Companies force showdown
Shore rejection urged
At Fisherman press time, this is how matters stood in salmon industry negotiations between the UFAWU and the Fisheries Association of B.C.:
• Salmon net fishermen were preparing to vote on a negotiating committee recommendation to accept a
new association offer that includes minimum price increases averaging 12.8 percent over last year.
• Shoreworkers will vote by July 14 on their negotiating committee's recommendation to reject a wage offer of 55 cents an hour —less than eight percent for most categories — with little or
no improvement in other contract provisions.
• Tendermen were returning to port where meetings July 14 and 15 are slated to vote on a recommendation to turn down a proposed wage offer of $6.78 — just over seven percent average — per 12-hour day.
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Vol. 43, No. 14
Vancouver, B.C.
25 cents
July 12, 1978
Members of the coastwide shoreworkers negotiating committee of the UFAWU voted unanimously July 11 to recommend rejection of the latest Fisheries Association contract proposals.
Membership meetings to vote on the offer will be held in all areas of the coast this week, with results to be tabulated by noon this Saturday, July 15.
The offer recommended for rejection was tabled by the association at the last bargaining session July 9. Company spokesmen described it as the "upper limit" to which their principals had authorized them to go.
Included in the proposal is an across-the-board increase of 55 cents an hour, with filleters to receive an additional 17 cents in two
• UFAWU welfare director Bert Ogden (centre) met with Rivers Inlet fishermen at Wadhams last week to discuss a Fisheries' Association offer that was rejected four-to-one in balloting July 5, 6
Barbara Stevens photo
and 7. Past president Homer Stevens (centre, in cap) helped chair the meeting. Fishermen are to vote on a new offer this week that would give an average 12.8 percent increase in minimum prices.
Salmon fleet votes on offer
The salmon price negotiating committee has recommended membership acceptance of a Fisheries' Association offer that would give fishermen an average 12.8 percent increase in minimum prices in 1978.
Armed with a membership vote rejecting the companies' previous best offer by a solid four-to-one margin, the committee returned to the bargaining table July 7 for a series of meetings that produced the proposed agreement at 1 a.m. the next morning.
Committee chairman Bill Procopation said voting on the proposed one-year contract should be completed by July 17.
If the proposal is ratified, the agreement will not be signed until the shoreworkers' and tendermen's sections have also settled, he added.
The proposed settlement would pay 88 cents a pound for sockeye (78 cents in 1977), 36 cents for pinks (34 cents), 62 cents for coho (56 cents), and 48 cents for chum (40 cents).
Prices for large red springs would increase to $1.10 (98 cents), small reds to 62 cents (56 cents), whites for 48 cents (40 cnets) and jack springs would increase five cents to 60 cents.
Welfare fund contributions would increase .015 cents a pound
to .085 cents, netting an estimated increase of $120,000 in 1978.
The previous company offer, rejected by 80 percent of those balloting in a vote held July 5, 6 and 7, was below the recommended settlement in almost every category.
That offer, tabled by the association June 27, proposed 85 cents a pound for sockeye, 35 cents for pinks, 61 cents for coho, 45 cents for chums, $1.07 for large red springs, 61 cents for small reds, 45 cents for whites and 60 cents a fish for jack springs. The proposal offered a .01 cent a pound increase for welfare.
"The committee feels that a 12.8 percent increase in the mini-
mum is reasonable," said Procopation, "and if it has the effect of driving up the grounds price by 12.8 percent, then fine. At least no one will get less than the minimum.
"But if people don't get a similar increase in the grounds price, then we'll know that the companies are starting to squeeze."
Procopation said the committee stands by its forecast of a bumper year for fishing industry profits.
"We still believe our economic information was valid and actually somewhat conservative," he declared. "If markets keep expanding to the extent they See SALMON page 3
stages, bringing them to the level of general fresh fish workers.
Some clarification and improvement was offered in contract clauses dealing with technological change, overtime work and other issues.
