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)

462 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES was only an armed peace and never has solved the fundamental differences between lATSE and the craft unions involved. The present Hollywood strike is another in the series of jurisdictional wars. Fundamental difference between the opposing groups is that while the A. F. of L. originally and primarily was a federation of craft unions, lATSE actually is a semi-industrial union of theater and studio employees which cuts across a number of crafts, most potent of which are the carpenters, painters, and electricians. lATSE won its first major triumph over a craft union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), in 1914, when, after a long battle A. F. of L. awarded lATSE jurisdiction over theater motion-picture projectionists. It was this victory which encouraged lATSE to penetrate film production and, in 1918, launch a movement avowedly to form one big union of many studio-working craftsmen. It was (and still is) the position of the lATSE that craftsmen such as carpenters, painters, and electricians, working in picture studios, are stagehands who come within the lA jurisdiction rather than that of the building-trades internationals. On the other hand, the craft unions — weak in downtown Los Angeles because of the then open-shop conditions and smarting from defeats at the hands of the lATSE elsewhere — believed it was life-or-death matter for them to organize the studio workers along craft lines. After several years of conflict over studio-job control, in which the lATSE and the craft unions frequently competed in supplying manpower to the studios, the first armistice was negotiated, A compromise agreement, which was supposed to settle studio jurisdictions of the unions involved, was signed between the lATSB and the carpenters' local in 192.5, and between lATSE and IBEW in 1926. Beneath the surface, old rivalries between the unions and between union leaders continued to seethe. The armed peace was ended in August 1933. An lATSE local struck in an attempt to ensure its control over sound men. IBEW assisted the producers by replacing striking soundmen with members of its own local. lATSE called a general strike of all its members in the studios. The carpenters' union sided with IBEW, jumped at the opportunity to regain some of the work which it had conceded to lATSE in the earlier jurisdictional pact. The electricians' and carpenters' unions supplied the studios with all craftsmen they needed. Cameramen quit lATSE, returned to work. Other lATSE members flocked to join the carpenters' and electricians' unions. lATSE lost this war — partly because the depression had weakened its control over labor in motionpicture theaters and it could not make good its threat to close down the theaters. Under NRA codes, lATSE regained the enormous power in the theaters. It again dominated all skilled exhibition labor and in 1935, demonstrated its powers to the studios by closing the Paramount theater circuit in Chicago because of a jurisdictional dispute with the electricians' union. Motion-picture producers could stay in business only a very short time if all theaters closed. They succumbed to lATSE's closed-shop demands and all studios posted notices requiring former lATSE members to return to its fold. The erstwhile victorious craft unions gave in without a struggle. lATSE won the first closed-shop agreement in Hollywood, establishing an important precedent. In 1937, open hostilities flared again. Led by the painters' union, a number of small-crafts groups, which had been kept out of the studio basic agreement by the lATSE banded into the Federated Motion Picture Crafts (FMPC). In past years, the painters' union had absorbed the make-up artists. Now the painters found they could not reenter the studio basic agreement and obtain a 10-percent wage increase negotiated by lATSE unless they relinquished the make-up artists, claimed by lATSE. Eleven member unions of FMPC, led by the painters and including scenic artists and studio utility workers (common laborers), struck in what was another phase of the long struggle between lATSE and the craft unions. lATSE moved to break the strike. It disrupted the studio utility workers' local, chief ally of the painters, by establishing a new classification for laborers, the class B grip, in its studio technicians' local and then forced from the producers a wage increase for this category. Laborers went back to work, joined lATSE. Except for the painters, the smaller crafts sued for peace and went back to work. lATSE gave the make-up artists and the hairdressers a charter, got them a favorable agreement with the studios. lATSE again had won a substantial, but this time not complete victory. It withdrew its objection to the