A young Australian film crew member finished work in the early morning, got into his car and started driving home.

He didn't make it.

According to research by Australia's Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the worker fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a telegraph pole. He was one of many Australian crew members who told the union that punishingly long working hours were damaging their health, relationships and careers. One in four said they were considering leaving the industry altogether.

The story could have happened in Hollywood.

But it’s more likely to happen in London, Seoul or Manila.

As America's studios and streamers increasingly shift productions overseas - often in order to save money - local crew are complaining about uncertain work conditions, erratic pay and troubling safety issues. 

While the working conditions and guidelines vary from country to country, those places that don't have a unionized industry presence seem to have a consistent series of problems. There can be few restraints on the numbers of hours worked and even when there are contracts in place with local crews, they are routinely ignored. Pay can be delayed for weeks, often attributed to "paperwork delays" or other unnamed difficulties. Meals are skipped or workers are not allowed to eat until their shift ends. 

Safety is also a frequent concern, especially from workers assigned to second units, which often face less oversight than the primary set. "I don't think they necessarily plan on allowing dangerous conditions," one stunt person in Thailand explained to me. "But the pressure is on to get the shots done and move on. We're doing things in a way that is going to lead to someone being severely injured. I hope not killed. But you can only play Russian Roulette so often with people's lives."

The people who make movies and television programs around the world share a peculiar occupational hazard: Their jobs may look glamorous from the outside, but the actual work is frequently temporary, physically demanding, poorly scheduled and dependent on the next production.

In Britain, where Bectu represents workers across the entertainment and media industries, freelancing remains the dominant employment model for much of the screen workforce. Bectu's 2025 survey of more than 5,500 creative workers found that 47% of screen-industry freelancers had been out of work, while 80% of freelancers across the creative industries reported working 10-hour-plus days. A quarter said 12-hour shifts were standard.

The financial insecurity is almost as striking as the hours.

Bectu reported that fewer than half of freelancers were always paid on time, 37% said late payments had pushed them into debt or a cash-flow crisis, and a quarter said they could not survive three months without work.

For television specifically, Bectu found that nearly half of the workers surveyed had been out of work in March 2025. Sixty-eight percent said they were struggling to make ends meet, and one-third were considering leaving the industry within five years.

Again, this isn't simply a story about unions being weak. It is a story about what happens when the underlying employment model is unstable.

A worker can belong to a union and still be unemployed.

Australia provides one of the most vivid examples of the physical cost of production schedules.

MEAA's research found that two-thirds of Australian crew members had fallen asleep while driving to or from work. The union documented the crew member who crashed into a telegraph pole and reported that long hours were contributing to workers leaving the industry. One in four respondents said they were considering leaving or retiring.

The research also found that crew members were dealing with workdays and schedules that affected relationships and physical health.

Australia therefore offers an important lesson for Hollywood: Even where entertainment workers have organized representation, the culture of production can remain difficult to change.

A contractual right to rest is useful only if productions schedule people in a way that allows them to rest—and if workers feel secure enough to insist on that right.

Few recent examples illustrate the international problem more dramatically than South Korea's television industry.

During the boom in Korean drama production, crews became notorious for extreme working hours. The Los Angeles Times reported on workers who described productions involving extraordinarily long weeks and inadequate staffing.

One midcareer freelance producer who worked on a Netflix production said she earned approximately $3,400 a month while working 90 to 100 hours a week. She said only four full-time producers were handling everything from staff contracts to running shoots.

A lighting technician working on another Netflix production described another familiar problem: Work that occurred before and after the cameras were rolling wasn't always counted.

Her crew was called in for two additional days of preparation and setup that went unpaid. The workers also weren't paid for an hour of equipment cleanup after each shoot.

And then there is the case of Lee Han-bit, a 27-year-old drama producer who died by suicide in 2016. Before his death, Lee described what he saw as labor exploitation in Korean television and wrote that although others viewed him as a supervisor, he considered himself a worker as well. His death became a catalyst for increased scrutiny of working conditions in Korean television.

The Korean experience also demonstrates the limits of blaming the global streaming companies alone.

Netflix generally contracts with Korean production companies to make its local programs. Workers interviewed by the Los Angeles Times argued that the production companies—not simply the American streaming service—were responsible for the working conditions they experienced.

The business model matters because the person whose name appears on the program may not be the person's actual employer.

India presents another version of the problem.

The country's film and television industry employs enormous numbers of daily-wage workers whose livelihoods depend on individual productions. Lighting technicians, makeup artists, background performers, dancers and other workers can find themselves without income when productions stop.

The Indian Express reported that years after India's pandemic shutdown, many daily-wage workers were still struggling with stalled productions and limited opportunities.

