Sussex Film Office
Word in of another company seeking to make a bit of cash on the back of hard-working freelancers.
The company in question is Sussex Film Office, an organisation run by Kelly Mikulla which (despite its fancy title) is just a private company, not an official body.
As part of its work, this company recruits freelancers for companies filming in the Sussex area. The issue is however, that they take themselves a nice fat 10% cut out of the wages when they do.
It is difficult to see what extra benefit freelancers might be gaining by getting work via this company rather than being employed direct (and why is the freelancer getting the bill for a company to find workers?) but, apart from the cash grab, there are also other issues at play with what The Sussex Film Office does.
Such as this. A company which is currently recruiting freelancers for a film, Kirlian Pictures, are offering what by any measure are very low wages for work on a film they are making called "Cain". The issue is that, when it comes to the Runners being employed on this job, the hours and rate of pay strongly suggest that they are dangerously close to being less than the legal minimum. And, when the Sussex Film Office have also taken their wedge, that makes the situation even more dicey.
When asked whether the company checks whether all workers are paid at least the legal minimum for the work they do on films through them, Kelly Mikulla was unable to say.
Added to this, it is not clear that Tax and NI are being dealt with correctly when freelancers are recruited in this way.
In terms of taking their cut, the way it works is that Sussex Film invoices the film company and then removes their 10% before passing the rest on. The amount in question however appears to be a gross amount, with no accounting for taxes or National Insurance as would be required from those workers, such as the Runners and Assistants, who cannot be treated as self employed.
Plenty of concerns then which Kelly Mikulla does not seem inclined to address.
If any company filming in the local Sussex area would like to recruit freelancers for their next production and be sure that every penny of the wages they hand over does reach the pockets of the workers who are actually making their film with them, then there are of course any number of free-to-use Facebook pages where they will find all the workers they could ever need.
And by going down that route, they can be confident that the money is going to those who earn it, rather than being creamed off the top by this company. And that at least the minimum wage would be paid to each and every one.
Which is as it should be.