UFAWU 'breakthrough' in fisheries policy fight
Standing committee gives lobby support
"We had a real impact ... it was a breakthrough . . . probably the most successful lobby the union has ever conducted."
These were the words of UFAWU business agent George Hewison by long distance telephone to The Fisherman May 1 just after more than a score of fishermen had met with the House of Commons standing committee on fisheries and forestry.
Authorized by the union's convention in January, the lobby was to bring attention to the dual crises of North Pacific and Bering Sea halibut depletion and the looming sellout of this country's salmon rights on the Fraser River.
Even tempering the lobbyists' initial jubilation with knowledge that 1974 will likely be a federal
election year, the union has grounds for optimisim.
The standing committee effectively adopted longstanding UFAWU positions on both North Pacific fisheries and a Canada-U.S. reciprocal fishing treaty.
Liberal members of the committee, predictably, abstained from voting when the 25-man union lobby confronted it for about three hours. The lengthy session followed similar audiences with environment minister Jack Davis and external affairs minister Mitchell Sharp.
Tory and NDP committee members combined to carry, with sizable majorities, resolutions proposed by New Democratic MPs Tom Barnett (Comox-Alberni)  and  Harry Olaussen
See LOBBY — page 11
PTA role bared In court battle
Richard Morgan photo
• This view from the river bank shows some of 27 vessels auctioned at the final buy-back sale on April 20. More than 1,000 people gathered at Wes-Del Marina in Ladner for the event. Twenty-eight foot troller-gillnetter Princess Isle brought auction's highest price of $22,000. The buy-back committee had purchased her for $53,813.
Cook Corp. up 67 percent
Packers profits trebled
B.C. Packers, the fishing arm of the multinational Weston octopus, fared very well last year, despite what it regarded as its unprecedentedly generous settlement with fishermen, tendermen and shoreworkers — generous, that is, by its customary niggardly offers.
Its net income soared from $3,079,789 or $5.18 a share in 1972 to $9,342,986 or $15.71 a share for 1973, a percentage increase dwarfing the gains made by its shoreworkers which already are being stripped away by inflation.
It's difficult to detract from ■ sales figures which rose from $110,298,940 in 1972 to $153,773,589 in 1973, but president R. I. Nelson was impelled to try. He was on ground more familiar to UFAWU and Native Brotherhood negotiating committee members in claiming that 1974 may not be as favorable to the company as 1973
May Day rally to hear Laberge
Quebec Federation of Labor president Louis Laberge will be the main speaker at Templeton High School May 5 when Vancouver labor holds its May Day celebration.
With another 15 percent inflation increase facing workers this year, the May Day rally's theme "Unite to Fight High Prices and Profits" is particularly timely.
"This year's program is also the 88th anniversary of Chicago's famous Haymarket Riot and the beginning of the struggle for the eight-hour day," Vancouver May Day Committee secretary and UFAWU business agent George Hewison points out.
Laberge will be joined by other labor and consumer spokesmen in a program starting at 2p.m.
because the condition of export markets in the European Economic Community and Japan may be adversely affected by unemployment and reduced purchasing power, while "currency adjustments could affect the value and volume of company exports."
N. B. Cook Corporation, the conglomerate which acquired
Babcock Fisheries in 1972 and now has its new Ucluelet plant in operation, also is doing well. Its net income rose 67 percent for the nine months ending February 28 this year, up from $869,766 or 29 cents a share for the comparable period a year earlier to $1,455,195 or 48 cents a share. Sales increased from $12,187,253 to $18,269,329.
By JACK NICHOL
The Pacific Trollers Association is the latest group of working fishermen to wield the legal cudgels against the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, taking their cue from the Prince Rupert Vessel Owners Association, whose legal actions against the union extracted more than a quarter of a million dollars from the pockets of UFAWU members and jailed two officers for orie year.
An ex-parte injunction enabled PTA members to unload herring caught during the strike of herring fishermen.
The second of two bids by the PTA for a more permanent and restrictive injunction was successful in an application argued before Mr. Justice E. Davey Fulton, whose 27-page judgement rendered April 11 parallels in its reasons the earlier B.C. Supreme Court decision favoring Prince Rupert Vessel Owners.
The injunction was granted with short reasons on March 28 and restrains the UFAWU from persuading or inducing any person not to deal in or handle
PTA products, from classifying cargoes as "hot" and the vessels and their owners as "unfair", and from interfering with the contractual relations of the PTA.
The "interlocutory" injunction remains in force until the suit against the UFAWU for alleged damages, launched by the PTA concurrently with its application for the injunction, comes to trial. The PTA now wants its pound of monetary flesh from the union's membership.
The PTA's court actions are not the result of a situation that organization unexpectedly found itself in but rather a carefully prepared program to protect and extend its strikebreaking fishing operations.
An obscure company called Pacific Trollers Enterprises Ltd. was created by the PTA last November 23 ostensibly to market production during strikes and to lay the base of a contractual relationship for court purposes. In a sworn affidavit, a spokesman concedes that PTA members would sell their catches
See PTA — page 13
• Ugly scene along Pipeline Road in Coquitlam River valley is work of several sand and gravel firms. Harder to see is silt that creeks carry into river on left. Settling pond (centre) is totally
Richard Morgan photo
inadequate to handle runoff. Salmon are the losers. Pink and chum spawning grounds downstream are silting up, while conservation group attempts to prosecute one offender. (See story page IS.)