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Seiners face disaster as roe stocks collapse
Herring seine fishermen, prisoners of area licensing and victims of collapsing stocks, faced double disaster at Fishermen press time as evidence mounted that west coast stocks were too weak to provide a seine fishery.
Chances of full seine fishery in the Strait of Georgia, where the fleet landed only 3,400 tons of a forecast catch of 6,650, had dwindled to nothing. On the west coast, where the target catch was 6,000 tons, seines had landed only 1,000 tons and no further stocks were available.
UFAWU
accepts 1982 roe contract
UFAWU and Native Brotherhood roe herring fishermen turned a solid strike vote, a determination to picket the grounds and a refusal to accept processors' pleas of poverty into a substantial victory March 4 in minimum price negotiations.
In coastwide voting that day, fishermen voted by an 82.3 percent margin to accept prices of $710 for gillnet-caught fish and $384 for seine crewmen, still a six percent cut below last year's figures but a far cry from the 20 percent reduction the companies sought.
In vote after vote, through a rejection vote, a strike vote, a second rejection vote and finally the acceptance vote, fishermen showed a unity and determination that paid off in hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional earnings.
"A joint membership rejection vote of 75 percent March
1 was a determining factor in compelling the companies to move substantially from their last offer of $675 a ton and $365 a ton," joint UFAWU-Native Brotherhood committee negotiator Bill Procopation said in a news release March 4.
The agreement, reached at
2 a.m. March 4 after a nine-hour bargaining session, also provides for a company contribution of $4.05 a ton into the welfare fund.
Although the agreement represents a six percent price cut below 1981 minimum negotiated levels of $760 a ton for gillnetters and $411 a ton for seine crewmen, Procopation said that it represented a victory for roe herring fishermen.
"The companies were determined to impose drastic price cuts this year, regardless of valid reports that wholesale and retail markets in Japan appeared to be on the rise," said Procopation.
The Fisheries Association entered talks Feb. 19 with a dismal offer of $625 a ton for gillnetters and $325 a ton for seine crewmen. Last year's prices were $760 and $411.
"The committee agreed to accept the final association offer of $710 a ton and $384 a ton in order to allow our fishermen to participate in the 1982 roe herring fishery," said Procopation.
Gillnet fishermen fared somewhat better, landing about 7,000 tons in the Gulf, where the quota was 6,350, and about 3,000 tons on the west coast, 75 percent of the goal.
Prices were erratic, starting at a low $800 to $950 in the Gulf as the fishery opened and then climbing as high as $1,100 later in the week as the failure of the fishery and the short supply became apparent.
For the 69 seines locked in the Strait of Georgia area, the first week of the fishery was a panicky stampede from one spot to
the next in the hope of finding fishable stocks.
Fisheries assistant herring co-ordinator Norm Lemmen said March 11 the Gulf stocks appeared to be as strong as forecast. Starting March 5, the 529-boat gillnet fleet took its quota in 32 hours in the Lambert Channel, Denman, Hornby area and delivered fish with roe content between 10 and 13 percent.
But nowhere in the Gulf could the department find schools of herring large enough to support a seine fishery. Stocks that were sampled showed high propor-
Vol. 47, No. 5
Vancouver, B.C. 80$
March 12, 1982
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Geoff Meggs photo
• J. S. McMillan employee Tatsuo Gibo supervised unloading of Strait of Georgia herring production in Vancouver March 8, but deliveries quickly dried up when west coast stocks failed to materialize.
tions of spawned-out fish. Finally the department opened Upper Pylades Channel and the desperate seiners took 3,400 tons in less than 13 hours during the night of March 7.
The fleet and fisheries vessels combed the area for more stocks, but none were available. Lemmen admitted at press time that a school in Hoskin Channel that appeared promising early in the week was diminishing in size and included many spawned-out fish. The Gulf seine fishery almost certainly was over.
The department faced even more severe problems on the
west coast, where weak stocks were making even the gillnet quota difficult to achieve.
Although 50,000 tons was needed in the area to meet spawning requirements, only 30,000 had been identified at press time and the 4,000 tons taken was fished from local surpluses.
