The screen writer (June 1946-May 1947)

THE SCREEN WRITER industry. But we must be awake to the fact that this is not true peace, but only an uneasy truce. The underlying causes of industrial unrest are still with us; to mention a few of them: the rising cost of living, the defensive militancy of the trade union movement in the face of national reaction and the prospect of a new depression, labor factionalism within the industry, the structural weaknesses of the American Federation of Labor, with consequent jurisdictional differences, the unwillingness of some producer strategists to accept the fact that democratic trade unionism is to become a permanent fea¬ ture of the Hollywood scene. Tomorrow, next week, next month, another crisis may burst upon us, as suddenly and as devastatingly as the last one did. And again, under present conditions, we will not be prepared for it. Why? It has been said that we found our¬ selves in a dilemma this time because the Executive Board had no policy. This is not true. The Board had a policy, a sorry one to be sure, but still the only policy possible under our Basic Agreement with the producers. The clause which dictated this policy reads as follows: “The Guild agrees that it will not call or engage in or assist any strike against the Producer during the term hereof, and will during said term order its members to perform and will use its best efforts in good faith to induce its members to perform their services as writers for the Producer and to continue to accept em¬ ployment as writers with the Producer even though other persons or groups of persons may be on strike; it being under¬ stood that if the Guild complies with said obligations it will have discharged its full responsibility under this Article II so far as the individual conduct of its members is concerned.” The Board faithfully fulfilled its obli¬ gation. It ordered the membership to go to work, only pointing out that each in¬ dividual member had a legal right to refuse to cross the picket lines if, in his judgment, he thereby ran the risk of suffering physical violence or public in¬ dignity. The Screen Actors’ Guild and the Screen Directors’ Guild, with similiar clauses in their contracts, issued similar instructions to their respective member¬ ships. The result was to throw the onus of decision on each individual member. It was as if we had no Guild. We had fought for a Guild, spent our time and money to create it, and then found it powerless to act in exactly the sort of crisis in which a Guild should act. The Actors and the Directors were just as impotent as we were. In a situation of great danger to us all, these three potentially power¬ ful groups within the industry could offer their members no positive leadership and only the vaguest hope of adequate pro¬ tection. Is it any wonder that we were ignored by the principals in the dispute? Can we blame such hard-headed realists as Messrs. Sorrell, Brewer, Mannix and Kahane for not consulting us before they flung down the gage? Can we blame them if they do it to us all over again? What can WE do about it? At an in¬ formal meeting of the membership held on July 3rd, the day after the strike set¬ tlement, the following recommendation to the Executive Board was approved with only two dissenting votes: “That the Screen Writers’ Guild Exec¬ utive Board and Labor Committee, in cooperation with the Actors’ and Direc¬ tors’ Guilds, be urged to work toward the elimination of the ‘yellow dog’ portion of the no-strike clause of the Minimum Basic Agreement.” If the Actors, Directors and Writers, united, thus free their hands for action, there may never arise another strike situation in Hollywood. The weight of the three talent guilds, thrown on the side of a just complaint, against an un¬ just one, can force an immediate settle¬ ment in almost any conceivable industrial crisis. It is not our purpose here to propose an immediate alliance between the three guilds. The Guild, however, has every¬ thing to gain at this time in more closely coordinating its activities with those of the Actors and Directors. What we now 40