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Top actors are being paid 300 crores per film Crore, but technicians are not paid 3,000 in a day, the Film Employees Federation of South India (FEFSI) complained before the Madras High Court on Monday (June 30, 2025), while the Tamil Film Producers Council (TFPC) opposed a civil suit against it.
Advocate Ji, who represents FEFSI. Mohankrishnan, Justice K. Kumresh appeared in front of Babu, said, TFPC members were also trying to “snatch” livelihood of technicians in Tamil Nadu, trying to complete the ongoing projects to people from other states.
On the other hand, advocate Krishna Rabindran, who represented TFPC, said that most of the council members were small budget moviemakers and not corporate filmmakers who make big budget films. He said, TFPC was equally concerned about technicians.
The lawyer said, the TFPC was following the practice of entering a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with FEFSI once in three years, which was also with other service conditions in relation to the determination of wages for technicians and other service conditions. The last MoU signed in 2022 ended on 9 March 2025.
Meanwhile, FEFSI suspected the TFPC to promote the rival association of technicians named Tamil Nadu Thiripad Thijillargal Samlanham, and on April 2, 2025 released a communication to all its 23 affiliated unions, asking them not to cooperate with members of TFPC.
Saying that the TFPC had nothing to do with the rival Association of Technician, Mr. Rabindran said, “Ever since FeFSI issued non-surplus communication to his concerned associations, technicians were refusing to work for the ongoing film projects, which caused a lot of monetary loss to the manufacturers.
Minister to talk
He also said that FEFSI had now started working with another body called the Tamil film Active Producers Association (TFAPA), and the issue had become so serious that the Minister of Information and Publicity had decided to intervene and negotiate between the parties.
After listening to both sides, Justice Babu made it clear that he could not force FEFSI members to work with TFPC as MOU expired on 9 March 2025. At the same time, he warned that TFPC members could always initiate legal action against individual members of FeFSI for violation of work agreements.
Therefore, he suggested that it would be in the interest of both sides to solve their differences in the table. The judge asked Shri Mohankrishnan and Shri Rabindran to submit it by Wednesday (2 July), a couple of retired judges of the High Court may be appointed as an intermediary.
Published – June 30, 2025 03:20 PM IST
