FIM

On 28 and 29 November 2016, the final con­fer­ence took place on the FIM, FIA and UNI-​MEI joint project on Health and Safety in the Bollywood film indus­try (a project backed by Union To Union).

In the pres­ence of a gov­ern­ment coun­sel­lor, a poignant doc­u­men­tary by Opender Chanana was shown, high­light­ing the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult work­ing con­di­tions for indus­try workers.

A few rep­re­sen­ta­tives of stu­dios which were more sen­si­tive than their peers to these issues attend­ed the con­fer­ence to out­line their efforts to enhance safe­ty and com­fort for staff employed on their premis­es. A fire brigade leader described the work of his unit to save lives and men­tioned the polit­i­cal desire to enhance fire prevention.

Participants adopt­ed a safe­ty code based on inter­na­tion­al stan­dards. Above all, this text is aimed at meet­ing the most urgent con­cerns regard­ing work­ing hours, elec­tri­cal safe­ty, fire pro­tec­tion sys­tems, hygiene and respect for pri­va­cy. The code will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to work­ers con­cerned and could con­sti­tute a bench­mark doc­u­ment for future nego­ti­a­tions with employers.

Participants adopt­ed a safe­ty code based on inter­na­tion­al standards

The con­fer­ence list­ed changes that had occurred over the past four years:
– Health & Safety issues are now tak­en seri­ous­ly by sec­tor unions;
– Public author­i­ties and some employ­ers are grad­u­al­ly becom­ing aware of the need to invest in safe­ty sys­tems to deal with the too many fatal acci­dents that occur dur­ing shooting;
– The sec­tor union move­ment is cur­rent­ly being restruc­tured, dri­ven by par­tic­u­lar­ly dynam­ic groups of work­ers. This need to mod­ern­ize could lead to re-​evaluating the role of the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE);
– The three inter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions have sched­uled clos­er ties with for­eign audio­vi­su­al and broad­cast­ing pro­duc­ers linked to the Bollywood indus­try, with a view to see­ing that they exer­cise care­ful con­trol of the con­di­tions of pro­duc­tion con­cern­ing the films in which they invest.