Job advert response

 10 Walnut tree avenue

Martham

9^th July 2013

 

Dear Mr Cook

I am writing to you about your job advert at flipside media as part of a production team and I have to point out that you have advertised it in a very wrong and offensive. It doesn’t have a detailed contract mentioned like a job of that description would have and the job description doesn’t even have a lot of detail attached to it, It does have a sense of confidentiality but it states an exclusive clause.

Your letter breaches ‘The Equality Act’ (2010) which clearly states that it is designed to protect people from discrimination in the workplace. It replaced other laws like the ‘Sex Discrimination Act’ (1975) ‘Race Relations Act’ (1976) and ‘Disability Discrimination Act’ (1995) with just one law, ‘The Equality Law’ (2010) which is breached when you specified for a worker below the age of the thirty and that they have to have Christian views. The proposed video of a documentary could cause distress among the interviewees and because I wouldn’t be under your employment I wouldn’t be protected from the possible liability’s that could be caused; the interviewees could suffer from emotional harm which would also breach health and safety and I would be held completely responsible. The trade unions only protect employees under the direction of employers, not applicants.

The codes of practice and policies and procedures should be passed on to applicants to avoid any legal or ethical issues which would make it clear to those applying that you would not be held responsible for any action taken upon them due to the video product they are sending in. You have also stated that female victims and male offenders will be the videos interviewees; this is sexist because it is saying that only men are rapists and sets a bad stereotype. This would not help anything except fuel what stereotypes children see advertised on the news every day and made worse by the media’s representations of certain people’s.

The content of the proposed video itself is supposed to be for school children but this has to run through Ofcom broadcasting code which states ‘Material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of people under eighteen must not be broadcast. In the provision of services, broadcasters must take all reasonable steps to protect people under eighteen. For television services, this is in addition to their obligations resulting from the Audio-visual Media Services Directive; Children must also be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them’. Showing children ‘re-enactments’ of rape as you requested would definitely breach that. You must remember that Ofcom exists in the first place because of ‘The Broadcasting Act of 1990 and ‘The Communications Act of 2003’. The ‘Obscene publications Act 1959’which was amended in 1964 says that its purpose is ‘An Act to amend the law relating to the publication of obscene matter; to provide for the protection of literature; and to strengthen the law concerning pornography’, and again the re-enactments of rape would go against that. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) would probably certificate the video as a fifteen, restricting the amount of school children who could even see the video because of not just the content of the product itself but because of the subject of it as well. You have also asked for a popular soundtrack to be used to go along with the video, you haven’t taken into account intellectual property laws which have the purpose of ‘protects the legal rights of creators and owners in relation to intellectual creativity. It lets people own the work they create.  Intellectual property rights (IPR) are, broadly, rights granted to creators and owners of works that are the result of human intellectual creativity.  These works can be in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic domains.  They can be in the form of an invention, a manuscript, a suite of software, or a business name.’ Using a popular soundtrack would more than likely infringe a music piece protected under copy write laws.        

 I hope you will take my letter seriously and under consideration.

Yours Sincerely

 

Josh Rimmer