EXCLUSIVE: India’s Screenwriters Association (SWA) has expressed help for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and requested its members to down instruments on U.S. movies and sequence. 

The SWA, the nation’s main {industry} guild for writers with greater than 57,000 members, emailed its membership on Thursday night time to elucidate the WGA’s causes for calling the strike and to state that the affiliation “stands in complete solidarity with our 11,500 sisters and brothers of WGA.”

“We ask all SWA members working on U.S. shows and films to strengthen their protest by stopping work on those, and to not accept any new writing work from the companies in the US affiliated to AMPTP [Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers],” the SWA mentioned in an e mail signed by SWA General Secretary Zaman Habib.

“If the WGA strike succeeds, it helps our efforts, by setting a precedent. After all, we shall be negotiating with the Indian subsidiaries of some of those companies,” the e-mail continued.

When contacted by Deadline, Anjum Rajabali (Rajneeti, The Legend Of Bhagat Singh), a veteran screenwriter and SWA Executive Committee member, clarified that the affiliation isn’t at present asking its members to cease work on reveals produced by the Indian subsidiaries of firms akin to Netflix, Disney and Amazon. 

But Rajabali mentioned that Indian writers face even larger points than their counterparts within the U.S. As a consequence, the SWA is at present within the means of drafting a Minimum Basic Contract for its members and initiating negotiations with producers on commonplace clauses. However, as India lacks an industry-wide producers’ physique such because the AMPTP to barter with, the affiliation is holding talks with main producers one after the other. 

In its e mail to members, the SWA mentioned: “The challenges faced by Indian writers are even more acute. Grossly unfair contracts, no credit guarantee, undignified low fees (especially for new writers), one-sided termination clauses, impossible indemnity demands, no buy-back clause among others.”

Screenwriters guilds around the globe – together with the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) and Australia Writers Guild (AWG) – have expressed solidarity with WGA members and asked their members to down tools on U.S. shows.