder versions of industrial muscle. They began with people — including directors — talking to one another, naming problems, sharing experiences, and agreeing on what “good” looks like. They began with professionals refusing to shrug and accept the status quo.
Consensus building works because it changes the environment in which decisions are made. When facts are widely known, when expectations are clear, and when senior figures realise the profession is paying attention, behaviour changes. Even the most entrenched dysfunction — the chaotic workflows, unclear authority, and “too many cooks” decision making that blights both factual TV and drama production — becomes harder to defend once the damage it does to quality, and its financial costs are publicly understood.
And directors know those costs better than anyone. You see the creative compromises, the wasted hours, the demoralised crews, the reputational damage. You know when a process is broken. And you know when it doesn’t have to be.
Of course, when formal industrial efforts are possible, they matter. That’s why Directors UK lobbies the Government for better freelancer protections, and recently became a founder member of their Freelancer APPG. Meanwhile, if others can secure overtime protections or structural safeguards, that reinforces the norms workers are trying to build. Bectu’s call for better “broken turnaround” protections is a good example. I’ve yet to hear a coherent counterargument, and the campaign deserves everyone’s support.
But the point is this: consensus is not a consolation prize. It is one of the most effective tools available to people who lack leverage in its bluntest forms. And directors — with your visibility, and your networks — are uniquely placed to help build that consensus.
Industries don’t transform only when rules change. They transform when expectations do. And expectations change when people who care about their craft — and about their own wellbeing — quietly, steadily, collectively decide that the old way of doing things is no longer acceptable.
A final thought: most readers may broadly agree with me on this. But agreement alone doesn’t build norms. Directors can do more — and frankly, deserve more — than simply nod along. None of us needs formal authority to start these conversations. Informal chats — on Zoom or wherever — have never been easier, and as Bob Hoskins used to remind us, it’s good to talk.
But Directors UK is your professional association, and we want to help get those conversations going. So, what are the working practices that you want to change? If you think there is the potential to build a consensus around it, then drop me a line. I’m at [email protected]
Paul Evans is Head of Industry Relations at Directors UK. In this regular blog Paul shares his thoughts on the industry, as he meets and collaborates with directors across the UK.
Read Paul’s previous blog: Fair pay for directors, whatever their employment status.
When directors collectively decide that certain practices are unacceptable — or that better ones are both possible and expected — the industry shifts. Culture moves long before contracts do.”