The voice of B.C.'s organized fishing industry workers
The log of the M/V George Miller
By GEOFF MEGGS
PRINCE RUPERT - In a season of closures, poor runs and price cuts, the energies of thousands of fishermen and shoreworkers inevitably focussed on the Skeena this year, where the fisheries department promised the only really good harvest on the coast.
When the George Miller tied up at Rushbrook (or the "new floats'") at the end of the first week of July, there were already hundreds of gillnetters and seines in the area and several thousand shoreworkers were anxiously awaiting the re-opening of canneries which had been idle for almost 12 months.
It is a grim season in the citv that calls itself the Halibut Capital of the World. Halibut prices and catches have tumbled, the herring roe that co-op fishermen landed without a firm price in March remains unsold in storage and, despite high early escapement, Skeena sockeye catches are a bitter disappointment.
A clipping posted in Fishermen's Hall by organizer Joy Thorkelson provides a graphic illustration of how times change. The clipping, a copy of an article published in the Daily News in June. 1967, says "the long-term prospect for the industry is basically sound and good." An accompanying ad from the Fisheries Association is even more remarkable.
Sending Centennial Year greetins to the people of Prince Rupert were Anglo-British Packing Co. (first split by Canfisco and BCP and now entirely B.C. Packers), B.C. Packers, Francis Millerd and Co. (nominally independent), J. H. Todd (now B.C. Packers), Cassiar Packing (now controlled by Marubeni), Nelson Bros, (now B.C. Packers) and Canadian Fish (now B.C. Packers).
It was against this backdrop that the Miller crew joined Thorkelson and northern representative Mike Darnell in a major organizational campaign and. not surprisingly, the question asked most often of union organizers was. "Where do I sign?"
A meeting called July 13 by the Port Edward netloft attracted 75 fishermen for a wide-ranging discussion of the season's prospects. With the fishermen solidly organized into the union or the Native Brotherhood, there was no dispute about the fact that government mismanagement was destroying fishermen's incomes while the companies continued to reap healthy profits.
There was particular concern about the impending sell-out of Canadian salmon stocks in the proposed salmon interception agreement. Six million Canadian salmon sorely needed this year by B.C. fishermen are destined for the holds of U.S. vessels.
"Not too many things get to me," one fisherman concluded, "but if that treaty gets signed, that scares me."
The meeting seized on the suggestion that fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc be invited to visit the area and see firsthand the chaos his department's policies have created in treaty talks, licence limitation, environmental protection and a host of other areas.
LeBlanc refused to attend and his representatives could not appear until the afternoon of July 20, too late for many seiners. Nonetheless, the issues raised in preparation for the meeting and the realization by fishermen that action was essential became the centre of discussion in the week following the Port Edward gathering.
The next day, Port Edward cannery shifted into high gear for the first time in many months. As Thorkelson worked through the plant organizing shop steward elections, hundreds of workers were busy canning sockeye, much of it delivered that morning from Bristol Bay by the packer Talapus.
It was indicative of the poor Skeena catches that the six canning lines were relying on 76,0(H) Alaskan fish and only 8,000 Skeena sockeye to support production.
The quality of the Alaskan fish was good, in spite of the 12 days at sea, and even the roe plant whh busy despite the age of the product.
(>n July 14, organizers Frank Cox and John Kadosevic took the Miller across to Area 6 where a sizeable seine fleet had rej>ortedly concentrated the previous day. In fact, only about HO seines were in the area, but they were so scattered that most were recording good catches of pinks and dog salmon.
• The crew of the Istra donated two salmon to the Miller larder July 15 as the union organizing boat headed to seine fishing area near Kaamano Sound. The shot was taken only a second after Istra crew member Oario Dusman heaved a six-pound coho to union organizer John Radosevic.
The only major concentration was off the Duckers in Squally Channel where a score of vessels including Promise Isle, Marine Star, Dual Venture and Belina were lined up at one spot. Big boat vice-president Nick Carr of the Belina reported that seiners working in Barkley Sound claimed their catches were improving.
