Union remains probe's target
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
impact of monopoly control, corporate price-fixing and profiteering in the fishing industry.
Invariably, when the union witnesses raised these matters they were challenged by MacLennan to provide chapter and verse documentation — an incredible resonse, as many of those who sat through the hearings commented later, from an arm of the federal government nominally responsible for monitoring the power of monopoly.
The growth of monopolization and vertical integration in the British Columbia fishing industry is a matter of public record, Stevens noted at one point.
"That includes the takeover of Nelson Bros, by B.C. Packers, the absorption of B.C. Packers into the Weston empire, and the carving up of J. H. Todd Ltd. by B.C. Packers and New England-Canadian Fish," he said.
The general outline of recent moves into the B.C. fishing industry by Japanese multinationals such as Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Taiyo Gyogo and the Sumitomo group also is know, he pointed out.
"I wish we had all the information," Stevens added. "It would make it a damn sight easier for fishermen, co-ops and others to know who they're really dealing with."
It was significant, he said, that the combines branch appeared to know little about these developments, displayed scant interest in them and obviously had no intention of doing the necessary research.
The line of questioning pursued by MacLennan frequently served to highlight the bizarre nature of the proceedings.
There was, for example, the question about how many processing plants were in operation on the B.C. coast in a particular year. Did the plants listed on a document seized in combines raids on UFAWU offices in 1975 accurately reflect the number of company facilities operating?
Nichol answered as best he could from personal knowledge. But, he observed drily, if the branch really was interested in learning something about the nature of the fish processing industry, it could have got "all the information it wanted by raiding company offices" instead of rifling through union records and questioning union spokesmen.
At another point, after Stevens had described some of the effects of centralization and monopoly control on fishermen, plant workers and entire coastal communities, MacLennan inquired blandly if it might be possible to obtain documentary evidence of the companies' role in those developments.
"You know that your investigators had the power to seize materials from our union hall," Stevens said, "and you know that you could get all the information (about monopoly activities) back to day one if you want to.
"I think that's what you should be doing — examining the real combines in the industry," Stevens said.
The combines attack of the
fifties had been called off when it appeared that some aspects of corporate behavior might be put under the microscope, he noted, only to be mounted again almost 20 years later against the same trade union of fishermen and allied workers.
Reporters asked MacLennan afterwards if there was any chance of subpoenaes being issued to corporate chiefs or of other measures being taken to probe the effects of monopolization outlined by Stevens.
"No," MacLennan replied. "To seize documents and so on we must have very specific allegations to go on and Stevens wasn't specific enough."
At another point, MacLennan asked if Stevens knew of "arrangements between two or more companies which shows a combination."
Of course, Stevens replied. So does everyone in the industry. Member companies of the Fisheries Association of B.C. make collective decisions on a regular basis.
Abandoning this area of discussion, MacLennan informed the chairman that his subsequent questions would centre mainly on fishing industry strikes, 'hot' declarations and boat 'clearance' procedures.
This, obviously, was anticipated to be more fruitful ground, which MacLennan and Wapniarski have been tilling carefully for several months by soliciting testimony from an assortment of strikebreakers and aspiring entrepreneurs.
MacLennan, however, drew a blank when he asked Stevens to describe what effect a 'hot' declaration might have on individuals who fished during a particular strike.
Stevens pointed out that the question was wholly at odds with exemptions provided in the Combines Investigation Act for trade unions and their activities.
Combines investigators clearly operate "on a different wavelength to trade unionists," Stevens observed, adding that MacLennan's questions went directly to the issues of bargaining, the winning of contracts and the right of fishing industry workers to belong to a union, to withdraw their labor and to protect their common interests.
Earlier, when he was asked to answer questions about what was described as a list of strike rules issued in 1971, Nichol had told MacLennan bluntly that he was "getting into an area which is outside the scope of this inquiry as it's been defined to me by the federal minister of corporate and consumer affairs and others. You're getting into the policies and practices of a trade union ■" Chairman Les Blond's interjection that "because you call yourselves a union doesn't make you one" may have revealed, unwittingly, more than was intended about the main thrust of the combines investigation.
The assertion that fishermen — as opposed to shoreworkers and tendermen — are not 'workmen or employees' and are therefore unable to avail themselves of legislative protection afforded other unionized workers, is a central theme of the combines attack on the UFAWU.
ROE SETTLEMENT
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Meanwhile, the federal fisheries department Feb. 28 announced that Naden Harbor, Queen Charlotte Islands, would be closed to roe herring fishing until further notice.
Naden Harbor is the only area to have been opened so far in the 1979 roe fishery. As of Feb. 28 it had yielded 111 tons to gillnetters. The department attributed the closure to dwindling stocks and the presence of immature fish.
Key fishing areas in Strait of Georgia 'Areas 14 and 17) and west coast Vancouver Island 'Areas 23 , 24 , 25 and 27) are
scheduled to open sometime after March 4 depending on the roe content of herring as determined in monitoring operations.
The department estimated Feb. 28 there were 10,000 to 12,000 ions of herring in Barkley Sound 'Area 23), but roe content was less than two percent.
Earlier in the week, test sets in Sidney Inlet (Area 24) indicated an average roe content of between eight and nine percent in a 1,000-ton body of fish in that area.
On the south coast, small amounts of herring with an average 1.5 percent roe content were present in Deep Bay (Area 14) while Nanoose Bay fArea 17) reported an estimated 1,500 tons with negligible roe content.
