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926 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES
TESTIMONY OF LESTER WILSON, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REPRESENTATIVE, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Mr. McCann. Please state your name and your address.
Mr. Wilson. Lester Wilson, 536 South Maple, Los Angeles.
Mr. McCann. Give your telephone number for the record.
Mr. Wilson. Mutual 4356.
Mr. McCann. What position, if any, do you occupy with your union?
Mr. Wilson. Labor-relations representative.
Mr. McCann. And would you give the technical name of your union for the record ?
Mr. Wilson. International Union of Operating Engineers.
Mr. McCann. Wliat is your membership, sir?
Mr. Wilson. The membership of the international or locally ?
Mr. McCann. Of your international.
Mr. Wilson. It is around 90,000.
Mr. McCann. How many of your union members were employed in Hollywood prior to the September 23 incident?
Mr. Wilson. That would be a matter of speculation. This is the first time that a representative of the operating engineers has been able to represent their people, to get anybody to listen to them. We have never been able to even be allowed to see our people in the studios or to contact our people in the studios, except through subterfuge. I would have to get a pass on the pretext of going to see a motion picture made or something of that type before I could even meet with our people.
Mr. McCann. Didn't your people in the studios have a basic contract?
Mr. Wilson. Never, no.
Mr. McCann. Did they have any contract at all, did your union, international union, have any contract at all with the studios?
Mr. Wilson. None.
Mr. McCann. Didn't your men have any contract as a local with the studios?
Mr. Wilson. None.
Mr. McCann. So far as your organization is concerned, it has been completely unorganized with respect to the studios ?
Mr. Wilson. Our people have been forced to join as many as three and four organizations to hold their jobs out there.
Mr. McCann. We are very much interested in that, sir. I am going to cut you loose and let you tell your own story. You have 40 minutes to do it.
Mr. Kearns. You say you had to join three or four different unions ?
Mr. Wilson. Our people have been forced to affiliate with as high as four organizations, in order to perpetuate their work in the motionpicture studios.
Mr. Kearns. You mean in order to have a job ?
Mr. Wilson. That is right.
Mr. IvEARNS. That is what I want to get.
Mr. Wilson. In order to hold their jobs.
^ I would like to read for the record the jurisdiction of our international, recognized by the American Federation of Labor.