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.

*Carpenters, painters, prop & set builders, as opposed to production employes: cameramen, stage hands, lamp men.

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