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 1187 dis])utes. I wonder why, if tlie lawyers have the reason, that you haven't tried that section of our Taft-Hartley law. Mr. MiciiEi.. From what I understand, our lawyers have been study- ing the matter. I have not yet gotten a real answer one way or the other. We have a lot of lawyers. I assure you I don't walk down the street without lawyers. I have never found people who mix me up more than lawyers. I say that will all respect to them. You can't live with them, and you can't live without them. That means Mr. Lew, too. I had a lot of trouble with him. ytv. Landis. The point I am tryinfj to make is that just because it is a closed-shop contract is no reason why you should wait from last Auofust to next August to stop a jurisdictional dispute. ISIr. Michel. We are very human people. I don't know whether you know that. We are in the show business. Show peoi)le are most human people. We don't want to hurt anybody. Sorrell, I would have a tight with him. yet I w^ould not hurt him. I mean, I just had several arguments with the boy; look at the size of him. I am not afraid of him. you know. But I mean, we are very human. Some- times these union fellows who are trying to whip up everj^thing, they hurt things. We have people sometimes where our contracts do not call for it, who are away for 6 months. We have paid them. You know more than do that than the next contract come in '"6 months sick leave." You go broke, but you did that. There you took all the conditions in hand and said, "We want to take care of that poor fellow." I do not think there is a labor representative in this room that will tell you we are not fair. They might fight with us. They may come here with all the petty little cliiferences saying that tliis guy should have done this and this guy should have done tliat, but under- neath it they all want to work in that studio. These carpenters that were put out by this thing, they were not out of a job, my dear sir. I was there in 1946, in October, and I saw more work than any man could take care of. I know all over this country there was plenty of work for carpenters. I was building some barns on my farm, and I could not get any- body. Good god, I was in there doing it myself. It's a good thing the union didn't see me or I'd have gotten into trouble. So I tell you, sometimes I don't know. We have been in trouble with this kind of stuff.- It's a shame, because I think we do treat our peoi)le right. We have a tough job to operate, as you know. The cause of all this difficulty that has come about is in our inventories right now, my dear sir, and we are going to lose money on that inven- tory. Nobody knows that but us, and we have 20,000 stockholders we have to answer to. That was the big argument I had with Mr. Eric Johnston. He is head of our organization. He only has us guys, but each one of these presidents. I assure you. have many stockholders that they have to protect. That was our difficulty. That is where we had to make the decision. Tliat is where we had to be right or we would be sued, and I don't know whether you have ever had any stockholder suits in your life. They are wonderful. Boy, they drag you up and down the stairs, all around the place and into the basement and every place else.