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 333 Mr. McCann. I want you to confine your remarks, first, to this <;oniinittee, and then if you talked also with Mr. Hutcheson or with Mr. Green or any of the others, I want you to tell us about that. Tell us now about what took place when you went to see this committee. Mr. Murphy. If I might have the permission, Mr. Chairman, when we went to Chicago it was for two purposes. We had a resolution we wanted to put before the convention of the American Federation of Labor. And we wanted, if possible, to meet with the committee who had sat on this arbitration, who had handed down the decision. We wanted to meet with these men personally so, if possible, we could get to the truth and find out who was right and who was wrong, and thereby in some way clear up the confusion that had existed in Hollywood. We had no feeling one way or the other. We have worked alongside of men of both organizations for many years, and we hope we will work alongside of them in the future for many years. We went to talk to these men, aside from the resolution, to see if we could find out directly from them — there had been charges and countercharges — and the issues were so confused that many people had no idea what the directive said. Many people had no idea what it meant. There was a great discussion whether erection meant assembly or whether assembly meant erection, or whether erection meant to bring the pieces in and nail them together. That was our primary purjDose in meeting with the three gentlemen who have just testified. It was our feeling, after meeting with the three gentlemen — No. 1, that we were amazed at the amount of knowledge they had accumulated of the workings of the industry, because, as we all know, it is a pretty complicated affair. No. 2, 1 am quite certain that our committee was satisfied with the directive that was handed down in December — in other words, the lirst directive which has been read and, I believe, made part of the record here was exactly what they meant. We were given to understand that at no time did they mean in any way to change that directive. We were told that the first sentence of the clarification, the socalled clarification, tliat they insisted that that first sentence be there. In other words, which would state that they were ordered ; that as far as they were concerned they did not want to write any more. They had written a directive; they thought they had done a good job, and an honest job, and they stood by that directive. Further than that we discussed the question as to the construction of sets, which was the major point in question, and as far as I am concerned I was satisfied that these gentlemen knew exactly what construction of sets meant, what that included, and we not once but several times went over the ground again and said, "Do you mean that the set construction, with the exception of mill and trim work, is given to this union as against being taken by this union ?" And they said : "Yes; we believed that and that is exactly what we meant and we don't mean to change it." They referred to the fact that one of the vice presidents had asked them not to write the directive until they had returned to Chicago to see him, and they told us that since they had 30 days to do the job, which was not adequate time and that they would be rushed, that if he wanted to talk to them about the directive that he would have to