PACT / BECTU TV Drama Agreement Overview

You may or may not be aware that BECTU has agreements with PACT, the producers’ alliance, which is an umbrella organisation representing about 350 UK independent production companies.

There are two separate agreements, the Major Motion Picture Agreement, which covers Feature Films with a budget of more than £30m, and the TV Drama Agreement.

The documents came into force at the end of 2017 and are agreed sets of terms and conditions covering aspects of working in larger budget films and TV dramas in the UK, which production companies who are members of PACT are expected to adhere to.

Whilst not perfect, they have been instrumental in ending a number of practices damaging to our workforce, such as buyouts, whereby productions can ask a crew member to work unlimited unpaid overtime. They also stipulated that productions had to issue deal memos before engaging workers, so crew understand the terms of their engagement before it starts.

The agreements are predominantly geared towards shooting crew, but our branch members have seen improvements in their working lives as a result of their implementation. There is scope in the future for separate agreements covering non-shooting crew, and this is something we continue to push for.

The agreements contain a commitment from both parties to revisit them one year after their initiation, with further negotiations every two years thereafter, to update and amend.

The MMPA (which generally contains more favourable terms than the TV drama agreement) has been revisited and tweaked slightly, mainly dealing with points of clarification.

The PACT/BECTU TV Drama Agreement was scheduled to be reviewed in 2019 but didn’t happen until July 2021. Since then, representatives from our Committee have sat at the table with PACT to advocate for improved terms conditions.

In December 2022 a new agreement was reached, which came into effect on the 1st January 2023. You can find the agreement here.