Drawing the line on workshop time: costume case study
Workers in costume workshops spend their day stitching, dyeing and painting costumes. They will generally arrive and be ready to start work at 8am and will expect to leave at 6pm. In the workshop, they are expected to be tightly focussed on painting and dying. This can be very physical work. In comparison to on-set colleagues, the working day is intense with little ‘downtime’ in which the team can collect their thoughts. Bectu members report it being ‘an act of will’ to ensure that a lunch break is taken as the day can often be overwhelming.
There is a long-standing norm for these workers is that they only need to work a ‘nine-plus-one’ day, but this convention is increasingly being abused. Depending upon the cutter a team are working for, the hours can vary significantly. When some teams leave at 6pm, they know that other colleagues will be there for a further two hours.
Members have reported cases where some teams are working for 12 hours consistently without any overtime being paid while another team was working the ‘norm’ of 8am-6pm – and when crunch periods happened and they were asked to work longer hours, they were paid at the overtime rate.
Some costume workshop crew are also expected to be on-set working as a ‘costume standby’, often doing ‘action damage” (simulating blood, explosion dust etc). On these days, the work is less intense – instead, the activity comes in bursts. But while the work may be less consistently demanding, having their working contract switched onto the ‘continuous working day’ format can be disorienting and confusing, which also results in increased levels of exhaustion. There is ample evidence that changing shift patterns adds to exhaustion levels, and that this problem becomes more acute for workers who are over 50 years old.[i]
Working while exhausted also poses important safety risks to the workers concerned. They are working with scalding water or chemicals and members report that it is common for people not to ‘mask up’ properly when they are working under pressure. During the covid pandemic, members reported being rushed to do something and feeling pressured to by-pass a lot of covid ‘social distancing’ rules. Many costume workshop members report having sewed through their fingers more when they are working on tough jobs and tired. A domestic sewing machine tends to stop when you catch your finger – but an industrial machine doesn’t.
The quality of work is often hit by long-hours working. Members have noted that they combine a self-criticism when watching the cast wearing badly-prepared costumes with an ‘I’ve stopped caring’ attitude during particularly gruelling periods of work. As one Bectu member put it:
‘In the first few weeks, I was proud of the work I was doing, but I was increasingly aware that, as time went on, I was deliberately dragging my feet so that I could get a bit of a breath – and after a few weeks of 12-hour days, I stopped caring about whether the work was to the standard I would normally expect of myself. You can’t problem-solve when you’re exhausted.
‘You do that a lot better on a Monday morning than when you were stuck by it for four hours at the end of the previous week. I sometimes see it when people are wearing the costumes. I just know that – when we’re tired – we’re less productive, and we’re making more mistakes. Even getting 30 minutes less in a day makes a massive difference to the sense of stress and well-being. This means 30 minutes off the length of the working time – shortening it by having a 30-minute lunch break doesn’t alleviate stress.’
Today, with the huge growth in high-end TV, and the growing major motion picture budgets, costume workshop crew are often working very long contracts that last for eight months or more. When much of the work was on lower-budget UK commissions (as much UK production work was a decade ago) a typical engagement would only last a few months which meant that the working life had more periods of recuperation between jobs.
Because the industry is busier than ever, combined with the disruptions related to covid, has all meant that the intense days working to tight deadlines are more common now. The overall working experience has become much more intense and demanding, but the working arrangements haven’t adapted to allow for the increased levels of stress and exhaustion that they cause.
Costume workshop crew are also aware that they are perceived to have a lower status than on-set workers. Their levels of pay are lower than comparable on-set crafts. Bad scheduling, script planning, or cast-members not coming for fittings, can result in longer hours and avoiding this is rarely a management priority. Sometimes a production won’t fly a cast member in for a fitting.
The ‘prep-and-wrap’ provisions in the Bectu/Pact agreements are often treated as an overtime contingency (though this is expressly not the agreed purpose of these provisions). Bectu members tell the union that productions abuse the fact that the contract allows them at least 11 free hours of work (or sometimes 12.5 free hours where the prep-and-wrap clauses are abused).
