Thai creative labour solidarity,(post)-pandemic precarity,and directions of production studies in the Global South

The turn to creative labour in Thailand and workers’ precarity writings

As social media have been widely used to voice social inequality during the pandemic in Thailand, apart from the articles mentioned in the introduction, an important case that steered the conversation on screen labour toward public debate centered on the issue of catering and social class. In March 2021, AmarinTV reported on a viral Facebook post which included a photograph showing a sign indicating that extras were only allowed to drink water and not the tea/coffee set up for the rest of the crew (AmarinTV, 2021). The subsequent media debates revealed the class system on Thai production sets, which echoes the complex dual-class systems in Thailand. One is the capitalist class distinction shaped by access to capital, income, and competitiveness in the job market. The other is the pre-capitalist sakdina social hierarchy, which treats individuals based on social relations, consecrated ranks, and connections to those in power (For an overview of this two-fold structure see: Thongsawang et al., 2020). While workers can progress in their careers beyond their economic and social backgrounds, their entry points and mobility in different sectors tend to be associated with their locality, access to training, family support, and connection within social networks. During the pandemic, a former extra, who has now established himself as a stunt person and an entertainment journalist (Terodigital, 2021), spoke out about experiencing unfair treatments in their careers. These class-bound dealings can be found in different areas, from the division of food, spaces to eat, to verbal/non-verbal communication. The aforementioned signage indicating that extras can only drink water has a female polite particle and a smiley emoji to soften the message, which Tiammek and Salathong saw as a way that Thai culture encourages the acceptance of social hierarchy (2024: 161). On the one hand, these different arrangements can be connected to the division of above- and below-the-line workers, whereby the former have their privileges associated with authorship and copyrights as opposed to the latter status as workers for hire (Stahl, 2009; also in Tiammek and Salathong, 2024: 159). In fact, a notable Thai director responded to this class issue as the standard hierarchy of job roles (Brief, 2022). On the other hand, the lack of care for those lower in the hierarchy to the extent that sometimes no toilets were provided or not enough food was made for everyone (Terodigital, 2021) was seen as part of a wider issue of class systems reproduced on the film sets.

With the media debates above, the Thai youth protest which sought to destabilize both the neoliberal state management and the military-associated sakdina system found solidarity with screen labour criticism of their internal class practices. This solidarity also reflects the way the term ‘labour’ or ‘แรงงาน’ has been used more widely by those in creative positions who see themselves under their own precarious conditions. With progressive politics on the rise, certain producers also used media channels to voice their understanding of labour issues and the difficulty of changing the current standards due to the limited budget in the local screen industries. ⁷

Before the pandemic, stories about ‘film crew’ are limited. Between October 2016 to December 2018, Themattter.co online media published articles written by a well-known actor, Intira “Sai” Jaroenpura on her journey into the film/TV industries as a child actor whose father was a notable actor/director/screenwriter. These articles, later published in paperback, draw attention to film crews and their struggles. For example, in an article on the costume-makeup-hair department (Jaroenpura, 2017) , Sai discusses the plight of four staff having to deal with a string of requests by an unprofessional actor that led to a delay in prep time and longer working hours. The attempt to save production costs also meant that the same four staff had to take care of 30 other extras. Apart from these writings, Sai's stardom has also been connected to the youth activist movement through her support of street protests (KhaosodEnglish, 2020). As production services were out of work during the pandemic, Sai describes connecting the catering and deluxe portable toilet rentals teams — who would normally be servicing film stars — with youth activists during their flash mobs (GMM25Thailand, 2020). These kinds of para-industry relations brought a portion of the screen industries closer to youth activism.

