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 423 not accept that August clarification, then Mr. Hutcheson would be agreeable to arbitration upon this basis : Both the December directive and the August explanation be thrown out the window and we start all over again arbitrating the thing from the beginning. I asked him if I could go back to Hollywood and say that he was definitely committed to that proposition, and he said, "Definitely, yes." An arbitration on either of those two bases was agreeable to Mr. Hutcheson and had ahvays been, and he personally had heard Mr. Bill Hutcheson tell the screen actors that in Chicago. That was the position of the carpenters. It seemed to me and still seems to me to be a sound position, in view of all of the obscurity, the denials and counterdenials, and contradictions that have gone on ; it seems to me there can be no other sound basis for arbitration except those two positions, the original directive as interpreted by the men who wrote it, or starting all over again from the beginning and deciding the jurisdictional lines clearly. The only third alternative possible is simply an arbitration on the basis of the December directive, interpeted by the men that made it. That is the extent of my participation in this dispute. I would like to simply summarize my conclusions by saying it seemed to me throughout, on the basis of what this hearing has brought out in the open, the essential merits are established. There has been a lot of conclusion and people may have on both sides, even with good will, been confused. Granted the producers may be in an extremely difficult position in this thing, the essential merits have been established as brought out in this hearing. In fact, the carpenters have been deprived of work which the December directive of 1945, as explained by the men who wrote it, never intended they should be deprived of. It seems to me the statement made by Mr. Kearns in this hearing is very pertinent. Mr. Kearns with a great deal of feeling remarked here one day — and Mr. Freeman made very much the same statement from this witness stand — one of the sacred rights of an American is the right to a job, particularly if he was a workingman with a wife and children; that no man would deprive him of his job. I think the basis for the position of the carpenters is simply that there can be no equity, certainly, in depriving men of their jobs which admittedly for 25 years that they held simply on the basis of an ambiguous phrase or interpretation made erroneously by the man that wrote it, to deprive men of jobs they have held for 25 years. That is why there has been so much feeling in this matter by men deprived of their jobs, simply on that basis. I think there is still less equity to still deprive men of those jobs since the authors of the directive have made it clear they never had any such intention of depriving those men of tliose jobs. In making suggestions for settlement. No. 1, it seems to me there can be no just settlement unless the men who have been deprived of their jobs are restored to them. There can be no just settlement unless all the men and women who have been deprived of their jobs, because they, out of loyalty have supported the carpenters — were erroneously deprived of their jobs — are restored to their jobs. That means the members of local 683, for example.