“Spotlight on…” is an interview series designed to help you get to know our members on a more personal level. Featured across both our website and Instagram, each edition highlights a different individual. This times, we are excited to introduce Paul Fleming, Vice President of the Federation.
Tell us about yourself
I’m the General Secretary of Equity in the United Kingdom, and I’m a Vice President of FIA!
What made you want to do this job, and how did you first get involved in your union?
I started working for Equity in 2011, and over the 9 years to 2020 I was responsible for most of the union’s agreements in theatre at every level. Before that I worked for the steelworkers’ union in the UK(!), which obviously was a little different. We’re a strong union, with 95% of UK theatre, film, and TV working on a union agreement, and 20% of our 50,000 members working in light entertainment, which makes us a force to be reckoned with. Reconciling the pernicious myths which glamourise precarity and individuality in professions which are fundamentally about empathy and solidarity was the thing that first attracted me to Equity. Although it was different to the steelworkers, the issues which affect all working people – whether in the arts or in heavy industry – are the same. Low pay, dignity at work, and the right to have a say over the capital your labour creates.
I had the overwhelming honour to be elected General Secretary by our membership in 2020, and re-elected in 2025. I am responsible for managing the union’s resources, being its principal spokesperson, and leading its negotiations, alongside our elected lay officers and Council which govern the union, and set its policy.
Tell us about a movie or a show that changed your life.
“Threads” is a powerful independent British film based on real plans for how we would react in the event of a nuclear strike during the Cold War. It has a gripping power which would leave nobody unsure about the imperative to fight for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and to build a global working-class movement dedicated to peace and justice.
What are your dreams and hopes for performers worldwide?
The role of a trade union in any sector is to ensure that all working people can be artists. That they have the work/life balance, the education, the voice, and the pay to flourish as something more than a number on a bosses’ balance sheet. For lots of trades unions, the mission of getting working people to realise that they can be artists is a challenge. For Equity, and for FIA’s member unions, our members know that they are artists – but they have often been convinced that they are not really working people. They’re told that their work is flippant, a hobby, or that they are lucky to do it. Worse still, they are told that having dignity at work, rather than a precarious, low paid life, somehow makes them less of an artist.
That’s untrue. My hope is that performers worldwide embrace being both artists and workers, and realise that dignity as a worker in fact makes you stronger as an artist – and that being part of active unions is the best way to secure that dignity.
As Vice-president of FIA, what is your priority?
Standing up against global capital. The bosses work globally: we have to as well. Every encounter with a fellow FIA union enriches and strengthens Equity, and I hope that is true of each union we meet.
Creating a global union movement which is fighting fit to take on globalised capital has to be the number one priority for us all.
Give us an example of how FIA’s work has improved the working conditions of performers in your country?
There are too many to count! The Dancer’s Passport has been an incredible resource for members traveling internationally. Our global co-ordination over the behaviour and practices of major streamers has been essential in putting together our current negotiations for renewed agreements.
Our union won some of our greatest victories – such as an agreement at the UK’s first commercial broadcaster – thanks to FIA sister unions standing with us. Only support from Canada and Ireland broke the bosses resolve and forced them to settle.
If you had to describe FIA in one word, what would it be?
Solidarity!
