Jurisdictional disputes in the motion-picture Industry : hearings before a special subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first-session, pursuant to H. Res. 111 (1948)

MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES 259 So that was the end of that. That is all I have to report there. Mr. McCann. That is all. Then proceed now, Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan. At the October 26 meeting, with all of us representatives there, you will recall, and before the telephone conversation — before the group call — Mr. Sorrell in the October 24 meeting had said if the board of arbitration would say over the telephone to all of us together what they had said then in Chicago, he would accept that and thereby accept the Deceml^er directive. Now, on the basis of that telegram in the October 26 meeting, Mr. SorrelPs group explained that this wire had furnished another completely different picture and that they therefore were not bound by that statement and they did not have to accept the December arbitration iiward. From that it appeared that this wire had thrown the entire problem right back to where it was, in complete confusion as to who got set erection and who didn't. He was determined to insist, regardless of whether someone else had sent a clarification here, that was not wdiat they had written — they had made it perfectly plain by his entire conversation. He said repeatedly in the entire conversation that he intended to keep the set erection right where it belonged, with the lATSE, and he therefore felt that the arbitration award had been settled and should be accepted, a.nd we were there until almost midnight arguing back and forth on this position. At approximately midnight Roy Tindall of the electricians asked that his group have an opportunity to attend a caucus. We recessed for 10 minutes and they held the caucus. At the end of 10 minutes they came back and said that the}^ approved that December 1945 arbitration agreement, that they would make that arbitration agreement for the people that worked then in the studios, and that the only thing that remained now was to put the men back to work and put the arbitration machinery in so that any arguments that came up over the interpretation of that ruling could be clarified ; for example, if some work is to be clone on the stage and an argument comes up as to whether this constitutes set erection work to be done by the I A or the carpenters. It was further discussed, and some methods were discussed, and it was decided that the following day a committee of the Conference of Studio Unions, a committee from the lA, and a committee from the Screen Actors Guild would meet at the Screen Actors Guild, and we would start formulating a permanent arbitration machinery which would then go on to take care of any future disputes in the business here, but that the December arbitration award was accepted. And I think you then said you wanted an interruption in order to get Mr. Keenan here, wlio had been selected unanimously as the permanent arbiter to be hired by the union. I think we discussed a salary that we were going to pay him to be the permanent czar in the industry. Those meetings went on until the eventual break-down of those negotiations, and that break-down occurred when the carpenters again repudiated the December arbitration award and the Conference of Studio Unions backed them up in saying that it did not intend to abide by the December arbitration