Bectu members are widely critical of the poor scheduling that they must work to with during ‘crunch’ periods to meet a poorly planned deadline. They are particularly critical of the time that is wasted when they are working on set, and they are keen to accelerate attempts to explore job-sharing that facilitates a shorter working week.
Again, it has been noted that some managers and supervisors are very open to this, and experiences with this idea have been very positive. However, in a self-managing framework, other managers are dismissive of this opportunity.
But ultimately, they are calling on their industry to give them the same respect that on-set crew are afforded – this should be reflected in wages and working conditions – and agree contracts that reflect their actual working hours so that overtime penalties will apply.
Working conditions in craft workshops
In an interview panel conducted with workers in various craft-workshop teams, the union was told about common health and safety problems that are faced in the course of the work on high-budget productions.
Workplaces
Members reported that, in some cases, the building that they are working in almost seems to have been chosen at random and had not been assessed for the suitability of the work prior to the work starting. It was confirmed that this was not just the case with smaller productions or Special Purpose Vehicle production companies – it also applied to major studios.
Prosthetics makers, and other craft workshop crew are expected to work for hours every day with hazardous chemicals and other substances that are hazardous to health.
Often, extraction fans and pipes are improvised by the craft workers themselves, using tubes and ducting that is run out of windows and across roofs. Members reported that those who were expected to do this had been given no training or information on how things should be set up or what needs to be in place, and no advice about what materials to use for this. They also reported that they will often be working in a workshop for months before any extraction system is set up.
Members called for more purpose-built craft workshops designed to accommodate workers who are doing complex and dangerous work with cutting tools and chemicals.
Lack of safety expertise
In interviews, members reported that responsibility for health and safety in craft workshops is often given to heads of department who don’t have the expertise to assess the risks of a workshop. As one member put it:
‘With the best will in the world, and even with many years’ experience a makeup designer isn’t necessarily going to know what safety measures are needed for people working with chemicals and fibreglass – just taking two examples of many instances that we work with. And for this reason, workshops are often not equipped with the right extraction systems.
‘We don’t have the PPE and other safety measures that are needed. There’s also a lot of inconsistency because of the varying levels of experience and focus among HoDs. If they are knowledgeable, they are more likely to give health and safety in workshops a focus, if not, then the workers are the ones who have to work in unsafe conditions.’
Members expressed the opinion that this was partly down to the ‘self-managing department’ status that they work in. HoDs are under pressure not to give the production any unpleasant surprises with their budgets, and any underestimates that are made on safety have to be swept under the carpet by the workshop teams. As another member puts it:
‘If there were a central health and safety budget, this wouldn’t be a problem, but HoDs have to answer for everything and they’d often prefer not to.’
Lack of safety training
Unless they pay for it themselves, craft workshop crew are not usually given training on the specifics of the materials they’re working with, or on the safety measures needed for working with them. Even if they are willing and able to pay for this training themselves, they may not know exactly what kind of training is needed, or if anywhere will be able to offer it.
Although health and safety inspectors for the production companies do occasionally walk around and check on the measures that have been put in place, members have given examples of cases where they asked for advice on working with chemicals and were told that the inspectors concerned didn’t have the expertise to deal with it themselves. Others said that some health monitoring had been done, and they had reported concerns and potential harm suffered because of these issues, but were never given any response or feedback, and they saw no obvious changes put in place.
Members also reported a lack of expertise here among their colleagues:
‘Our problem is that we don’t know enough to know what we don’t know about this. If everyone knew the dangers here, I think we’d be up in arms about it, but I’ve been working in the industry for a number of years now and I’m only just realising that this is a real problem.
‘Our working hours are long and exhausting as it is. If we had to deal with this as well, it would tip you over the edge – it’d be the last straw.
‘New starters won’t have a chance of knowing how to protect themselves! Unfortunately, everyone who does know that there’s a problem is too nervous to stick their heads above the parapet – they think they’ll never get hired again.’
[i] Occupational health studies show that decreases in the number of night shifts, quick returns, and a preference for quickly forward-rotating shift arrangements are likely to reduce fatigue, and that improvements in shift characteristics would be particularly beneficial for employers older than 50 years. See this page.