The Treaty of Beverly Hills
Like the
burly hero of a Grade-B Western, A.F.L. Union Boss Herbert Knott
Sorrell took on ten of Hollywood's major studios last week, and won out.
In a two-day strike, the 7,000 "off-production"* workers of Sorrell's
young, tough Conference of Studio Unions won every wage-&-hour
demand, including a 25% increase in base pay. For the first time
in Hollywood history, studios will guarantee their off-production
workers, by far the biggest part of their staffs, a work week. This meant that any time these employes are called to work they must be paid for a week, even if they work only a part of it.
But what impressed and
worried Hollywood was the way Sorrell dodged the jurisdictional trouble
which turned C.S.U.'s strike a year ago into a shambles (TIME, Oct. 22).
At one point it looked as if the A.F.L.'s International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees would cross Sorrell's picket lines and either
1) break the strike or 2) force the studios to shut down to avoid
picket-line bloodshed.
Sorrell smoothly talked I.A.T.S.E.'s leaders over to his side, thus forced the studios to give in.
The wage raises will cost studios about $20 million over their 1941 annual average. Much of it can come from swollen box-office receipts, although some studios are in for tough sledding if this falls off. But Herbert Sorrell isn't worried about that. Said he chestily: "From now on, we dictate."
This was just what studios feared. Rough and tough, Sorrell is little liked by rival studio labor leaders. Neither do they like what they think are his politics. He is now being tried before a union tribunal on charges of Communism. Nevertheless, his quickie victory had greatly increased his prestige. Not since Racketeer Willie Bioff had any labor boss been able to dictate to the studios. The way he was going, using union unity instead of extortion, Sorrell might be the man to do it.
10/7/1946, Vol. 48 Issue 15, p24, 1p
Hold Your Hats, Boys
Hollywood's labor picture unreeled like an old-fashioned serial. For the umpteenth time
in the industry's hair-raising history, movie producers and quarreling
A.F.L. unioneers scuffled along the brink of studio chaos.
Pickets massed angrily last
week at the gates of Warner Brothers, M-G-M and five other major
Hollywood lots, as they had done for 34 weeks last year and again for
two days in July. Studio laborers scattered
tacks in the path of movie stars' automobiles, threw coffee in the faces
of picket-line crossers, stoned busloads of rival A.F.L. workers
convoyed through their jeering, milling ranks.
The new blowoff came when
the studios instituted wholesale firings of carpenters and painters
belonging to the A.F.L. Conference of Studio Unions.
C.S.U. members had refused to work on sets where producers had handed
over disputed jobs to the competing A.F.L. International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees. Neither the
jurisdictional squabble nor the producers' inclination to string along
with the I.A.T.S.E. faction were new angles in Hollywood's continuing
labor war.
Moviemakers had acquired
the habit of dealing exclusively with the I.A.T.S.E. when the union was
bossed by racketeers Willie Bioff and George Browne (since jailed and
paroled). I.A.T.S.E. control of movie-house projectionists had always been a trump card. The C.S.U., led by beefy, belligerent Herb Sorrell, business agent for the Painters Union, had gradually broken the I.A.T.S.E. monopoly.
Low-Flyer. A rough, tough bargainer, ex-prizefighter Sorrell raised producers' hackles last year when, after winning a 25% pay increase, he cried: "From now on, we dictate." His politics are of the far left; his relations with the C.I.O. are chummy.
The I.A.T.S.E. once threatened to try him before an A.F.L. court on
charges of being a Communist, but later dropped the accusation. Last winter he was thrown in jail for defying a court order to restrain mass picketing.
Because a local ordinance prohibited sound trucks, Picketer Sorrell patrolled last week outside Warners with a portable amplifier strapped to his back. Later he took to the air, blared encouragement from a low-flying plane.
After last year's
protracted strike, the C.S.U. and I.A.T.S.E had agreed to let a
three-man committee, appointed by the A.F.L. executive council, iron out
their studio jurisdictional differences. Last
August the committee had awarded the set-building jobs to the C.S.U.
But neither the I.A.T.S.E. nor the producers abided by the decision. With a fat backlog of finished pictures, moviemakers talked of shutting up shop and starting all over again to settle the mess. Said Sorrell: "Well, hold your hats. Here we go again."
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