Crackdown pledge on rogue Fringe firms

Councillors have vowed to step up efforts to tackle rogue operators of Edinburgh Festival Fringe venues in the wake of efforts by campaigners to expose exploitation of workers at the event.

They have pledged to apply more pressure on operators to pay the Living Wage and ensure safe working conditions are in place this summer after a damning dossier was compiled by the Fair Fringe campaign.

Companies face being turned down for licences and banned from hiring council properties under a crackdown ordered less than a year after the council published a new code of practice for the treatment of festival workers.

Produced in response to lobbying from the Fair Fringe campaign and the Unite Union, the code of practice urges festivals to ensure people are paid no less than a Living Wage of £8.51 an hour, guaranteed rest breaks, not used for unpaid trial shifts and protected from harassment and discrimination.

Fair Fringe has cited widespread evidence of “shameful practices so common they are now accepted as the status quo”.

Fair Fringe campaigner Kirsty Haigh told councillors there was evidence some workers ended up in hospital and considered suicide due to the stress they had endured.

She said: “The council needs to use all the available tools to ensure that no worker in the Fringe is exploited again.”

Donald Wilson, the council’s culture leader, said he was “very concerned” at the evidence presented by Fair Fringe and would be looking to enforce its code of practice much stronger in future.

He said: “The goal posts have moved as a result of information that’s come forward. The Fair Fringe movement is to be commended for that. We’ll be looking into how to encourage, and where possible enforce, compliance with the guidelines we have set.”