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)

1214 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES Mr. Owens. This was the one that had originally filed the petition with the War Labor Board back in the fall of 1944; is that correct? Mr. ZoRN. That is correct, and the one which withdrew when the lA intervened. When the employers filed a petition they went along with 1, 2, or 3 days hearing and right in the middle of the hearing they withdrew and started the strike. For your information, Con- gressman, in some of the subsequent NLRB litigation on this issue, the National Labor Relations Board said the}^ defied the orderly processes of law and in their decisions have castigated the painters for what they did while the proceedings were going on. That strike was instituted by the painters union but the painters union was merely one of the unions in this entire group of conference of studio unions. The other unions immediately recognized their picket line so that we had a strike not merely by the painters, or that particular local of the painters, but we had the carpenters, who were not then members of the conference of studio unions, observe the painters' picket line and there were a variety of other craft unions which were members of the CSU which also observed the picket line. It immediately became apparent, however, within a few days after the strike had started, that it was not merely a strike over recognition for this small group of set dressers—there were only about 37 employed in the studios—because the carpenters immediately asserted—and there was some prior correspondence prior to this time in which they asserted they had jurisdictional beefs which they wanted settled. Mr. Owens. Had that matter been brought up prior to that time? Mr. ZoRN. There is in the letters, as I recall it, a letter from Mr. Hutcheson to Mr. Pat Casey, who is labor relations chief for the studios, in which Mr. Hutcheson says he is sick and tired of this con- troversy and this matter of profit-maker jurisdiction and it should be settled. But aside from that letter and possibly some conversation Mr. Casey might have had with Mr. Hutcheson there had been no threat of strike by the carpenters prior to this. Mr. Owens. Did you have a contract with the carpenters? Mr. ZoRN. At that time we did. Mr. Owens. And you had contracts with the other groups also? Mr. ZoRN. Oh, yes, with all of them. Mr. Owens. Did you have a contract with the painters? Mr. ZoRN. Yes, sir, and as a matter of fact we took the position before the National Labor Relations Board subsequently that the strike was in violation of certain no-strike commitments in those con- tracts. But then some very curious things happened. I don't know whether you want to know about them or not but among the deci- sions of the National Labor Relations Board was the decision known as the Columbia Pictures case, in which they finally determined that Mr. Kearns. We have all that in the record. Mr. ZoRN. I did not know whether Congressman Owens wanted to know that. Mr. Kearns. Well, he can read the record. Mr. ZoRN. That was the sequence of events which led to that. Mr. Owens. I have a habit sometimes of drawing out a few things that are in the record or that might be in the record in a believe-and-