After supper, the Miller tied alongside the packer Kimsquit where we passed a pleasant hour with skipper Gordon (■rant and mate Jim Good lad. Tendermen have not escaped the general economic decline and even the veterans of the Kimsquit, with their years of seniority, will count themselves lucky if they accumulate more than 100 days of work this year. Several had already had more than 100 by this time in 1979.
Goodlad. a long-time fisherman and union stalwart, expressed his fear that the setback suffered by fishermen on 1980 minimum sockeye prices will take many years to overcome. The processors had imposed a cut in herring prices in 1960, he recalled, although fishermen and packers resisted with a year-long strike.
A major issue in that dispute was a company demand that seiners pack their own fish, the first step in the long campaign to eliminate packers from the industry, and a company attempt to cut prices. Fishermen finally went back to work for the rate paid before the dispute, but agreed to pack their own fish for nothing. In effect, the companies imposed their cut.
The packers were chased out of the fishery, hut put on seines and came back as fishermen.
"Everyone was worse off." he remembers, "and there's a lesson in that for all of us. You can't get ahead by kicking the other guy in the groin." (We've toned down his exact words.) Goodlad expressed no criticism of the fishermen — they struck, after all, for 12 months — but noted that the setback suffered was never really overcome.
July 1"> the Miller returned to Prince Rupert toresumetheorganizational work on the floats. With the plants now fully operational, shop steward elections and signing up new members were a top priority in that section. A quick meeting at Cassiar on the slough produced almost 100 new members July 18 and similar results were obtained in other plants. When it comes to the shore plants, Prince Rupert is a union town.
One reason why this is so was evident in a grievance meeting we attended at Seal Cove that day. The shop stewards' committee, which had presented its position to management on several questions, was hoping the meeting would produce a company counter-proposal. Instead, plant manager Al Sheppard lectured the group on the cost of the meetings to the B.C. Packers' payroll.
Steward Dave Dudley cut short this line of argument with the observation that "if the company wasn't always jacking us around, we wouldn't need meetings atall."Thegroupthen got down to business.
Each shoreworker performs work as
important to the company as any fisherman, but the long hours of production line pressure and constant management interference create conditions few fishermen endure.
Fishermen confront the company push for profits in a different way. For shore-workers, the attack comes not in price cuts but in perpetual nibbling at hard-won working conditions.
A case in point was the complaint raised by cold storage worker Henry Kelly, who found himself forced to grade fish in the freezer without special compensation.
The problem was a minor one, Sheppard replied, and if "a worker is half-interested in his job, I guess he'll do it. If the attitude is you won't pick out the fish, that's the end of it."
Kelly, who was confronted with two jobs — his regular work and sorting — for no extra pay, was unmoved by appeals to conscience. "There are no facilities for grading." he told Sheppard. "If I don't
have to grade, I'm glad to hear it, I'll send the fish right on through."
With amazing candour, Sheppard replied that B.C. Packers "would be happy to have you grade, but we won't pay you to do it." That settled that. Union members don't do a job for nothing, and as Darnell pointed out later, they've learned that when BCP does something, it's with profits in mind, not the welfare of the workers.
Kelly's grievance was just one of several raised during the meeting. Some were solved and some were not. But none of the union members in the room needed to fear dismissal for raising a complaint and all were confident in the knowledge that Seal Cove workers have taken job action in the past to defend their contract and are ready to do so again.
It was a good example of the solidarity which, on a coastwide scale, can make this industry a source of secure income for every worker in it.
• Skeena sockeye catches were a bitter disappointment in mid-July, despite early high escapement. This year's low prices combined with poor returns spell financial disaster for most net fishermen. The seiner Promise Isle recorded poor catches off the Duckers, in Squally Channel, July 15.
THE FISHERMAN — JULY 25, 1980/5