Accidents Waiting to Happen? Policies, Practices, and Pitfalls in Keeping Film and TV Workers Safe

Media scholars tend to focus on a rather narrow convergence between screen media policy and labour that privileges the relatively contemporary phenomenon of state-level edicts designed to build and sustain satellite production industries. Economic enticements, like production subsidies, provide tax breaks that, in turn (and in theory), create high profile and well-paying gigs for local production workers. In these discussions, “labour” is the sum total of jobs lost or jobs gained, while the day-to-day realities of production work are largely abstracted from the equation.This chapter, however, takes the day-to-day realities of production work as its starting point to chart a different conversation about screen media policy and labor, one that shifts policy deliberations away from economic development to consider the health, well-being, and safety of film and television workers. In doing so, my aim is to make visible some of the less queried structures that shape and condition the nature of creative work and expose potential alternative avenues to explore for scholars and advocates with interests in protecting the status and experience of creative labour. Ultimately, the analysis renders bare layers of hitherto ignored complexities and contradictions that complicate answers to a relatively straightforward question: who or what is responsible for keeping film and television workers safe