25-hour Days and Driving People Round the Twist (or Down the Mountain)

The Department of Labour publish a manual on stress and fatigue. It says that fatigue is increased when work is mentally demanding, and that sustained mental effort is more fatiguing than physical effort. I doubt there is a craft whose members are not mentally taxed during a shoot (no jokes, I don’t know which craft gets the brunt of humour like ‘drummers’ do in the music world, but I’m sure there is one…). Impacts of fatigue are increased by various factors, including a lack of job security. Interesting to consider where — as in this industry — there is essentially never any job security. As always, employee status is assumed in the DoL document, and it varies in how you can apply it to the screen production industry, but this made me wonder if contractors who are in genuine control of their conditions cope better than those who are treated like employees.

It’s a matter that could be debated at length, however I suggest there are unlikely to be many plumbers out there who — outside of a state of emergency — would allow their work day to extend well beyond 12 hours… Unfortunately the same was not demonstrated to be true of contractors in this industry on a recent shoot: The shoot-day, scheduled at an already insane 13 hours, blew out to well over 20 hours. Clearly, with last-wrap after such an outrageous length of time, some crew would not have had the opportunity for any rest until well into the next day.

The production company must hold responsibility for utterly poor scheduling and planning; and must accept that crew have genuine fears about speaking out in such situations due to the same absence of job security referred to above. But… this does not absolve crew from their individual responsibilities in such situations. A reasonable standard work day was fought for by workers following the industrial revolution, and after World War II settled at eight hours. Our industry has pushed 10 hours as standard in many cases, and 12 in others. When such hours are standard any further work must be strongly discouraged — that is the principal of overtime penalties. Such charges are not intended as a way for contractors to earn extra money! If they are viewed carelessly as such, it has to be asked: Where on earth does the creep stop? Answer: with you. As long as crew allow themselves to be divided, disempowered, and pressured by productions, these sort of potentially fatal working conditions will only get worse.

There are always other stories, and a recent one involved driving passengers down a mountain from location and directly on to a long-haul journey home after a lengthy shoot day. In all too many such cases as cited here, not even the basic safety options of swing-drivers or alternative transport solutions are explored.

Don’t kid yourself. Fatigue is a killer. When you last did overtime, did you drive home after last wrap? How many road accidents do you think cite fatigue as a contributing factor? In 2006 at least 40 people in this country were killed, and almost 1000 people were injured, in accidents where fatigue was a key factor. What is your life worth to you and to your family?