Around the same time that Sai commenced her writings, the Facebook page ‘วันละภาพ’ or ‘Behind the Crew’ was created by Samavee Pummuang — an established script supervisor working on foreign film productions — to offer a space for knowledge exchange. With the suspension of work during the pandemic, the Facebook page shared the news of a Netflix series shot in Thailand before the outbreak, along with articles on creative labour by young writers, calls for jobs, and offers of support for screen workers. Through her posts which reached a million viewers during the pandemic, Pummuang connected foreign film production crews to film students, academics, and governmental officials who started following her page. Bringing various parties together, the Thai Film Archive subsequently organized a hybrid event to discuss the potential for unionization and to reflect on the history of crew labour since the 1970s (Chabun, 2021). This idea was later formulated into a collective led by two young activists ⁸ under the name of Creative Workers Union Thailand (CUT) — a remarkable move that signifies ‘a turn to labour’ within the Thai screen industries.

Viewing the above participations as grassroots activism that initiated a local ‘turn to labour’, this phenomenon differs significantly from those in the Global North initiated by academic criticism of the creative industry policies. Mark Banks, Rosalind Gill, and Stephanie Taylor referred to ‘the turn to cultural work’ in relation to closer examinations of ‘the nature and organization of work’ in cultural industries following the enthusiasm around policies such as ‘Cool Britannia’ in the UK (Banks et al., 2013: 1). Writings that emerged from the early 2000s onwards problematize the focus on jobs and GDP and draw attention to the growth in labour precarity with neoliberalism and the decline of ‘jobs for life’ and trade unions (cf. Banks and Hesmondhalgh, 2009; De Peuter, 2011; Neilson and Rossiter, 2008; Oakley, 2006). By 2013, Banks and colleagues noted that the ‘initial “golden era”’ of pure creative industries optimism had closed in the UK context (2013: 6).

In Thailand, the creative economy idea was introduced in politics in the early 2000s with a similar kind of optimism. Notable projects such as One Tambon One Product sought to add branding and commercialize craft works. At the time, the focus was paid to the design and knowledge management sectors with the establishment of organizations including the Thailand Creative and Design Center, which had extended into the Creative Economy Agency (Lohatepanont, 2024). After multiple coups and turbulent public affairs, it was not until post-pandemic that there was a renewed interest in boosting the economy with culture and creativity. This time, creative sectors are promoted under the term ‘soft power’ but with similar optimism of monetizing cultural products. With the lack of state support during the pandemic, creative workers who felt largely neglected by the government started their own political and industrial critiques.

This local turn to labour through activism shares the same spirit with the Precarias a la Deriva collective in Madrid, where feminist activists occupied a deserted building as a meeting point and published the monograph Drifting through the Circuits of Feminine Precarity. The circumstances at the time were the Euro May Day movement that united temp and flex workers combined with the impact of the 2008–2009 economic recession. Maribel Casas Cortés remarks that this kind of precarity activism ‘has become a source for reconfiguring individual and collective identities, leading to a fluid space of political creation made out of unexpected alliances’ (2021: 511). This seems to also be the case in Thailand whereby the division between creative sectors was being challenged and a collective identity was formulated. Casas Cortés notes that non-academic writings also reveal the role of activists as ‘knowledge producers and sources of theoretical insight and innovation in their own right’ (Casas-Cortés, 2021: 511). In the Thai context, these online writings have made screen labour visible and highlight the way precarious lives can come in many shapes and forms. The time and place where these writings emerged also reveal circumstances that make the intersectional solidarity possible including local politics and the shared concerns over social injustices and the increased use of social media to connect across groups and organize street protests. The transition from fragmented individualized labour to collective identity during the pandemic can also be found in the case of creative workers in Italy, although the circumstances of regulations and unionization are different (Dent et al., 2023). As not all creative workers have participated in online activism, the next section extends the imaginaries of screen workers to those surviving the pandemic in their own ways.

