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)

2370 MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES support to Soi-rell. Philip M. Counelly, head of the California State Industrial Union Council CIO, has been identified by Rena M. Vale, former Communist Party member and others, as a member of the Communist Party. Mr. Sorrell also served as sponsor of a committee which was set up to promote the election of Mary Dorothy Connelly, wife of Philip M. Connelly, to the board of education, according to an undated leaflet. 18. The American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, which specializes in defending such foreign-born Communists as Gerhart Eisler and Harry Bridges, was cited as a Communist front by the Special Committee on Un-American Activities on June 2.5, 1942, and March 29, 1944, and by Prof. John Dewey's Committee for Cultural Freedom in April 1940. Herbert K. Sorrell was a sponsor of a national conference held by the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, on O-Jtober 25 and 26, 1947, in Cleveland, Ohio, according to an official program of the conference. Mr. Levy. In order to proceed in some order I want to take up the question that was presented with respect to the War Labor Board Tongue decision, in the early part of 1945. You will remember, Mr. Chairman, tliat in the early part of 1945, and as a result of the strikes called by local 1421, the National War Labor Board, which was then in existence, appointed an arbitrator by the name of Tongue to attempt to resolve the controversy respecting the set dressers. The lATSE maintained — and I think properly — that the War Labor Board was not the legal or proper tribunal to go into this matter and that it was without jurisdiction to determine the question of representation involved, particularly in view of the fact that it was the position of the lATfeiE that set dressers appropriately belonged in a different unit than that claimed by local 1421. Now the Tongue award has been offered in evidence in full by Mr. Bodle on behalf of Mr. Sorrell, and I think also on behalf of Mr. Cobb. Therefore I want to pay some attention to it. I want to emphasize that the lATSE did not participate in the arbitration proceeding before Mr. Tongue, except to the extent of voicing its objection to the matter of jurisdiction. I think investigation will show there was a barrage of repeated threats by local 1421 to strike even before the 12tli of March 1945, pending the Tongue decision, and notwithstanding the wartime emergency, unless a favorable decision Avas rendered by the arbitrator. An award was finally made sustaining local 1421's contention in part, but the award expressly provided for leave to appeal and stated that the award should continue only until such time as the National Labor Relations Board assumed and determined jurisdiction over the representation question. Now the interesting thing about this is that on behalf of the lATSE I, or my representative in California, promptly filed an appeal to the National War Labor Board. That was before March 12, 1045. Why do you think, sirs, that the National War Labor Board did not decide that appeal? This is the first time this has been disclosed in these weeks of hearings and it is important. The rule of the National War Labor Board was that if a strike took place all of its machinery would stop; it would not process the appeal. The result was that when Sorrell and his cohorts went out on strike on the 12th of March 1945, the appeal which we took to upset the illegal award, because of lack of jurisdiction of Mr. Tongtie, could not be heard by the National War Labor Board.