LETTER OF COMPLAINT

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this letter to you regarding your recent job role application. This letter is going to explain and even quote the legal, contractual and moral issues of what you are expecting, with the hope of changes to your application. 

Let me first explain to you what a contractual agreement is because you seem to be confused, it’s having a voluntary lawful object (so an applicant) who aims to form a legal obligation with a party (your company being the party). There are two main elements of a contract agreement which are to “offer” and to have “acceptance”, I can’t see any of these elements in your application. How can I even try and get an agreement with you if you can’t be any more specific, it’s all ridiculously broad. I will first begin with reminding you that you said “between 10-45 hours per week”. I am unsure on what that means. What is the basis? It is based on experience? I hope you know that this puts a huge opening through the Equality Act (2010) as it varies between paying somebody who is only working part time, to full time. I’m just reminding you that a part time job is anything that works under 16 hours. As a working company, you are meant to have equal opportunities for all of your workers. Another issue that your employees will face is because the hours are variable, the salary will be too. You can’t expect a worker to work full time one year & earn £35,000 and then cut the hours down so he/she earns only £15,000. It is morally wrong to expect that somebody will do that, it’s unfair for the worker as they have a life to live and things to pay for and falls under the Equal Pay Act (1970). I will now turn all of my attention to the salary rate as it now links to Exclusivity Causes. An exclusivity cause is a legal document that only allows the model to work for one agency and not work for other agencies (which you have mentioned in the fine print, but don’t worry, I’ll come back to that later). You cannot pay somebody more or less for doing the same job as a previous employee.

I will now move on to the Employment Legislation issues within your application, although I have mentioned the most important ones in the paragraph above but in case you’ve forgotten (like before, clearly) they are the Equality Act (2010) and the Equal Pay Act (1970). Specifically, the Equality Act fights for equality for all employees, not discriminating gender, race, age etc. This means regardless of who you are, what you’ve worked/will work everybody gets equal pay. You have already discriminated as you have stated you are looking for “male/female (aged below 30). You cannot discriminate age. It is illegal to decline somebodies application or terminate employment due to someone’s age. Doing this, you have broken the codes of practice made by the act. Along with this, you are looking for somebody with Christian religious views. I’m assuming because you haven’t looked into anything legal, of course you haven’t looked into Ofcom’s regulations. Ofcom explains that you are NOT allowed to promote religion, it is illegal.

The content of the proposed video is very explicit. As an applicant, I would not be protected if somebody were to sue me. As an employer, you are responsible for the safety/wellbeing of employees, I am not covered or insured by your company and if something were to happen, I would get in a lot of trouble whereas your company would remain untouched. This links into the health and safety legislations. I will be able to claim compensation if I believed the employer is responsible – please notice the word “employer”, which I will not be. This is something you need to look into. I would now like to talk about Trade Unions who protect the rights of workers. An example of this is BECTU which is a freelance company and a membership is currently £120 which is only £10 a month. I think this is something you need to look into, immediately.

Codes of practice are not legal agreements but they are guild lines that are passed down from legislation to help protect people involved. It is an ethical issue and a social concern for thinking of showing high school students something that isn't acceptable to view at their age. We all must be able to work in a safe/legal environment so we can all be protected.  Representation is another very important factor to look into (maybe I should write you a list?) It's basically how people are portrayed in media and it could be extremely problematic. The audience will always follow the way the media represents it, in your case you have stereo typically used "female victims and male offenders" where there have been cases of it being the other way around - it's wrong to make females feel like they are in danger when males are too.  

The Ofcom broadcasting code which 

particularly has a “protecting the under 18’s” code, which would probably didn’t realise. The BBFC states that “the R18 category is a special and legally restricted classification primarily for explicit works for consenting sex or strong fetish material involving adults”. You planned on the applicants to promote the ‘No Means No’ date rape campaign to High School Students. Being a UK Media company, surely you would be capable of figuring out that High School Students are aged between 13-16 which of course means most students are underage, meaning it’s illegal to show them explicit sexual nature. Not to mention involving re-enactments/dramatizations which is nothing less than obscene, which will refer to the Obscene Publications Act that was legalised in 1959. Did you stop to think about how some individuals might be affected? There are legal rights against this and it’s morally wrong as people might find this to be a sensitive subject. Legally the identity of an alleged rape victim must remain disclosed, for the safety and wellbeing of the victim. During this duration of filming this campaign as an applicant, I will not be in my rights as an employee, like I explained before. I will be in the wrong for breaking confidentiality agreements. I also couldn’t help but notice the small print at the bottom of the brief about promoting “the ideals of Christian faith” obviously you haven’t really checked the regulations as it’s illegal to promote religion. Because of the topic of the video, I believe this will be a rating of 15 because of the strong violence, perhaps nudity, sexual nature etc. These are some of the regulations from the BBFC website. 

One last thing, if you are going to use a "popular music soundtrack" you need to be careful not to face any copyright legal issues (you've already broken the law lots of times anyway, may as well not have another one). The soundtrack also would have taken the point away from the campaign, so instead, I suggest using some a piece of music that will fit the theme of the video and manipulate your audiences a little, there are lots of musical sites including Incompetech and more royalty free tracks - just look.

I hope the issues I have raised here will open your eyes a little and you'll research before making such idiotic mistakes. Please make the changes required to the application. Thank you for reading my letter. 

Yours sincerely,

Sam Cattee