The Malayalam film industry produced an even more disturbing set of allegations. Workers interviewed by the Indian Express described junior artists as being particularly vulnerable because they lacked the bargaining power and union protections available to more established actors and technical workers.

The common thread is familiar: The further a worker is from the top of the production hierarchy, the more difficult it can be to turn labor rights into actual bargaining power.

The Philippines provides an especially interesting counterexample because the government has attempted to address the problem through legislation.

In 2024, the Philippines enacted the Eddie Garcia Act, named after the veteran Filipino actor who died after an accident on a television set. The law explicitly covers workers throughout the movie and television industries and establishes requirements involving contracts, wages, working hours, social protection, safety and insurance.

The law requires written employment agreements that spell out a worker's position, job description, period of employment, compensation, hours of work and grievance mechanism.

It also establishes an eight-hour normal workday that can be extended to a maximum of 14 hours, with a ceiling of 60 hours a week. Productions must provide accident insurance at no cost to workers.

The implementing regulations, signed in September 2024, go further. They require employers to provide safe working conditions, first aid, safety equipment, adequate meals, drinking water, rest facilities and accommodation where applicable. The regulations also establish penalties for violations.

The law is significant precisely because it recognizes something that entertainment industries around the world have struggled with for decades: Film and television production is not ordinary office work.

The work is temporary. Crews move from employer to employer. Production schedules can change overnight. Workers may be reluctant to complain because the person they anger today may know the person hiring tomorrow.

The Philippines has essentially attempted to put a legal floor underneath that system.

Whether the law will be effectively enforced is a separate question.

Eastern Europe demonstrates yet another variation of the problem

Prague, Budapest and other Central European production centers have become important locations for international film and television because they offer experienced crews, attractive locations and production incentives.

For workers, the arrival of international productions can be an economic opportunity.

During the production boom, a 2021 report on the Czech film industry found that studios were struggling to find enough qualified workers. Geoffrey Case, managing director of Prague's Dazzle Pictures, said artists were constantly being approached by competing companies looking for staff.

That is the other side of the labor story.

When skilled workers are scarce, their bargaining power can increase even without a strong union.

But the economic model can also produce a two-tier system. Research on Prague's international production workforce has found that foreign productions can provide better pay than domestic Czech productions while still leaving workers with less job security, creative control and opportunity for advancement than workers in more established Western industries.

The globalization of production therefore doesn't necessarily mean Hollywood standards are exported around the world.

Sometimes the opposite happens.

Hollywood goes where production is cheaper.

When Raffi R. (he asked not to be publicly identified) worked on the crew of a major streaming television project earlier this year, he was excited by the prospect of multiple weeks of guaranteed work on a major Hollywood production. But the experience turned out to be a bittersweet one for the Hungarian tradesman, who worked several weeks without a contract and when he did receive it, discovered the production company that hired him refused to pay for overtime he should have received before he was given his paperwork. "I am happy to put in the time, this is work I love. And the experience of working on a big show will hopefully mean I will get more work in the future," he told me during a Zoom call on Tuesday. "But it makes me angry to know that I didn't get the money I earned simply because they can keep it from me."

"I often hear that we don't need a union because the country's industry is small and that closeness provides peer pressure which reinforces safety and adequate pay," he told me. "The reality is that yes, it's a small scene here. But that means that you can't afford to say no, even if someone is taking advantage of you. Peer pressure really means you can't afford to be seen as a troublemaker if you hope to be hired in the future."

That may be the fundamental problem.

A lighting technician can have a terrific week and still spend the next month looking for work. A VFX artist can work on a blockbuster without having portable health insurance. A British freelancer can work a 12-hour day and still worry about making rent during the next production gap. A Korean producer can earn thousands of dollars a month while working 100 hours a week. An Australian crew member can have a union and still fall asleep driving home.

The international labor movement in film and television is therefore not a simple story about good countries and bad countries, or unionized workers and non-unionized workers.

It is a story about bargaining power.

Strong unions can establish minimum wages, overtime, benefits, rest periods and grievance procedures. They can make it harder for an employer to tell one worker, “If you don't like the conditions, there are 20 other people who will take your job.”

But unions cannot organize workers who aren't covered by their agreements. And even when workers are represented, enforcement can be difficult in an industry built around temporary productions and complicated chains of subcontractors.

The global entertainment business has become extraordinarily good at moving production around the world.

The question is whether labor protections can move with it.

Because the audience sees the two-hour movie.

The crew member sees the 16-hour day.

The audience sees the polished streaming series.

The crew member sees the unpaid preparation day, the missed meal, the canceled contract and the months spent waiting for the next call.

And increasingly, the people who make the entertainment are asking a simple question:

If the entertainment industry is global, why shouldn't decent working conditions be global, too?