5. It is understood that the Earl Carroll Theatre Restaurant in Hollywood is operated by the Hollywood Restaurant Corporation, and if any musician desires to leave its employment he must give two (2) weeks' notice. If the Corporation desires to dismiss a musician, it must likewise give him two (2) weeks' notice. However, the Corporation shall only be required to give one (1) week's notice in case of the closing of the show. 6. The scale for the Earl Carroll Theatre Restaurant in Hollywood shall be, for five (5) hours per night, six (6) days per week, as follows: Leader All other men- All men engaged merely to play the show shall be Per week $150 100 80 The Contractor shall receive time and a half and the Corporation shall have the right to engage a combination leader-contractor at a salary of not less than Two Hundred Dollars ($200.00) per week. 7. It is agreed that free rehearsal for dance music only at the Earl Carroll Theatre Restaurant shall be two (2) hours per week, which may be divided into two (2) sessions. 8. This agreement shall remain in force for a period of three (3) years from date, excepting that wages, hours, and working conditions may be renegotiated one year from date and annually thereafter. Thirty (30) days' notice shall be given by either party to start such negotiations. EARL CARROLL, MUSICIANS MUTUAL PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION, By J. K. WALLACE, President. By JOHN TE GROEN, Vice President. Mr. KEARNS. Mr. Carroll, will you take the stand? Do you solemnly swear the testimony that you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Mr. Carroll? Mr. CARROLL. I do. TESTIMONY OF EARL CARROLL-Recalled Mr. KEARNS. Mr. Carroll, in view of the conference which we have just had, I understand you have a statement to make to the hearing. Mr. CARROLL. Yes; I have. I appreciated very much Mr. Maury Paul's attitude on the stand this morning, and although he told his side of our controversy, it wasn't entirely correct because there were some real problems here which had slowly worked out. It is true, as he said, that last Sunday night we met and arrived at a contract, but when we were ready to sign it I was told that I had to wait 3 or 4 more days, or a certain length of time, until the national board could authorize that contract. I have been afraid of the musicians union-I have feared them tremendously, because they had the power to take my business and the livelihood of myself and those who work for me away, so I was afraid of a subterfuge. That is the only reason that I did not agree with them Sunday night. We have agreed upon all the terms that we will sign, and I am happy to say that this is a very splendid conclusion of the case. I want my place to stay open and I am very, very happy that we have come to a decision. Mr. KEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. The meeting stands adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. (Whereupon, at 3: 15 p. m., the hearing in the above-entitled matter was adjourned to 10 a. m. on August 6, 1947, to investigate matters pertaining to television and the motion-picture industry.) INVESTIGATION OF JAMES C. PETRILLO, THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF MUSICIANS, ET AL. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1947 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Los Angeles, Calif. The subcommittee met at 10 a. m., in room 324, United States Post Office Building and Court House, the Honorable Carroll D. Kearns (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Also present: Hon. Fred A. Hartley, Jr., chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor; Irving G. McCann, general counsel to the committee. Mr. KEARNS. The hearing will come to order. As stated yesterday, we will proceed this morning with the testimony pertaining to television and the movie industry. Mr. TE GROEN. Mr. Chairman, our whole board of directors is here. If it doesn't concern them, could we entertain a motion toMr. KEARNS. Will you take the stand, please, Mr. te Groen? Counsel, will you question the witness regarding his officers, and then we can proceed from there? TESTIMONY OF JOHN TE GROEN-Recalled Mr. MCCANN. Will you state your name again for the record, please, sir? Mr. TE GROEN. John te Groen. Mr. MCCANN. You have been previously sworn in this case? Mr. MCCANN. You are the vice president, acting chief officer of local 47? Mr. TE GROEN. I am, sir. Mr. MCCANN. You have your board of directors and trustees present? Mr. TE GROEN. Yes, sir. Mr. MCCANN. Can you state to the committee whether you or any member of your board of trustees or directors had anything to do with entering into the contracts with the movie industry with respect to the musicians employed by them? Mr. TE GROEN. None at all, sir. Mr. MCCANN. By whom, on behalf of the A. F. of M., were those contracts made? 457 Mr. PAUL. I am a member of the price-list committee. The pricelist committee does not set minimum quotas of men. That is done by the board of directors. We occasionally make such recommendation. The price-list committee has been inactive for the past 412 years, since both Mr. Green, the chairman of that committee, and myself are members of the board. Most of the setting of wage scales and house minimums has been done by the board in board meetings. Mr. MCCANN. Is that job delegated by the board to some official or representative of the union, or is the price fixing or the price list actually established by the board itself? Mr. PAUL. It is established by the board itself. It works something like this: We have many classes of night spots-classes A, B, and C, hotels, and dance halls; it is a complicated price structure, and the mechanics of setting that up is done by Mr. Green and myself. • We present it to the board and the board approves it, but the board is cognizant at all times of what we are doing, and the board in effect does set the wage scales. Mr. MCCANN. Mr. Chairman, since our hearing yesterday afternoon I have devoted 2 or 3 hours to going over their minutes, and I want to say for the record I feel that the organization proceeds in a very businesslike way. I have found certain matters in the minutes about which I feel that we should interrogate some of the witnesses, and I think perhaps Mr. Paul this morning. I am not through with this study, because, as you know, the records were received yesterday afternoon, and it is a laborious task to go over and become acquainted with the details, but I wanted you to know, Mr. Paul, that we didn't ask for those records, without trying to give them the once-over. Mr. PAUL. I quite understand that. Mr. MCCANN. Now, there are several things that I am impressed with, and one is that there seems to be a delegation of your powers at times to some members to do the work, and so I would like for you to explain how you set up this complex price structure. For example, Mr. Paul, we are interested in maintaining a free-enterprise system in this country; we are interested in maintaining a free economy in the United States; and we want to know whether or not there is in the setting up of these price structures an exercise of reasonable judgment by your union