Different shades of precarity and the intersectional lives of Thai screen workers

During the pandemic, Thai film crews were consciously reminded of their informal status. The government support for this group comprised a relief package of 5,000 THB per month (approximately 140 USD) for three months in April-June 2020 ⁹ (See: Sakulsri et al., 2023: 171–174). With the difficulty of proving their occupation, which reveals the state's lack of recognition of screen labour, the now defunct Film & Digital Media Crew Association, Thailand (FDCA) helped film crews connect to relevant authorities through social media. The FDCA also sent out care boxes for crews in need and a pop-up flea market was initiated by a group of cast members and crew to supplement their income (Thaibunterng ThaiPBS, 2020). These pandemic self-remedies heightened the awareness that workers needed to look after themselves. The problems that each individual faced, and the care needed also varied depending on their financial status, age group, family support, and social relations.

Despite being out of work for longer, workers on foreign film productions were in a better situation than those within local sectors. Their past earnings allowed the crews to cover their expenses for up to one year. Interviewee no. 7, who had worked for more than 15 years as a producer/production manager, talked about never having a long holiday in her working life. During her eight-month break, she enjoyed spending time with family outside Bangkok, helping her sister at a family café, and teaching English online to kids in the neighborhood. Interviewee no. 1, who had been working for more than 15 years in different roles — especially as a script supervisor — also took this time to stay with her family in the province. The break of one year also allowed her to reflect on financial security. The interviewee noted that before the pandemic, below-the-line crews including herself would buy lottery tickets and look for ways to make the most of their income. Along with her friends, she took a course in cryptocurrency and made 40,000–50,000 THB (approximately 1,225–1,400 USD) within a month. She remarked on ‘the freedom to have a life’ with investment, which is in contrast to crew work in which time quickly disappears. The experiences of their relative financial stability and closer family relations reveal their appreciation of work-life balance. However, the solution did not come from within the industry but was based on their own management.

For a senior worker close to retirement age with underlying health problems, the need to care for oneself long before the pandemic led to his reflection on the sustainability of a career in the film industry. Interviewee no. 3 was in his 50s with more than 30 years of experience as a focus puller. He reflected on years of heavy lifting, lack of sleep, and bad habits of smoking and drinking. This led to a heart condition that required an operation. Without insurance, he was forced to sell his car for treatment and gradually withdrew himself from the film industry. With his mother owning a house by the river, he started a small kayak rental business before the pandemic hit. With no income from film or tourism, this interviewee decided to sell his antique guns, which he had collected while earning good money from commercial projects. The interviewee contemplated that these guns brought him connections with people in the industry. It was also a way to earn extra cash from renting them as props. Yet, there is no point in keeping them as he did not have children and life is fragile. For this individual whose retirement plan was disrupted, the pandemic raised questions as to the sustainability of life without any industry and state support.

For younger film crews too, COVID-19 also encouraged them to think about diversifying risks. Interviewee no. 4, who started working as a freelance location scout before the pandemic, noted that the impact of long working hours and lack of sleep meant he did not want to work in the industry for long. Being out of work for five months, he started an online business selling house plants and second-hand house décor using his skills as a photographer to attract interest on social media. The success made him envision working two jobs after the pandemic. This situation resembles that of interviewee no. 5, who was a prop master with less than five years’ experience. He had just been paid for the production done before the pandemic and spent one year with limited work learning to bake, doing still photography, and preparing himself for jobs in smaller-scale media productions. Interviewee no. 6 started working as an assistant director not long before the pandemic and considered taking a course in computer programming for its higher income potential. With the pandemic and labour mobilization, these younger film graduates especially valued work that offered them a better quality of life and financial stability. As the industry has now started back up again, all of them have returned to the screen sectors, although with seemingly better positions than when they started. The two male crew members chose to work for either smaller/more relaxed productions or larger/standardized projects. The other worker started a production service company with her partner.

