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 1563 The nuiu at Twentieth Century-Fox who is head of the sound department says, "My system is the one ; the others are no good." The follow at Metro will tell you that Fox is no good but his is. Now that goes for that, it goes for sound ; it goes for the laboratory ; it goes for construction ; it will go for pretty nearly everything. Each one is an individual, and each one thinks that his is the proper one and that the other fellow's is not. They get along, but how they do he does not know. Now, these men came out there. They made a survey. They had 30 days. You have heard it here a million times. They met with people, and what happened at those meetings I don't know a thing about. I was never present at any one of them. The only connection I had was that about 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning I got a telephone call from someone on the committee asking if I would arrange for them to go over to Paramount and see the lot, which I did. I understand they went over there, and they were there 2 or 3 hours. They came back and made decisions. Now far be it from me to say what they should have done or what the American Federation of Labor should have done. But the way that looks to me from the testimony I have heard here is that there should be a lot of house cleaning in the American Federation of Labor. In my early days when Mr. Sam Gompers gave an order, gentlemen, it was an order, and somebody filled it. But from the testimony I have heard here, from the letters Mr. Walsh has written to Mr. Green, to Mr. Meany, the answers back, and everything else — somebody made the remark here that it was a lemon handed from one back to the other and from the testimony now every day it looks as though that lemon, in my estimation, has gotten to be a watermelon. Now, this committee gives orders. Bear in mind one thing. The producers were part and parcel of the committee. The producers were the ones that wanted this thing settled. They were the ones that were getting hurt. Yes ; the fellow who was out of a job was getting hurt a little bit, but that producer is budgeted to that picture, and when those costs go up 100 percent, which they do in many cases, somebody wants to know why. So they say, "Our decision is final." They make a decision, and the main thing they say and the main thing I understand all this argimient is about is that they said "Set erection belongs to the lATSE." All right, the directive came to California. Then the argument started, gentlemen, between ourselves, between the unions and between practically everybody, as to what was the definition of "set erection." We ourselves were divided on it. We brought the attorneys in to ha"*'e them give us decisions. We finally decided we would send the committee down to Miami where the American Federation of Labor was having its meeting, or the executive council was having its meeting, and see if they would give us a clarification so that we would know what to do. We did not care who got the work. It was the same price. We would not save a nickel if this one or that one got it. There was no dispute as to the amount of wages they were to be paid for what they did.