or a dictatorial set of rules that just applies to the industry, and so I want to give you an opportunity to explain that to the committee. Mr. PAUL. In my opinion, we do exercise reasonable judgment in the setting of our price scales. We are interested in the employment of our members, and seeing to it that our members get paid a fair scale of wages, commensurate with their ability and the educational requirements of musicians, which are comparable to those of many other professional men, and also pricing the particular establishment so that the establishment can operate and make money and thus furnish employment to our members. It is very obvious that if we price a particular engagement too high, so that the employer was not able to make money, he would close up and our people would lose engagements. We try at all times to be reasonable and just in setting our wage scales and not arbitrary. Employers are permitted to appear before our board at any time, and many of them do, and question the classification that we have placed them in, and the prices we charge them, and when those prices seem to us to be out of Inie—in other words, if we have misjudged that particular place of employment-we adjust that wage scale. We reclassify it from, let us say, a class B place to a class C place. I believe that is all I care to say on that. Mr. MCCANN. But getting back to the previous answers you made, Mr. Paul, you stated that this price-list committee has not really been functioning for the last 2 or 21/2 years, as I remember it. Mr. PAUL. That is correct. Mr. MCCANN. Because of the fact that the two major members of that committee are now on the board of directors. Mr. PAUL. That is correct. Mr. MCCANN. What I would like to ascertain, and I think the committee will be interested in the answer, is that when you come to consider the establishment of the rates of pay of your musicians and the question of how many musicians should participate in the orchestra, do you take into consideration the earnings of the employer? Mr. PAUL. We do not take into consideration the earnings of the employer. We have no way of telling what the earnings of the employer are. We take into consideration the seating capacity of the establishment, the general facilities of the establishment-that is, the physical facilities of it. It must be obvious that in cafes where they have dancing and serve liquor, that there are many classes of them. Some of them are very expensively furnished. Some of them cost as high as a quarter of a million dollars to decorate, and reasonably small places, too. Another place with the same seating capacity may have sawdust on the floor and be, in slang parlance, a "joint." We take into consideration the price charged for drinks and cover charge, if any. The members of our board, with one or two exceptions, are every one of us playing and working musicians with long careers in just such establishments. We feel that we know the business very, very well indeed, and I think we are very fair in setting up wage scales and that we are not arbitrary. We have no interest in the income of the employer-in his personal income. Our only interest is in the protection of the wage scale of our members and in the creation of employment for our members. Mr. MCCANN. Let us assume that an employer, who has been paying a high wage scale and has had an orchestra of 10 or 12 people, came to your board and said, "My establishment is not paying any dividends; it doesn't have any earnings any more. Essentially, either I should reduce the number of my employees or reduce their rate of pay." What would be the attitude of your board toward the problem? Mr. PAUL. We would examine the circumstances as fairly as it would be possible for us to do. If it turned out to be a fact, as you stated, we very possibly would reduce him in classification so that he would pay a smaller amount of money. I would like to point out to the committee that it is not our policy to dictate to any employer the number of musicians that he must employ. We formerly established house minimums in most of our places of employment, but we have discontinued that practice because of the very evident public opinion against such practice, and because of the Taft-Hartley bill, which has become a law and which we intend to live under. Mr. MCCANN. When did you do that? Mr. PAUL. When did we do what? Mr. MCCANN. When did you make that change to do away with the house minimums? Mr. PAUL. In the past few weeks. I can't name the exact date. Mr. MCCANN. It has been stated to me that you have never required, as I understood the testimony of Mr. Bagley yesterday, that you haven't required stand-by orchestras in this locality. Is that correct? Mr. PAUL. Mr. Bagley is not a member of our board. He is our counsel. He has repeatedly advised us for many, many years against the requirement of the employment of stand-by orchestras. When it was legal, under the laws of the United States and of this State for us to require the payment of a stand-by orchestra, or usually a stand-by musician, and these-I want to make it perfectly clear that in 99 cases out of 100 these stand-bys are paid at the request of an employer. In other words, an employer wants, for instance, to employ a nonmember on a radio station. He will telephone the union or communicate with the union and suggest that he be permitted to use this nonmember and to pay one of our members. Mr. MCCANN. That is because they had closed-shop agreements? Mr. PAUL. We have had closed-shop agreements in the past. When this practice was legal, we have in the past accepted these stand-by payments. Since it has become illegal, under the laws of our country, we have ceased that practice. Mr. MCCANN. Well, I am glad to hear that, Mr. Paul. I was trying to get the picture. Mr. PAUL. I want to make it perfectly clear that Mr. MCCANN. You did do it when it was legal to do it? Mr. PAUL. We live within the laws of the land at all times. Mr. MCCANN. It is a fact that some of the nearby towns, though, have had perhaps even more stringent rules with respect to requiring stand-by orchestras than Los Angeles; isn't that true? Mr. PAUL. I don't know about that. Frankly, I am concerned only with the affairs of local 47 and what happens in our jurisdiction. Mr. MCCANN. When we were here before, it seems to me, someone told us that a soloist with her own accompanist would be required to pay for an orchestra if she sang in San Francisco, while not required to do that in your city, so that the local rules do-what I am trying to get at is each local may establish the rules it desires within the law now? Mr. PAUL. Each local in the American Federation of Musicians has complete local autonomy to set wage scales, working conditions, and rules for their members. And many of them have widely different rules. I don't pretend or wouldn't expect to try to explain any of those rules. I don't even know what they are. Mr. MCCANN. It appears to me from an examination of your records that a very large portion of the time of your board of directors is devoted to the matter of complaints against your own members by other members; is that not true? Mr. PAUL. That is correct. |