The final group that we interviewed were mid-career workers who relied on cash flow or had responsibilities caring for family members. This group had little time to contemplate past careers or future direction as they had to focus on surviving. As the demand for food deliveries surged as a result of people working from home, these crew members started working in the food and delivery sectors not long after becoming unemployed. Interviewee no. 8, who otherwise worked as a set medic and behind-the-scenes photographer, started looking for work after three months of unemployment. He remarked that before COVID-19, he had invested his savings on new camera equipment, which left him low on cash. He started selling dried fish made by his neighbor and making veggie wraps to sell at local markets. With the fear of the virus at the market, he did food delivery for his friends. Subsequently, he joined an online delivery platform after passing their online training.

Interviewee no. 9, who had worked as a costume designer and an assistant director in Thai productions for more than 25 years, also turned to the food industry. At the start of COVID-19, she joined the aforementioned pop-up market selling vegetable soup. As her unemployment extended and having to support her children, she started a noodle shop at home with the encouragement of her mother. The business went well with crew members supporting her with extensive orders. Having to do everything from buying the supplies to managing orders, she fainted at one point due to exhaustion. The interviewee reflected on this health episode that it caught her by surprise since she had always seen herself as a strong woman who was never ill on film sets.

These vastly different experiences illustrate the impossibility of describing screen labour through one unified class or group. The sense of being above- or below-the-line workers is also less significant as other conditions are shaping their precarity, including the type of production and income, age, family support, and social relations. Although it is recognized more widely that local workers servicing foreign/runaway productions are lower paid and non-unionized, they are still better off when compared to those in local productions. When considering the aspect of gender and intersectionality, one can also see the highly precarious conditions of a woman in a care role or a semi-retired male worker with no children. Hence, notions such as informality and precarity could not be taken for granted to mean the same thing for different geographies and demographics of workers.

Similar to the context of Nigeria, the productivity before the pandemic with no time to reflect largely masked workers’ informal status and conditions of precarity that existed as the norm (Simon, 2024: 2). By making do with temporary jobs or taking up projects to explore future careers, their livelihoods also resonate with creative workers in Ghana who adopted online platforms for alternative businesses and diversified their jobs to cope and stay hopeful (Langevang et al., 2022: 145–148). Langevang et al. adopted the notion of ‘hustling’ to conceptualize the way workers navigate precarity with the resources available (2022: 143–144). I take on this idea and further it to discuss bureaucratic hustling that took place across different screen productions in the next section.

Post-pandemic micro-practices on the film set: Unpacking the industry's structural inequality through bureaucratic hustling

Thailand was the first country with a positive case of Coronavirus outside China, detected in a taxi driver picking up a passenger from the airport on 31 January 2020. A major cluster was found at a boxing stadium with over 150 positive cases on 6 March, one of which was a celebrity emcee for the boxing match. This attracted media coverage and resulted in the closure of public gatherings for 14 days from 17–31 March 2020. The severity of the epidemic led to the declaration of a state of emergency from 26 March to 30 April 2020, which was extended to the end of May. At the beginning of April, the government also implemented a nationwide ‘curfew’ prohibiting individuals from leaving their homes between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. From then until October of the same year, workers were faced with the uncertainty of not knowing when they could return to work. The suspension impacted the entire screen industry, leading to a collaboration between the Directors Association of Thailand and FDCA to submit a proposal to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Management (CCSA) to allow the resumption of filmmaking. Negotiations were successful and the Ministry of Culture announced a relaxation of restrictions on television and film production on 22 May 2020. Nevertheless, with another wave of infections, the CCSA announced a ban on gatherings of more than five people. It was not until 13 October 2020 that the CCSA agreed to allow filmmaking under the new conditions, including (1) no more than 50 people per production, (2) Antigen Test Kit tests to be done every day before staff enter the set, (3) crew members must keep a distance of at least two meters, (4) all team members must be vaccinated, and (5) crews must wear their face masks at all time. Given these restrictions, workers were forced to navigate through a wide array of methods based on available funding, connections with the authorities, and their ways of hustling.