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• Almost 200 herring fishermen marched from Fishermen's Hall to the Court House plaza on Georgia Street Feb. 20 to protest combines branch Investigation of the union. Labor leaders, including Syd Thompson of the IWA and Lloyd Ingram of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, joined other UFAWU members in a demonstration outside the Hotel Vancouver when hearings resumed Feb. 22.
LRB finds minimum prices help non-union fishermen
Despite its finding that scab lists naming fishermen who fished during UFAWU strikes are unenforceable, the B.C. Labor Relations Board decision released Feb. 20 was far from an unqualified victory for the PGA.
In a closely-reasoned analysis of the evidence presented by the PGA to support its members' actions, the board concluded "the position of the PGA is, at the very least, blind to certain unavoidable realities."
The board found that "members of the PGA who fished on the grounds in spite of the presence of picket boats . . . in a real sense crossed lawful union picket lines," demolishing an article of PGA faith that claims fishermen violated no union principles by fishing during a strike.
The strike of tendermen and shoreworkers was completely legal, the decision notes, and the union's decision to put maximum pressure on the employers by keeping all three sections off the job is consistent with time-honored practices of industrial unionism.
The fact is, the board concludes, "the inextricable intertwining of the union's bargaining agency is now well entrenched.
"It is, moreover, too late to turn back the clock and ignore the wishes of a substantial number of fishermen for a style of collective bargaining akin to the collective bargaining rights enjoyed by persons who conveniently fall within the classic definition of 'employee'."
(Text of this section of the decision is reprinted on page 5.)
But the board struck its most telling blow with its conclusion that "the salmon price agreement negotiated by the union directly benefits all fishermen and not just union fishermen."
PGA witnesses to the hearings argued repeatedly that minimum price agreements are of no benefit to fishermen and, for that reason, fishermen are under no obligation to tie up even when a strike is aimed at winning better prices.
Not so, the board said. "The agreement fixes the minimum prices to be paid by the member companies of the Fisheries Association to all fishermen.
"In addition, the benefits established by the welfare fund provided in the agreement are available to all fishermen.
"Witnesses for the PGA suggested that the minimum prices are of no benefit to any fishermen because the actual prices paid in recent years have far exceeded those minimums.
"It strikes this panel that the perspectives of the PGA and its membership is somewhat shortsighted . . . There is no guarantee that this phenomenon will persist indefinitely.
"Nor is there any guarantee
that a particularly abundant run of fish will not drive prices down to the minimum levels during that run."
In chiding the PGA for its tunnel vision in relation to the union's collective bargaining activities, the board provides a clear explanation of the current legal limbo in which fishermen find themselves.
Because fishermen do not have bargaining rights, the board says, the PGA assumes fisher-
ANALYSIS
men do not have the right to act like trade unionists. This position is buttressed by the combines branch investigation of the union, highlighted by the appearance of branch investigators at the board hearings.
But, the board says, the union has exercised de facto bargaining rights for more than 35 years, and fishermen on the East coast have had bargaining rights in law for some time.
Disputes in the fishing industry arise from industrial relations practices, the board says, and properly should be solved in an industrial relations tribunal, not a combines branch hearing room.
By implication, the report blames government inaction for
the "unsupportive legal environment" fishermen find themselves in.
The PGA gives lip service to the right of tendermen and shore-workers to bargain collectively, the board notes, but refuses to respect union picket lines set up by fishermen because of the doubt surrounding the fishermen's right to organize.
While noting that no doubt on that score exists in the minds of thousands of union fishermen, the board goes on to agree with the PGA view that scab lists had "substantially affected trade and commerce" in violation of the code's section 90.
Still unresolved by the board's decision are questions that may only be posed by a future fishing industry strike. Can fishermen be forced to fraternize with scabs? Can tendermen and shoreworkers be forced to associate with fishermen who attack trade union organization?
Despite the board's conviction the union was responsible for the lists — the union never conceded this in testimony — it failed to address a more basic concern.
Fishermen, shoreworkers and tendermen have bargained collectively in B.C. for more than 35 years on the basis of strong industrial unionism.
They don't need lists to know who seeks to undermine that strength while profitting from the minimum prices, wages and working conditions that collective bargaining achieves.
BOARD DECISION
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Union secretary-treasurer George Hewison told Vancouver and District Labor Council Feb. 20 that the decision "took the scabs to task and said they were blind if they didn't recognize the realities of the industry with respect to collective bargaining.
"The decision obliquely points the finger at governments," he added, "for their failure to provide fishermen with collective bargaining rights.
"The bottom line," he concluded, "is that industry trade unionists are supposed to be good workers and not harass scabs.
"But we intend to see that bargaining does continue and that the rights that fishermen and all industry workers enjoy are protected."
Nichol told the labor council that "we have a solid core of trade union organization in the industry and it's going to be pretty tough to dismantle by the combines branch, the labor relations board or whatever antiunion forces."
Noting that the decision came
in the midst of a combines branch inquiry aimed at crippling the union's bargaining power, he vowed "we're not going to let the PGA and other scabs run our union. We're going to run it."
The decision came just days before the 1979 herring roe fishery. Labor board observers indicated that the PGA had pushed desperately for a decision before the roe fishery to shelter its members.
Meanwhile, the union laid the groundwork for an intensive organizing drive during the roe herring season, with extra staff delegated to boost union organ-ization both ashore and afloat.
Corporate profits hit 21 percent
Profits of the country's non-financial corporations increased 21 percent in the first nine months of 1978 to net the companies a whopping $9.3 billion.
The Centre for the Study of Inflation and Productivity reported last month that sales increased only 11 percent in the same period.
THE FISHERMAN - MARCH 2, 1979/3