Unpaid Overtime in VFX - The Hard Truth.

If you work in the animation and vfx industry here in London, then you work unpaid overtime. That’s just a sad fact of the state of our industry.

Let’s say you average around 10 hours of unpaid overtime per week. Sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more and sometimes… a lot more. But let’s say 10 hours per week average. We’re supposed to be pretty good at maths in our line of work, but have you ever stopped to think that over the course of a year averaging an extra ten hours per week, you just gave the facility 3 months worth of your 40 hr/week labour for nothing?!

3 months of your time per year given away for free, every year.

You would think the facilities would be grateful for all you’ve given them and be all too happy to look after all their loyal and hard working employees when you need it.

Or maybe not. It turns out that when the government introduced the furlough scheme to keep employees paid something during the lockdown, the facilities were all for it. Now the big facilities are making hundreds and hundreds of their employees redundant to avoid having to pay 10% of your salary to keep you furloughed on reduced pay after July 31st when the government furlough scheme changes.

Why did we happily hand the facilities all that excessive unpaid overtime again?

Shameful.

The facilities have shown that they will always put profit before people. It’s time for all of us to stand together and stick up for each other.

Join the AVU - Animation and VFX union - today to end the unethical practice of excessive unpaid overtime in our industry.