Drawing on her time as a line manager for TV series and commercial productions for 20 years, interviewee no. 2 had to postpone all the night scenes for a TV series due to the curfew. Nevertheless, as a freelancer, she obtained a job conducting a one-day shoot for a commercial after the management negotiated with a minister-level official. The production took place in five separate studio rooms with less than two people staying in each. The communication with the clients was done via the Q-Take system so the footage could be approved in real time. For interviewee no. 5, who was a prop master, the job he had required him to travel at night. He was given a letter to show to officials on the road and was able to complete the project. These stories reveal that there was leeway to navigate the regulations, and this made it possible for some productions to take place. As we interviewed workers from foreign film productions, we also found that local workers played an extremely important role in making the impossible possible.

Interviewee no. 7 had been working as a production manager/coordinator for foreign film productions for 20 years before switching to a COVID-19 health and safety coordinator for a streaming company. She described the pre-production work to make large-scale filmmaking possible, including meetings with the Film Board and the Ministry of Public Health to convince officials to allow the crew to exceed 50 people. Before the meetings, she collaborated with the international team who created protocols for global film productions. This resulted in a 400–500-page manuscript of what she called the pandemic ‘production bible’. The Thai team translated this document while also updating it to match the Ministry of Public Health protocols. They also created detailed guidelines for different units, along with hiring a team of 60 people to manage COVID-19 prevention. The company allocated more than 50 million THB (1,406,100 USD) for this division, covering the costs of hiring a private hospital as a consultant, conducting RT-PCR tests for 200–300 people on the set (a total of around 7,000–8,000 tests per film), and providing for personal protective equipment (PPE) and other protection. The interviewee remarked that this scale of investment was only possible for big-budget foreign productions. Although the interviewee had extensive additional work at the same pay rate as before the pandemic, she took pride in being able to make the production possible and to support the local crew. One specific moment she highlighted was when she raised a point with the global medical team in an online meeting that help was needed for workers suffering from repeated deep nostril swab tests, so much so that they wanted to quit their jobs. Eventually, the lead doctor from Canada recommended that a mid-nasal swab be conducted by Thai doctors to help alleviate the workers’ daily agony. These circumstances illustrate the crucial role played by local crews as lobbyists, administrators, translators, and agents of care. At the same time, the creation of a tightly protected ‘bubble’ on the film set also exposes the structural inequality exercised by those in power to cut deals, as opposed to the makeshift situations of local productions.

Interviewee no. 8 with 10 years’ experience as a set medic, realized that there was a lack of staff to do swab tests in compliance with COVID regulations. He subsequently set up a team with two other colleagues to offer the service for local productions. As certain productions did not hire a separate medical team, he recalled having to jump in to help an unwell staff member. On a different set, he described the headache caused by budget constraints as the management did not have enough money to book accommodation for quarantine or secure spaces at a private hospital in case of infections. He subsequently had to create a hospital list to reach out to and locations for crew isolation, using his networks. Despite limited resources, interviewee no. 8 also took pride in the success of his efforts. The skill of handling new challenges and the pride in their work reveal the level of ingenuity and ‘can do’ attitude that makes their lives on the film set worthwhile despite the precarious conditions. By paying attention to care, we can also see types of jobs that may be uncredited or unpaid, yet are crucial to making film production possible.

Interviewees who were not in care or management roles were more open to expressing cynicism towards the regulations. Interviewee no. 3 expressed the view that COVID-19 prevention was there to be inspected by the authorities rather than to prevent the virus from spreading. He remarked that once filmmaking was relatively possible, the crews were more afraid of starving than getting the virus. The interviewee recalled the experience of being tested three times and having to wait 45 minutes as the test kits did not show valid results. As he had to start working on a morning scene that required natural sunlight, he did not wait for the fourth test for fear that the director may cancel the shoot altogether. The PPE that he wore in the sun was also too hot and the staff took it off after half a day. For him, these protections, in reality, made the possibility of filming under restriction illusory.

