A film production worker has won a disability payment dispute and will receive compensation after showing she worked more hours than the insurer accepted. 

TAL assessed that before the injury she worked less than the 20-hours a week threshold required for an assessment based on a person being unable to perform the important income producing duties of their main occupation. 

The complainant, who suffered carpal tunnel syndrome, said she worked in the poorly paid independent film production industry, where it’s common to receive little or no pay to gain experience. 

A letter she provided to the ombudsman said she had been a production designer for a pilot episode, F&F, while a cinematographer said she worked at least 20 hours per week from February 10 to April 14.  

She says she was paid $5000 in total for her work on F&F. 

The insurer looked at her hours from January 22 to April 22, based on F&F work on shooting days and employment on feature film/video production EF and video clip T. It calculated a total 176.25 hours, which averaged over seven weeks yielded only 13.55 hours. 

The Australian Financial Complains Authority says the insurer hadn’t allowed for any pre-production work for F&F. 

“There was around six weeks between the contract with company WAP being signed and the start of shooting for F&F. At 20 hours per week, that adds 120 hours of work to the total calculated by the insurer, and yields an average over 20 hours per week,” it says. 

There was “no good reason” to find the complainant, WAP or the cinematographer were dishonest or mistaken, it says. 

The complainant was disabled for all work from April 22 last year until March 17 this year, and the insurer should pay benefits and interest up to that date it says, with a surgery date and impacts also to be considered, if details provided. 

AFCA says the insurer should pay $6300 compensation for non-financial loss. 

“The rejection of the claim, and in particular the rejection of the account given by the complainant and her colleagues, caused the complainant significant distress over many months,” the decision says.  

The full decision is available here.