International Affiliation of Writers Guilds (IAWG)

Overview

The International Affiliation of Writers Guilds (IAWG) is the federation connecting national screenwriters' guilds across English-speaking countries and beyond. The IAWG facilitates cooperation between the WGA West, WGA East, Writers' Guild of Great Britain, Writers Guild of Canada, Australian Writers' Guild, Writers Guild of Ireland, and affiliate members from other countries on issues of common concern -- including international co-production terms for writers, residual rights in global streaming distribution, artificial intelligence and generative tools, and credit standards in international productions.

The IAWG's most practical function is the "honor the contract" principle: when a production that has been struck by one member guild moves production to another country, the other IAWG guilds commit to not providing writing services that undermine the striking guild's action. This mutual solidarity provision was tested during the 2023 WGA strike, when IAWG guilds declined to accept US production work that was moved offshore to circumvent the strike, demonstrating the practical value of international guild coordination.

International Residuals and Streaming

The IAWG addresses one of the most significant challenges facing writers' guilds globally: ensuring that writers receive appropriate residuals from the international streaming exploitation of their work. Traditional residual structures were designed for a distribution world organized around national broadcast territories, home entertainment formats, and theatrical exhibition. Streaming platforms' global distribution models -- where a single platform license can cover 190 countries simultaneously -- have disrupted residual structures that no national guild can address alone.

IAWG facilitates the sharing of negotiating approaches and collective bargaining strategies across member guilds, allowing guilds with less bargaining power to benefit from the research, modeling, and negotiating experience of larger guilds that have directly negotiated streaming terms with major platforms.

AI and Writers' Rights

The 2023 WGA strike placed AI use in screenwriting at the center of a major collective bargaining dispute for the first time, producing the first negotiated provisions limiting how studios and streaming platforms can use AI-generated content in connection with guild-covered work. The IAWG has coordinated the sharing of these provisions across member guilds, enabling writers' guilds in other countries to use the WGA's 2023 AI provisions as a template for their own negotiations with domestic producers and broadcasters.

The AI challenge -- how to protect writers' economic interests, authorship credit, and creative role from technologies that can generate script-like text -- is a defining challenge for all screenwriters' guilds worldwide in the coming decade. IAWG's coordination on AI advocacy represents one of the most consequential current applications of international guild solidarity.

What Filmmakers Should Know

For international productions engaging writers from multiple IAWG member guild countries, understanding the IAWG's "honor the contract" provisions helps producers avoid structuring productions in ways that inadvertently create cross-guild compliance complications. Productions that involve writers from WGA, WGGB, AWG, and WGC need to understand how each guild's agreements interact in the context of a single production.

For writers working internationally, IAWG membership through their national guild provides the assurance of international solidarity that extends the protection of their national guild's coverage into international production contexts.

See Also

For the primary IAWG member guilds, see WGA West, Writers Guild of Great Britain, Writers Guild of Canada, Australian Writers' Guild, and Writers Guild of Ireland in this directory.