IMAGINE you’re looking for a new job. You’re short on cash, and your options are all short-term work. You’ve trained for years and are laden with debt. Sixty per cent of the work you undertake is in London and south-east England. As well as your rent, bills, childcare costs, you have to keep training and taking classes to get work. Without a permanent job those costs of training and development are on you. Then, simply to access 95 per cent of workplaces you have to pay a fee of £200 every year — up front, whether you find work or not, irrespective of how much you earn. The bosses who benefit from your skill, training, precarity, and labour pay nothing to the industry monopoly which controls access to work.

It is taken for granted in practically every industry that a worker does not pay up front to look for work. The scenario above is outlawed for most working people since 1973 — but the regulations which cover work-seeking explicitly exempt the performing arts and entertainment industries. The desire to work for Equity members comes at an upfront cost — it’s a tax on hope.

One of Equity’s motions to Congress this year seeks the movement’s support and solidarity to ensure the government ends the carve-out which makes this practice legal in the industries where our members work. It’s a critical strand of a campaign which matters to all workers.

It matters because the stories that are told on our stages and screens, where they are told, and who gets to tell them is a critical part of the struggle of our class. 

Upfront fees disproportionately hinder artists from working-class backgrounds and, especially in such a precarious industry, they hit those who work the least the hardest. That’s black workers, disabled artists, trans people and women — especially older women. 

Equity sees no reason why our members should be treated differently from workers in any other industry when it comes to upfront fees. With work in the performing arts and entertainment characterised by low pay, insecurity and elitism, working-class performers represent only 8 per cent of performers in TV and film, according to recent research by Creative Industries PEC.

Performers generally seek work by paying to be included in a casting directory. Before the internet, casting directories came in the form of several alphabetical volumes. Nowadays they exist as online platforms, where performers upload personal information to a profile, casting directors post work opportunities, and the platform shows the performer opportunities matching their profile. 

To preserve this longstanding practice, casting directories enjoy a specific legal exemption which allows them to charge a fee to performers for their inclusion in the directory or platform.

Spotlight is by far the most dominant casting platform. According to its own website, over 95 per cent of productions in the UK are cast through Spotlight. It is considered essential to have a Spotlight profile to build a career in the industry and most talent agents will require it of any actors they take on.

For many years, Equity — a trade union of 50,000 performers and creative workers — accepted this situation. Spotlight was a family-run business charging modest fees to performers. 

In 2021, Spotlight was acquired by a US-based casting company, Talent Systems LLC, owned by a number of US private equity firms. Since then, Spotlight has taken a more commercially aggressive approach, culminating in its aborted launch of a “Premiere” tier of membership, creating even more pressure to pay even more money to a platform which benefit bosses. It is also clear that Spotlight aims to use its monopoly position in Britain to expand into European markets, using the subscriptions of performers in Britain — £198 per year, a 9 per cent increase on the previous year — to do so.

Concern among Equity members has grown with the shift in approach at Spotlight, leading ultimately to a change in union policy at the end of 2023. Part of the reason Equity previously took no issue with Spotlight is that we had the reassurance of particular legal restrictions on its fees. While casting directories can charge an upfront fee, the fee must represent no more than the costs of production and circulation of the directory which are attributable to the work-seeker.

Besides our political campaign to end upfront fees entirely, we believe Spotlight’s fees exceed this restriction. In response to our request for an explanation of how its fees are calculated, Spotlight denied that the regulations apply to it at all. 

We are, therefore, asking the High Court to order Spotlight to show how it calculates its fees with reference to the legislation. The time for resilience to costs for work-seeking is over. Equity’s members are choosing resistance instead — in the courts, in their workplaces and within our wider movement.

While we believe our legal challenge will succeed in lowering the exorbitant fees for performers, it will not do away with upfront fees entirely. For that, we continue to work with the new government to put our case as strongly as possible that this unfair carve-out must end. The formal support of every TUC’s 48 affiliates, backing our motion at Congress, will bring us one step closer to that goal.

Paul W Fleming is general secretary of Equity.