Through stories of micro-practices that took place during the production, the notion of the industry can be seen from the (bio)politics from above, in which various authorities needed to be consulted before making a film. These include the Thai Film Board which regulates foreign film productions to the local municipality offices and the police whose permissions need to be sought before on-site shooting at public places. On top of these authorities, the pandemic led to more layers of control through the central and local health offices. This situation reveals the lack of a centralized body that understands the different natures of screen productions and supports them with consistent standards. Against bureaucratic regulations, the practice of hustling was adopted by workers to create a kind of self-regulating (bio)politics from below. ¹⁰ Under this lens, the crews measured their own risks, trusted their level of protection and care, and redefined how screen production works are meaningful to them. The distrust of the state to protect workers’ bodies as well as the need to maintain life by keep working resonate with media production during the pandemic in Egypt (Kelada and El Khachab, 2024) and Turkey (Bulut, 2024). Under the ‘precarious geographies’, workers in Thailand and Ghana also share the characteristics of being ‘hopeful, resourceful, savvy, improvisational and caring’ (Langevang et al., 2022: 150).

In the process of recalling their experiences, these workers have unmasked the banality of top-down non-dialogic regulations that existed before and continued after the pandemic. Through the lens of film crews, the industry is not only defined by income from film productions or successful COVID-19 management but also by the structural violence of neoliberal and bureaucratic sanctions. Before the conclusion, the next section briefly discusses workers’ attempts to engage with policymakers and the limited impact of solidarity activism.

Unionization, recomposition of labour, and the paradox of solidarity

As the local turn to labour has been ignited, the newly created Creative Workers Union Thailand (CUT) took an active role in pushing the screen labour agenda in the political realm. In June 2022, the CUT team submitted four demands to the labour committee of the Thai parliament. These were: a 12-hour shift with at least a 12-hour break (known as a 12-hour turnaround), compliance with the health and safety standards, a fair contract system and standard practices, and care for child actors. The demand for child actor care was selected as the key media campaign, in the hope that it would draw immediate attention from policymakers. Sadly, there has been no substantial state response to these calls. By 13 April 2022, the FDCA, ¹¹ which played an important role during the pandemic, announced its termination.

At the time of writing this paper, youth activism has also gone into a hiatus period, with political activists in exile and some facing jail sentences. With the new election in 2023 in which the progressive political party won the majority of votes yet could not form a coalition government leading to the return of the military combined with neoliberal conservative parties, the creative labour solidarity seems to have been temporary. Nevertheless, there is some continued interest in the formalization of professional guilds – a circumstance that resonates with the context of post-pandemic Nigeria (See: Simon, 2024). On 1 May 2023, the Film Editor Association of Thailand was established. Other possible guilds for scriptwriters and actors have been under discussion. This post-pandemic re-composition of labour reveals some formalized setups with the hope of creating certain positive changes.

The impactful yet fleeting sense of solidarity that began this paper reveals the limitation of long-term change through activism alone. The paradoxical nature of solidarity particularly as it takes place at a time of crisis has been discussed by Ranabir Samaddar (2021) amidst the context of citizen self-governance in pandemic India. Samaddar remarks that there is a paradoxical nature of solidarity or what he calls ‘the paradoxity of solidarity’ as it takes place in crisis. ¹² Under the matters of life and death, society comes to terms with the Other and ‘the differences within.’ Yet, this sense of solidarity is temporary and does not end the tensions and inequality. Hence, the outlook for change through solidarity is not distinctly visible beyond the time of crisis. Nevertheless, considering the sense of solidarity that has taken place in history and the impact it has made, one could historicize and contextualize what took place in India or Thailand during the pandemic as one of the many possible solidarity movements that have taken place in the past and can take place again in the future. This hopeful view that takes life's interruptions as a time of ‘re-futuring’ has been addressed in relation to the rise of the collective consciousness of creative workers in the pandemic in Milan (Dent et al., 2023). The future direction of research is also to grow these dialogues further, beyond the context of the pandemic.