Is Peter Jackson anti-worker?
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand, Peter Jackson
New Zealand deity Peter Jackson was taken to task recently in a report by
the country's Occupational Safety and Heath board. OSH investigated an accident on the set of King Kong in which a scaffold
collapsed, and their report, full of complains by workers about
conditions on the set, concludes that it was by pure luck that the
accident didn't cause fatalities. According to workers, they had been
on the job for as long as 25 hours before the accident occurred, and "work practices and lack of safety infrastructure [under Jackson]
were the worst" some had ever experienced.The complaints prompted a harsh statement from the president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, who said that the director "needed to change his anti-union approach and respect [the] rights of his staff to organize safety procedures in the workplace." It'll be interesting to hear if any of the crew from the Lord of the Rings series have any similar stories, particularly since the cast clearly saw the whole experience as a giant love-fest. No word on if the crew got matching tattoos.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-21-2005 @ 1:09PM
A Lee said...
There's a couple typos in this article. In fact, I notice A LOT of typos in most of your blogs. Any chance you guys can make more of an effort in the proofreading of your blogs? It would be nice if you could. Thanks.
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10-21-2005 @ 3:21PM
Huw Bowen said...
Well, making movies is hard. Film sets are not safe places and the industry is rife with unsafe practices, because that's the only way that movies get made, given the difficulties of raising money and the unbelievable expense of filmmaking. If the crew are unhappy, they should go work on some other film, or in some other job. There are hundreds of people willing to take their place.
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10-21-2005 @ 6:33PM
Targ8ter said...
Everything I've heard personally from production people on Kong has been great. Sure, it's been a tough shoot with long hours, serious challanges, plenty of tricky stunts and lost of heavy set-wrangling, but it sounds like everyone has loved it. Probably somewhat less adventurous than LoTR because it's mostly on stages, but still fun. And though I didn't spend any time on Kong, I have had to deal with OSH on a few productions, and they are nothing short of tyranical.
I guess they're like any gov't agency, trying to take over for our own personal common sense, but the restrictions are a serious obstacle for all NZ productions. Fortunately, union difficulties are still relatively few, and here's hoping PJ continues to keep those busy-bodies from introducing even more red tape, uninformed opinions and useless bottlenecks into the process. For now, at least, I believe NZ crews can look out for each other on their own, without being forced to by Big Brother or Uncle Vinnie.
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