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)

1114 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES Mr. GwiNN. I mean the producers and the other unions that wanted to go ahead with this contract, all of them except the carpenters who wanted to throw the contract overboard. Mr. McCann. That might be, except for one thought which I would like to throw out for your consideration at this time, and which has not been developed here through Mr. Rathvon, while you gentlemen were present. The three-man commitee had emphatically stated it was not their intention to take from the carpenters any of the work which the car- penters had done and that when they made their original decision of December 26 upon the basis of an agreement dated in 1925 and called the 1926 agreement, they did not know until months afterward that the so-called 1926 agreement had never gone into effect, Mr. Rathvon. May I be heard on that ? Mr. McCann. Yes, sir; we will be glad to hear from you. Mr. Ratiivon. Earlier this afternoon Mr. Dullzell of the actors union testified about a meeting in Chicago where four of our most prominent actors, Mr. Dullzell himself, and others representing the four A's, which are the various actors groups, the stage, the screen and so on, sat down with those same three vice presidents in Chicago after they had issued the clarification. These men told these actors as testified by Mr. Dullzell that the clarification was issued over their name without their consent; it was not of their making. I would urge you to read the statement Mr. Dullzell put in here. When we were faced with this clarification we were faced with some- thing that we were informed and believed was the result of pressure by Mr. Hutcheson on these three men who had come out there to make this report. At that time when we were forced to decide whether we were to go by this original decision or to reverse ourselves and fol- low the clarification—if we went with the original decision we were living up to the agreement Mr. Johnston made; if we followed the clarification we were going into the doubtful area of taking a second decision from these same people. If they had not disowned the clarification at that time we probably might have given it more consideration. Later on they testified as Mr. McCann has told you. So I must put the results of this decision handed down by these three men in three phases: First, they came out there and made them- selves the decision. Eight months later they issued a clarification which they themselves denied to other members of the A. F. of L., the actors; and phase three, under some pressure that I am sure I do not know about, they came and testified and said, "When we did issue the clarification we did not know that our original thing took certain work away.'' I think none of you gentlemen can understand this unless you read this testimony. Mr. Owens. Well, they should have had three new men appointed to decide it rather than to have the same three admit that they had issued the thing and did not understand it and had made such a mis- take. It really would have been better to have three" new men ap- pointed to hear the whole thing, would it not? Mr. Rathvon. Right. But before you gentlemen leave make one more point which I am very much concerned over. I am very much concerned over this. This disturbs me most.