He took his union out of the American Federation of Labor's Building Trades Department on several occasions when he was displeased by its ruling on jurisdictional disputes involving the Carpenters.
That conflict over the proper role of unions was symbolized by the famous punch — or shove — that John L. Lewis delivered at the AFL's convention in Atlantic City in 1935 after Hutcheson interrupted a speech by a representative of the committee that was attempting to organize tire factory workers with a point of order.
He was also a member of America First, the organization headed by Charles Lindbergh that opposed any United States support for Britain or the Soviet Union in the years before Pearl Harbor.
His treatment of those locals and the union's failure to deliver effective leadership during several strikes in the Northwest led to their departure to join the CIO several years later.
The government claimed that the union's traditional methods of protecting its members' work — jurisdictional strikes, resistance to work-displacing technology, and featherbedding — were illegal restraints of trade.