Job Letter

15/06/2016

To Whom is may concern



I am writing this letter to inform you about the apprentice digital video production producer job. I will talk about the legal and ethical issues with the job advertisement.

Contracts are legal papers that relate to your working arrangement. Contracts need to be read thoroughly to make sure you know about working hours, what is required of you and the payment you will receive. A confidentiality clause is an agreement between both parties not to tell anyone outside the company about the work they are doing. A exclusivity clause prevents someone entering a similar deal with a third party. In your job advert you've stated the salary as between £15,000 and £35,000 a year and the weekly hours as between 10-45 hours. This is a large gap and you haven't stated if someone works 10 hours if they get £35,000 or £15,000,. This is very confusing and misleading.

The equality act of 2010 makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the grounds of there age or gender. It replaced the equal pay act of 1970, sex discrimination act 1975, race relations act 1976, disability discrimination act, employment equality (religion and belief) regulations 2003, employment equality (sexual orientation) regulations 2003 and the employment equality (age) regulations 2006. This needs to be considered when employing someone.  Equal opportunities employers aim to recruit fairly and they produce codes of practice that evidence that they comply with the equality act. In your job advertisement you've stated you need a 30 or younger year old, male or female who is christian. This comes under the equality act because you are discriminating again people who are older than 30, people who don't define them selves as either male or female and people who are not christian. You've also said to interview female rape victims and male offenders. This is a huge offence as it's not always males who offend and females who are the victims.

The Equality Act 2010 -

The Employment Equality Act 2006- 

The Equality Act 2010 -

Employers liability requires employers carry insurance for their employees encase they get an injury at work. Under the Employers' Liability (compulsory Insurance) act 1969 it is illegal not to have insurance for employees. Employees rights are enforced to make sure employees are treated in a professional respected way. These are paid time off work, the minimum you can get paid, public holidays, sick leave and bereavement leave. Employers liability and employees rights wouldn't protect the person making the rape video because they are not employed by your company. This means that they wouldn't have anyone to fall back on and take the blame for them. There are protections from people being angry or hurt by the video, but as the applicants don't work for you the legislation doesn't apply to them.

Trade unions are an organisation formed by workers in a trade, group of trades or a profession. They form to protect the interests and rights of the workers. A trade union in the media industry is the BECTU. They mostly protect freelance workers from being abused by big studios. They protect them from doing work without properly being paid. This links to employers liability and employee rights because your not protected when you make the rape video. This is because your only applying for a job, rather than working for your company therefore not entitled to join a trade union.

Health and safety legislation is important because if an employee gets hurt in the work place they can get compensation. Like I said earlier when someone is applying for your job their not covered by health and safety legislation. This means that if they hurt them selves while making the video they wouldn't be entitled to compensation because their not covered by the health and safety legislation.

Code of practices are a set of rules which explains how people in a particular field should work. Policies and procedures define what your organisation does and how it does it. Clear policies and procedures support decision making because they provide guidelines on what people can and can't do. These can be passed to the applicants before hand so the applicant knows about the company and how they like things to be done. But again an applicant wouldn't be covered.

People in the media can be represented in different ways. For example they media could only report the bad things about a person so the public only knows the bad things. Or it could be the other way round and the public only know the good things about a person. In the video you've asked your applicants to make a video about rape, the applicants would need to interview rapists and rape victims. This is a terrible idea because you are portraying the people within the video in a bad light and will then be judged badly by the people who will see the video. In the application you've called the people who have been raped are 'victims' for the rest of their lives.

Social concern is when the media represents a certain group in a way the effects the audiences views on that group. The people who have committed the rape will be judged by the audience in such a bad way they will never be see in a good light ever again. Also everyone will know that the people who have been raped.  This means that people will never treat them the same again.


Ofcom regulate the communications industry. Ofcom was created because of the communications act (2003) and the broadcasting act (1990). This is Ofcom rule regarding rape.

  This is the rule that prevents rape being shown. You've said in your job application 'Include re-enactments'. This rule prevent any content such as rape being shown.

You have said in the job application 'plan and produce a short documentary that can be shown to children at high school' These ofom rules -

These rules prevent anything like rape being shown to high school children because they are under 18.

The obscene publications act (1959) applies to television and covers material which is obscene. This stops any obscene material being shown. This mostly relating to research behind the material because Ofcom regulates whats being shown.

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) is an independent (not controlled by the government) which classifies movies, videos and computer games. The classifications range from 'U' which means the film,video or computer game is suitable for people older than 4. All the way up to '18' which means anyone 18 or older can see this film, video or commuter games. The video which will be made for your job application will have to be an 18. This is because it will show re-enactments of sexual violence.

Intellectual property is created products that people made and own. In your job advert you asked to put a popular music track in their video. But copyright prevents popular music being shown on a private video. Even the £20 offered to the job applicants wouldn't cover the cost of playing a copyrighted song. 




Your sincerely






George Allen