engleski

Labour Practices in the Audiovisual Industry: The Impact of Virtual Work in Runaway Productions

In this presentation I will focus on the critical analysis of the input of virtual work in the so called ‘runaway productions’ of the audiovisual industry in the Republic of Croatia. The case of runaway productions has caused a large concern from the perspective of (the unions of) audio-visual workers from 'outgoing' countries. This concern has been twofold ; firstly, it was based on the fear for the loss of jobs on the ‘local’ level ; and secondly, it was based on regards around the diminishing of the labour rights and the lowering of labour costs of audiovisual workers on the global scale (Mosco and McKercher, 2008). Taking into account the global flow of the cultural and audiovisual products and services, thus, the impact of the (global) cultural industries (Lash and Lury, 2007) and the transnationalisation of audiences and labour(Mosco, 2008), it is ever more difficult to establish the common ground for the labour rights protection on the global scale. Furthermore, in broader discussions on creative labour and media work, virtual working practices are mostly taken for granted, and only recently have been more critically analyzed (see forthcoming: Webster and Randle, 2016). The notion that runaway productions bring jobs and funding to particular locations under the hegemonic discourse of ‘growth and jobs’, needs to be critically reassessed from the angle of the quality of these jobs (Elmer and Gasher, 2005), labour right protection, the input of virtual work and the overall sustainability of such (cultural)development in particular locations. These questions will be examined by using the data from the case study on runaway productions in Croatia that has been executed in the period 2015-2016.

runaway productions; virtual work; audiovisual industry; creative labour; labour rights

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