"This is the kind of offer that might have been presented early in negotiations as a basis for further bargaining," UFAWU president Jack Nichol said.
"Instead, it's presented at the eleventh hour as a last ditch offer, because in almost 20 previous meetings company spokesmen were too busy muddying the waters with unacceptable proposals to negotiate seriously.
See SHORE page 2
Packer crews return to port
UFAWU tendermen were heading back to port from the fishing grounds as The Fisherman went to press to hold meetings on an employers' offer branded as "inferior and inadequate" by the tender-men's negotiating committee.
Crews of salmon collectors and packers along the coast voted July 6 and 7 by a better than three-to-one majority in favor of strike action to back up their contract demands.
With the required 72 hours' strike noUce served on the employers late July 7, tender-men will be in a position to strike as soon as provincial mediator Jock Waterston makes his expected departure from the bargaining scene later this week.
Talks held in the wake of the strike vote failed to extract any company offer that might have formed the basis for a settlement.
"Negotiations became virtually meaningless, breaking off July 10 after the companies dished up what they said was their maximum offer," UFAWU secretary George Hewison said.
The tendermen's committee voted unanimously to recommend rejection of the employers' package and to arrange membership meetings at Vancouver, Prince Rupert and the central area beginning this Thursday morning, July 13, at which the
See TENDERMEN page 2
Court unimpressed by crown's description
UFA WU Seven face verdict August 31
Judge D. D. Hume last week set August 31 as the date he will at last rule on the fate of seven UFAWU members charged with impeding a 1976 closed hearing of the Restrictive Trades Practices Commission.
The protracted trial — a skirmish in the main combines branch attack on the UFAWU — began May 1 and was adjourned eight days later after all evidence had been presented. It resumed July 4 when counsel for both sides made their final submissions.
Facing possible maximum penalties of $5,000 and/or two years' imprisonment if convicted are UFAWU president Jack Nichol, secretary-treasurer George Hewison, past president
Homer Stevens, vice-presidents Walter Tickson and Ken Robinson and Vancouver Fishermen's Local member Dave Mcintosh.
Charges were laid after demonstrations in December, 1976 by UFAWU members and other trade union-sits seeking public hearings into the fishing industry in place of what they characterized as a 'Star Chamber' inquiry aimed at the union alone.
Trial evidence confirmed suspicions that the union was the sole target of attack and harassment by the federal government and refuted assurances by Liberal politicians that the combines branch was conducting a general investigation.
Neither the testimony of witnesses nor the content of various trial documents afforded even a hint that monopoly activities were to be scrutinized, that corporation offices and spokesmen were to be subjected to raids and seizures, or that there was any intention of hauling B.C. Packers or CanaMian Fishing Company before restrictive trade practices commissioner Frank Roseman's hearings.
However, trial evidence did disclose that events leading up to the 1976 hearings had been set in motion the previous year after combines investigation director Robert Bertrand of Ottawa received complaints filed by six individuals, described as
members of an organization of some importance in the B.C. fishing industry.
Efforts by defence lawyer Harry Rankin to elicit the names of the six persons sparked vehement objections by crown counsel Arthur McLennan early in the trial. Roseman testified he did not know or could not remember their names.
McLennan insisted that, in any case, the identity of the six individuals was irrelevant and the names should be kept secret.
In applying for permission to invade UFAWU offices and seize documents — actions subsequently carried out by a federal team headed by comvines officer Simon Wapniarski — Bertrand
specifically referred to assertions by the six complainants that UFAWU officers and members were 'conspiring' to limit the production, transportation, storage or supply of fish.
The anonymous informants were brought into the picture again last week when McLennan, in attempting to refute defence arguments about the nature of Roseman's aborted hearings, declared that the six complaintants had provided the necessary groundwork for a full-fledged inquiry under the Combines Investigations Act.
While there is little doubt as to the anti-union origins and thrust of the combines probe, Rankin See TRIAL page 2