I'm guessing Danny Boyle really wishes this story hadn't broken until after Oscar voting ended:
Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, two of the child actors in "Slumdog Millionaire," are still living in the slums of Mumbai, despite the film’s $14 million budget and worldwide success. Ali earned 500 British pounds ($710) for one year’s work and Ismail earned 1700 pounds ($2414), "less than many Indian domestic servants".Now, I don't think the producers of the film are under any obligation to personally shepherd Ismail and Ali out of poverty, though given as they both play major characters (Salim and Latika, respectively) their pay was pretty meager indeed. But it's worth asking how we can raise those wages in future productions. The most obvious method is unionization. If Slumdog were filmed in the US, Ismail and Ali would have been paid off of the SAG pay scale, which would have easily resulted in much higher wages. Now, American child actors would no doubt be paid more anyway, given as studios would have a hard time finding anyone who'd be willing to do a year's work for $710. But unionization is still a big factor.
Perhaps it's too much to ask for studios to use the same day rates when filming overseas as they do when filming domestically, but they should at the very least be obligated to let foreign actors collectively bargain. India's a special case, in that Bollywood actors already have a union from which foreign production teams can hire. Other countries with smaller film industries might not have enough actors to form a strong bargaining unit. What is to prevent an actor in, say, Laos from being exploited?
This is why we've got to get functioning global unions organized. We have federations, yes, but you don't see ITUC negotiating contracts with multinational corporations. Those kinds of negotiations need to happen if we're to avoid loopholes like this. As long as national unions are striking separate deals, and corporations are operating without much concern for borders, labor just won't be able to keep up. If, on the other hand, SAG and FWICE etc. joined into a Global Actors' Union which could then negotiate a global contract with Warners Bros, Sony, and the like, the studios won't be able to skirt off to the third world when they don't want to pay actors at union rates.
