I read the the excerpts and have some points:
1) I am pretty sure that you can't sign away statutory rights within a contract no matter how much employers or, for that matter, employees wish to (I am happy to be corrected on this point by any employment lawyers but am fairly confident in my assertion);
2) Being sacked for using a chair, unfair dismissal any which way you choose to look at it (unless using it to beat your boss to a pulp of course);
3) Constructive dismissal not renewing your contract if the position remains after your departure (give or take certain requirements and job title shenanigans) even though it sounds like a blessed relief.
Should you ever be unlucky enough to find yourself in a similar situation seek legal advice or speak to Acas, also you could cunt them right in the fuck if you reported them for the Health and Safety violations you appear to describe. Might make you a less attractive employee to the next lot of course.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 15:42, 1 reply)

Thanks for the advice,
I have been told that on point 1) before. And I'm sure you're right on the other points too. The reason my contract wasn't renewed was partly because they were cutting back in several areas, and partly because after nine months I was absolutely miserable and as a result completely shit at my job because I was finding it took all the effort in the world just to get out of bed in the morning and drag my sorry carcass into a place that I would have happily burnt down given the opportunity...

I think a big part of their attitude came from (and still comes from, it hasn't changed even five years later, and it was like that before I started too...) the fact that we were all relatively fresh-faced university graduates desperately trying to start a media career, and we were willing to put up with pretty much anything if we thought it would get us to where we wanted to be. That was certainly the circumstances under which I took the job. We were also told that we'd be trained on the job in order to move up into being editors. In nine months, I got one day of training. There were people doing that job who had been there for four years who hadn;t moved up in any way shape or form. And the best bit was we were told we would have to wait for the people "ahead of us in the queue" to move up before we did. Which meant I would have to wait for about 12 people to leave, and 12 people to move up before I would even be considered for anything resembling a promotion. They were expolitative cunts in almost every sense. As far as I am aware, none of the people who I worked with are there now as they all gradually came to the realisation that the job was a massive pile of horseshit and we were being treated as such.

And this is one of the most prominent film and TV companies in Manchester. They make a hell of a lot of stuff you have seen on television. Supposedly a forward thinking industry, and yet it's full of the same corrupt bastards as every other industry...
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 15:59, closed)

Are they called summat like 'grandad'?

( His Popiness the Hole Invaded Poland on, Sat 14 Apr 2012, 16:21, closed)

No...
Not that big. Not the BBC either, who are actually lovely to work for.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 16:51, closed)

Four years!!!
I've worked in some pretty shitty places, but if any of them had treated their employees like that they'd have been lucky to hold onto them for four hours, never mind four years.

Also, the end of the last sentence would be more accurate if it read "every other industry that recruits mugs who'll put up with absolutely anything in the vague hope it'll get them something better".
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 14 Apr 2012, 17:25, closed)

I think it might be a bit harsh
to call us mugs. a bit naive maybe, but not mugs. Personally, I had never worked in that industry before. Going into the job I was told by a lot of people who work in the TV industry that "perseverence is the key to working in this industry". That's probably true of most industries.

I had decided after my first week that the job was a big pile of shit and I hated it. But this is one of the biggest TV companies in Britain, I just assumed that this was the way it was everywhere.

Everything I had been told by everyone up to that point was along the lines of "it's tough at first, then you'll move up, but stick with it because they're a really big company". I had worked for the BBC before this job, so I took their advice as read.

Literally, the day I was told I wasn't being kept on I had made the decision that I was going to quit that afternoon. They beat me to the punch by about an hour.

I don't feel like I was a mug. I was fully aware of how shit it was, and how shit I was being treated. But I was also desperate to carve out a career in probably the most competitive and over-employed industry in Britain. The fact that I put up with it for so long only serves to illustrate how much I give a shit about doing what I do for a living. I now work as a freelance film-maker/editor and a part time lecturer at a college, where I'm now a fully credited Avid Certified Instructor. I now teach the people I was previously making cups of tea for.

I still earn fuck all money, and the hours are still pretty ridiculous sometimes, but no-one tells me what to do and I actually make a living by being creative now whereas then, I felt like I was sucking dick for money.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 17:59, closed)