TV versus low-budget film: same laws, different ethics

This case study compares the TV Wrap petition for freelance TV worker rights in 2005, which brought about policy change in the TV industry, with similar campaigns in the low-budget film industry since 2008. TV Wrap campaigners chose statutory legal employment rights as a benchmark for defining ‘injustice’ and organising action to lobby for change. Significantly, however, the same claims of injustice, applied by the same campaigners, were received with hostility by many workers in the low-budget film industry, who vigorously defended their right to work unpaid. Based on participant experience as one of the original TV Wrap campaigners, this paper asks why one set of workers perceived sufficient injustice to be mobilised, while others applied a different ethical framework. The issue is examined in the light of John Kelly’s mobilisation theory, and the components it suggests as pre-requisites for collective action to take place.