TIM HAYES is a freelance writer and critic
Action
Please no more events where film critics in permanent posts with healthy salaries mention pitiful freelance pay rates but don't then produce their considered five-point action plan for that exact thing.
— tim hayes (@pistolerosa) August 5, 2019
Such as:
Everyone now writing for free stops doing so, immediately, no exceptions.
The freelance sector acknowledges that lower barriers to entry and a widening workforce will encourage wage-freeze plus a weakening of career ladders, and would do so in any trade under the sun.
The freelance sector delineates itself from colleagues in full-time salaried film-sector exhibition, marketing and academic posts who interpret their roles as including occasional film criticism. Salaried fellow travellers recuse themselves from the authentic freelance space while we sort things out.
The freelance sector recognises that a paid trade requires a working meritocracy, whereby good writers get better and bad writers get better or stop.
The freelance sector reorganises so that collective action is not unthinkable.