'Sweetheart Contracts' By Union Alleged

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30168, 27 June 1963, Page 19

'Sweetheart Contracts' By Union Alleged

(N.Z.P.A.-Reu

er—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, June 25. Congressional investigators today accused a United States entertainers' union of conspiring with night club owners to import Canadian girls for prostitution amid “unbelievable and shocking’’ conditions. United Press International reported.

The United States Senate’s Investigations Subcommittee called on the Secretary of Labour (Mr W. Willard Wirtz) to act swiftly to force the American Guild of Variety Artists to comply with United States law.

It alleged the union also cheated its own members of welfare and social security benefits, and the Federal Government of revenue under “sweetheart” contract with hoodlum owners of striptease parlours.

The sub-committee's report told of Canadian girls, some as young as 15, being held in “literal bondage” by night club owners. “Many of these girls, lured away from home by false pretences and promises, have found themselves in strange and terrifying places with no alternative but to bow to the will of their captors,” the sub-committee claimed.

In testimony heard in 1962, a United States Immigration Service investigator. Glen F. Rice, told of 11> girls, mostly aged 15 to 17, who were held virtual prisoners at a dub in Hurley, Wmconsin, and were told to “use whatever methods necessary to get men drunk.”

Mr Rice testified that two of the girls—aged 15 and 20 —tried to “escape” but were caught and sent to >a club near Chicago. There, he said, the club manager “knew they had no money, so he forced ‘Miss X’ to live with him and submit to him.

“He threatened both girls and told them they would not get far if they tried to escape, because the syndicate would find them.” The sub-committee said two Canadians girls were recruited in Montreal and sent to a Hurley club. After their first week there the report said, one of the girls had less than two dollars left of her 100 dollars in pay, after deductions for union initiation fees, costumes, food, lodging and transportation costs. Shipped To Club Failing in their attempt to escape, the report said, the girls were shipped to a club near Chicago, where they “found most of the girls in the area engaged in immoral practices.” Girls were beaten up, drunks were “rolled” for their money, and girl employees took men into rooms for “immoral purposes,” it said.

One of the Canadian girls was forced to lave with a man. identified as a “procurer" and a sub-committee witness who took the fifth amendment (in which he declined to answer questions on the ground that he might incriminate himself).