The Classical Hollywood Cinema - Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960

24 The labor-force, financing and the mode of production (p. 549-550)

Chapter 19 examined the relationship between production practices and technological change, probably the most significant of the factors in the means of production for this industry. This chapter will look at two other aspects of the mode of production, the labor-force and the ownership and financing of the films. We need to consider the interconnections between these factors and production practices. These interconnections while present from the very start of the American film industry have usually been considered most complex after the vertical integration of the major studios, the conversion to sound, and the unionization of the labor-force. What traditional historians have tended to ignore is that laborforce activities and financing reinforced rather than contradicted or changed the production system as it had been constructed. In the case of the labor-force, we will find that union jurisdictional disputes and fights for individual worker recognition reinforced and solidified the subdivision of the work and practices of differentiation.

Ownership involved economic agents which contributed capital to permit the firm to operate. Some historians have argued that the film industry changed when its financing methods shifted from capitalism to advanced capitalism. While it is apparent that advanced capitalism affected the industrial structure, the implications for the mode of production are not so clear.

The labor-force and the mode of production

Like the labor-force in any US industry, film workers wanted a greater share of the earnings through increased wages and salaries and more favorable working conditions. And just as in any other industry, the owners sought to avoid this, fearing loss of their profits. In the film industry, the labor-force was composed of both management and non-management workers, each presenting different bargaining problems—also the case in most industries. On the one hand, the industry perceived some skilled laborers and ‘talent’ as contributing desired knowledge, craftsmanship, and special abilities. (Stars, for instance, were seen as having a monopoly on a particular personality.) On the other hand, for work positions in which there was a ready supply of willing and able replacements, the companies had a bargaining advantage. Thus, the differentials between workers’ bargaining powers were large, and, as a result, the earliest labor coalitions for collective action to improve wages and conditions arose in the less skilled work areas. The more skilled and desired workers organized into guilds and only later into unions.

Since the earliest labor difficulties in the teens, a pattern of union and management conflict has occurred. The firms used strike-breakers, and the organizing unions competed among themselves, slowing down the workers’ gains. Murray Ross’s extensive history of the unionizing of the industry through 1941 traces a classic pattern: workers strike, top management makes countermoves (in the interests of the owners), and the State intervenes either to promote or retard union goals. (The State’s interest in harmonious industrial relations during political and economic crises—wars and the depression—contributed to compromises and evential recognition of the unions by the firms.)

Yet one of the effects of union activities and State intervention was the reinforcement and solidification of the division of labor. In many instances, unions battled less against the owners and more against competing unions for jurisdiction of work functions. These struggles resulted in very distinctly drawn job boundaries. Between 1918 and 1921 three major strikes produced compromises on wages, but the firms retained an open shop. During these and future strikes, members of rival organizing groups not only crossed picket lines, but offered their memberworkers at lower rates than the striking group. To solve this internecine warfare the feuding unions drew strict jurisdictional boundaries. In 1925 and 1926, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners achieved control over general construction, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) acquired jurisdiction for the actual processes of shooting films—constructing property and scenery, handling lighting, and creating miniatures. With the internal dispute settled (and IATSE’s control of theater projectionists), the film companies collectively recognized five unions in the Studio Basic Agreement of 1926. This union victory set the precedent for future collective contracts.