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2154 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES
Mr. Kearxs. I only have one question on this subject.
Mr. Laxdis. You go ahead, then.
Mr. Kearns. It was brought out here this morning or this afternoon that the executive council of the A. F, of L. hacl the authority to appoint the three-man committee to make a report, and said report was to be final and binding ; that all parties were to agree thereto. We were questioning the authority of the clarification.
Did the executive council then have the same authority to authorize the clarification as thej' had to authorize tlie directive ? You answered that in part.
Mr. DOHERTY. Well, I would say, Mr. Chairman, in answer to that question, that the executive council had the authority to hand down the original directive because the presidents of the seven international unions involved gave them that authority.
Now, as to whether they had the authority to instruct us to hand down a clarification, I am sure that it will take someone with a legal mind to answer that question.
Mr. Kearns. In other words, the t,hree-man committee felt their job had been done when they handed in the directive?
Mr. DoHERTY. Yes, Congressman Kearns, and we have so testified on many occasions before your committee, that we thought our work v/as done. The digest of the minutes that you have had inserted in the record ver}^ definitely states in many places that we so told the executive council. If you will look in there you will find I voted "no" on several occasions.
Now, as to whether the executive council had the right to instruct us to go out and bring in a clarification, I suppose that is a legal question that will have to be answered legally. It is just like Congress, I suppose, or the Committee on Education and Labor ordering your subcommittee to do something. It calls for a legal interpretation. I am here without counsel.
I am sure j^ou were shocked, along with myself, when you found out that Judge Joseph A. Padway died shortly following the Los Angeles hearings before your committee, some 2 months afterward', T believe it was. He died in October of 1947, at San Francisco.
But if you want a legal answer to that I suppose the present council of the American Federation of Labor will be very happy to supply it for the record.
Mr. Kearns. The only.question I bring up is whether the executive council of the A. F. of L. had the authority.
Mr. Landis. It was the same group, was it not, that told 3^ou to make the clarification?
Mr. DoHERTY. That's right. Well, there may have been one or two changes on the executive council, but not a serious change.
Mr. Kearns. The same authority?
Mr. DoHERTY. It was the same executive council, the same authority, put it that way.
I say the same seven presidents involved, including Mr. Hutcheson of the carpenters, gave the executive council the right to hand down the Cincinnati directive in 1945.
Now, whether they had the same authority to instruct this clarification, I am not able to say. I am very sorry I do not have a legal mind :and I am not a lawyer.
Mr. Kearns. Well, I would not expect you to do that.