The four luckiest seiners on the coast were on hand March 8 for a sudden fishery that saw 365 tons landed in Winter Harbor, traditionally a gillnet area. With the seines See ROE—page 2
LeBlanc to impose tax on landings
Any attempt to impose salmon royalties in 1982 could have grave consequences for price bargaining, says UFAWU secretary-treasurer George Hewison, because fishermen will need major increases just to overcome the government-imposed tax.
Fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc announced March 2 that legislation will be introduced shortly to empower his department to levy a landings tax in 1982. The amount of the royalty and the date of its implementation were not disclosed.
LeBlanc's surprise announcement came only four days after seven industry groups, headed by the Fisheries Association, appealed to him to take action on Pearse's announcements.
"The royalties imposed by Pearse would take 10 to 15 percent of a fisherman's gross income," Hewison said. "Even worse, it could amount to 20, 30 or even 100 percent of take-home pay. We have no intention of going to the bargaining table lacing that kind of rollback as a result of government action."
Hewison rejected LeBlanc's suggestion that the money should be used for salmonid enhancement. "The minister knows full well that fishermen are not responsible for declining stocks and should not have to pay for rehabilitation.
"So far, the enhancement projects undertaken with fishermen's licence money have produced no net increase in the fish available to the commercial fleet.
"The real objective seems to be to force fishermen to the wall," Hewison concluded, "to reduce the fleet by starving fishermen to death."
LeBlanc's statement was released simultaneously by his office in Ottawa and by fisheries commissioner Dr. Peter Pearse in Vancouver.
Although many of the points of the announcement simply reinforced long-standing department policy, LeBlanc said they were based on Pearse's recommendations.
"Everyone agrees that it is desirable to tailor fishing power to available stocks," LeBlanc said, "but it is essential to do so in ways that will control escalation in the value of licences and, also, in ways that will not unduly dislocate small boat owners and communities dependent on fishing."
No fleet reduction will be attempted in 1982, the minister said, but a "select committee" will be established to consider and advise "on the ways and means of effecting fleet rationalization."
(This committee, discussed at the ministers advisory meeting in January, was the key demand in the appeal forwarded by the Fisheries Association. See page 8.)
Other points LeBlanc said will receive early attention:
• removal of subsidies for vessel construction;
• creation of fishermen's committees to study implementation
See PEARSE—page 8
1,000 hour rate a priority
Shore wage demand is $2.25
By JACK NICHOL
Blithe calls for worker restraint in wage demands from millionaire Premier Bill Bennett ring cruelly hollow to the tens of thousands of workers in the province who are jobless.
Other workers cling precariously to jobs as plant after plant closes its doors or cuts back production because of the deepening depression in western economies. Those fortunate enough to have jobs experience an unprecedented assault on living standards and take home pay by corporate price gouging, criminally high interest rates,
soaring energy prices, rip-off taxation and government fiscal ineptitude.
B.C. government employees have endured a three year contract that gave them an eight percent wage increase in each year. They have fallen at least 15 percent behind private sector workers and yet are singled out for even harsher treatment.
Premier Bennett is the hero of the private sector, which expects to "me too" the restraints. Yet no one seriously suggests that a holding of the line on wage increases, or wage cuts, will solve the country's deep-rooted economic problems.
An insane high interest rate policy has driven the cost of housing skyward and in many cases robbed workers of their homes and shelters. The monetarist policies of the Reagan and Trudeau regimes have worked untold hardship on working people while accomplishing nothing in the fight against inflation, the perceived public economic enemy number one.
Inflation rampages at an annual rate of 14 percent and this is no time for workers to be standing still. As always, working people and their wage rates are fingered as the culprits in a stagnating economy when in
truth they are a depression's principal victims.
Shoreworkers are prepared to fight back. The March 6 coast-wide wage conference is advancing a demand for a general wage increase of $2.25 an hour and a premium increase for the industry's tradesmen of $1 an hour.
Three hours and more of the wage conference's time was devoted to the demand for the universal application of the 1,000 hour rate as a base rate. The issue of equal pay for work of equal value is becoming more complex  as a jurisprudence
See SHORE—page 3