Hi all,
I'm sure a lot of you remember the news from October 2021, when a 'prop gun' Alec Baldwin was using on set accidentally discharged, fatally killing a cinematographer and injuring the movie director.
As soon as this news broke, my thought was about the work conditions – no one should ever die whilst working and this was a case where such a thing happened. My guess was, It must be an unsafe workplace, right?
Over the last 7/8 months, there has been a constant trickle of reports about how terrible the working conditions for crew on this film was.
I've followed the case keenly since, including reading the legal documents that have been released (e.g lawsuits) and evidence released by the investigating DA's office – and it has become apparent that this was a film funded and produced by rich producers where constant corner cutting to save money led to a total disregard of workers safety and wellbeing.
The press on this has mostly turned it into an Alec Baldwin freak accident narrative. This is supported by Alec and the producers interviews which paint the dissatisfied workers as 'whining' etc. As opposed to having a genuine concern for safety.
But I think there is so much more than the media is talking about, and I wanted to try and bring it to light more. Partly to combat the media narrative, but also because it is a huge example of how employers take advantage of employees and put them in situations of harm. Especially for anyone that works away from home (e.g on location, or in work accommodation) and anyone that works with dangerous machinery (whether that be a prop gun or machinery).
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to personal blogs here, but I've made some notes on all of the legal docs/evidence I've read through and wanted to share it. I've had to put these as Medium posts because I've done so much research and there have been cases of journalists just lifting these from Reddit to pass off as their own (and apparently Medium is copyrighted to me?)
Anyway, two breakdowns i wanted to point you towards are from crew members communications highlighting lack of safety etc in the lead up to the shooting, which were totally ignored (all published in evidence recently released by the DA)
And secondly, the lawsuit against producers from Mamie Mitchell, the script supervisor who was next to Halyna Hutchins (RIP). This I think it super relevant to anti-work because it is a good exploration from the lawyer around how to evidence type of harm from employers. The response to this lawsuit is a good example (IMO) of the ways employer's try to squirm or twist out of things and diminish harm/culpatibility.
https://medium.com/@BaldwinFiles/mamie-mitchell-rust-lawsuit-against-baldwin-pals-2c7645a8b672