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2348 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES
AFTERNOON SESSION
(The subcommittee reconvened at 2 p. m.)
Mr. Kearns. The hearing will be in order, please,
TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW M. LEVY AND ROY M. BREWER—
Continued
Mr. Kearns. You may proceed.
Mr. Levy. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I want to read into the record this excerpt from Variety of March 16, 1945, quoting Mr. Sorrell at a meeting before local No.^ 40 of the I. B. of E. W., in which Mr. Sorrell is reported to have said :
When the current fight is over we will sit clown with the producers and say, "This jurisdiction belongs to that union and this to another."
And Mr. Roy Tindall, who was the assistant business representative of local No. 40, is f-eported to have stated on March 12, 1945, in Variety, 4 days after the so-called set decorators strike started :
Tliis is a show-down and the time to settle jurisdiction which has been in everybody's hair so long.
Now, when Mr. Sorrell was on the stand he attempted to justify — and I may say there can be no justification — for going out on strike on March 12, 1945, during the war, and in violation of contracts, pledges, and directions of the American Federation of Labor and during the very period when tiie National Labor Relations Board was conducting its hearings in this matter, by stating that there was no agreement on the i)art of Mr. Walsh or on the part of the producers to abide by the decision of the National Labor Relations Board.
That attempted justification, like many other things which Mr. Sorrell undertook to defend or to explain, is completely without merit.
In Variety of March 26, 1945, the following appears, and I quote :
Following this huddle —
The huddle referred to is a conference among I. B. Chadwick, the head of the Independent Motion Picture Producers Association. Mr. Mannix; of the major producers labor committee, and M-G-M, and Mr. Sorrell.
Following this huddle at which Mannix is said to have repeated the previous declaration of producers that they stood ready to abide by a decision of the NLRB, Mannix proceeded to arrange a conference between Sorrell and Walsh at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel. At the latter pow-wow, all three agreed to abide by the NLRB decision and for a few minutes it looked as though the studio pickets might be withdrawn.
Then skipping a bit and continuing to quote :
Sorrell qualified this acceptance, however, by stating before he made an agreement with Walsh the latter would have to settle his jurisdictional beefs with the carpenters, machinists, and so forth * * *.
Now, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Walsh gave personal and specific instructions to Mr. Brewer and Mr. Brewer carried them out, and the record will show it.
To clarify it — so that he who runs can read — the lATSE said they would abide by, nay, even insisted upon a determination of the National Labor Relations Board in the set-decorators' issue, and rather Mr. Sorrell stating that he would abide by it, not alone did he walk out