MUMBAI: Over 1000 music directors, music technicians and recordists are staying away from work today , to mark their support to the strike called by the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE).
Music studios in Mumbai’s Film City and recording studios have been hit hard by the indefinite strike called by the FWICE that is demanding stipulated wages and regulated working hours. A total of about 1.5 lakh cine employees are on strike currently.
The Cine Musicians’ Association, which has 950 members on its roster, is demanding parity of payments for the recordists and technicians who work on private and Hindi film albums at the city’s several hundred recording studios. CMA president Bhushan Chawla says producers often pay lump sums of money to music directors, who have no set system of payments to the recordists and allied music technicians who work on the projects. Any protest over the mode of payment results in loss of work on the next project, says Chawla.
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The Cine Music Directors Association has a different take. While the association has 208 registered members, over 200 unregistered music directors have been accepting projects from film and TV producers. According to CMDA secretary Raj Sonik, film producers often do not check the credentials of these music directors, thus creating pay disparities. The phenomenon is being seen increasingly in the Bhojpuri film industry, says Sonik.
As a result, “Workers are present at the studios but are not working. It is our non-co-operation,” Dharmesh Tiwari, Secretary FWICE, which controls 22 unions covering different crafts of the film business, said. “We are not demanding any thing extra… Only the wages as signed in the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) between the producer associations and workers federation,” he said.
