The voice of B.C.'s organized fishing industry workers
B. C. Packers is the only winner
LET the record be clear: the UFAWU believes the impending government purchase of the B.C. Packers' gillnet fleet on behalf of three tribal councils is a bonanza for the Weston subsidiary and a disaster for rental fishermen, Indian and non-Indian alike.
The balance sheet is a simple one. B.C. Packers gains between $10 million and $12 million for licences it obtained for nothing and vessels which in many cases are derelict. Indian fishermen now will buy those vessels, assume the cost of their maintenance and continue, in most cases, to deliver to B.C. Packers as before. Non-Indian fishermen either have assumed an even heavier debt load to buy their boats or have been forced out of the industry.
UFAWU criticism has drawn a furious response from some Indian leaders, who claim that opposition to this corporate hand-out is equivalent to an attack
on the Indian people's struggle for land claims and a larger role of the fishing industry.
The union's support of a just settlement of land claims is long-standing and was re-affirmed at the 1982 convention, but it has not been the union which linked land claims to the gillnet deal. Furthermore, an honest assessment of the union's position shows that affirmative action to improve Indian participation has been central to every UFAWU proposal. The present B.C. Packers deal cannot achieve that goal.
Some Indian leaders say they had to pursue in the purchase to save jobs that otherwise would have been lost forever. What in fact happened is that the government succumbed to B.C. Packers pressure tactics.
This was made clear by Nishga Tribal Council president Jimmy Gosnell in his report to the recent Nishga convention.
When the deal collapsed in January, with B.C. Packers demanding $12 million and the tribal councils offering $8 million, the company announced it would end its rental operation, sell as many boats as possible to individual fishermen and beach the rest. The move was a bluff.
Unity of all organizations representing rental fishermen could have called the company's bluff and forced BCP to sell at favorable terms, terms that could have avoided job loss and displacement of any rental fishermen.
Gosnell recalled how he telephoned Ron MacLeod, aide to fisheries minister Romeo Le Blanc, demanding government action to help commercial Indian fishermen. Unlike their American counterparts, Canadian Indians have no Boldt decision guaranteeing them a right to fish, he told MacLeod.
Rather than go on welfare, Gosnell warned that Indians would fish any way
Geolf Meggs photo
• UFAWU northern organizer Ken Bedard (left) chats with Marcel Guno during the Nishga Tribal Council convention. New Aiyansh overlooks the mountains surrounding the Nass valley.
Nishgas hear BCP deal report
NEW AIYANSH - Indian fishermen who worked on B.C. Packers rental boats last year will have first refusal on purchase of the boats in 1982, says Nishga Tribal Council president Jimmy Gosnell, but some boats in the fleet may stay on the beach if they cannot be repaired.
Gosnell told the Nishga annual convention April 15 that government funding of "$10 million to $12 million" will be in place by May 31 to purchase the 287-boat fleet on behalf of the three councils.
"Those now in have first refusal," Gosnell said, "but many boats are going to be beached this year, the wooden boats." It was the first confirmation that jobs could be lost in spite of the purchase.
In a wide-ranging report on the negotiations leading up to the deal, Gosnell spent more time answering union criticisms than in spelling out specifics. Many, many meetings will be required during the summer, he warned Indian fishermen, to arrange for the transfer of the boats to the fishermen.
Licences will remain in the hands of the new corporation. Mel Hubble, formerly of B.C. Packers will manage the fleet and interim director of the corporation is expected to be Jean Rivard, executive director of the Native Brotherhood.
Gosnell and Neil Sterrit, president of Gitksan-Carrier Tribal Council, warned fishermen there would be no further assistance if the corporation failed.
Sterrit said the deal was important to the tribal councils for two reasons. The first was that the purchase was the only way to stop the decline of Indian participation in the industry."
Secondly, Sterrit said, he believes that "everything we do relates to land claims. This is a test. It demonstrates what we have to do when we get to the big apple of land claims that's coming down the line.
"It's going to be big dollars, it's going to be detailed self-government. We have to organize ourselves... All this is part of the experience for the day when we start working on land claims."
Sterrit said there was "much more to be reported some time in detail. We're working on that and we will be reporting."
'Jobs are the main issue'— Bedard
NEW AIYANSH — B.C. Packers' corporate consolidation program has cost hundreds of Indian jobs in the past decade and will cost hundreds more in the future unless all industry groups unite to fight the decline, UFAWU organizer Ken Bedard told the Nishga Tribal Council convention April 15.
After paying tribute to the Nishga's leadership in the fight for aboriginal title and land claims, Bedard outlined the union's response to the growing unemployment in the industry.
The previous day, more than 400 shore-workers had marched in Prince Rupert to protest the closure of Seal Cove, he said, a closure that directly affected Indian workers.
"As far as we're concerned, B.C. Packers doesn't care about people. B.C. Packers has cost us hundreds of jobs, hundreds of Indian jobs.
"I say B.C. Packers must be forced to live up to its responsibility. The union is calling for the plant to stay open."
The B.C. Packers sale of its rental fleet to three tribal councils, including the
Nishgas, will mean a huge transfer of tax funds to the company, Bedard said, "but there is no guarantee of fishermen's jobs.
"We fear the long-term plan of Weston and fisheries department will not protect Indian fishermen." He called for good communication between all concerned groups in the industry, acknowledging that the union's position had created hard feeling in some quarters of the Indian community.
The company assault now is being extended to fish prices and shoreworkers' wages, Bedard said, which underlines the necessity for strong bargaining in coming salmon negotiations.
"The companies fail to consider rising costs and high interest rates. In herring negotiations we stood our ground and let the Fisheries Association know we were prepared to go on strike, that cuts were not in order.
"Again in salmon, it's obvious we have to work together — no cuts, no rollbacks."
The threat to jobs lies also in the Pearse report, Bedard concluded, which proposes to impose stiff catch royalties and down-
plays environmental hazards to the future of the resource. "Continued closures on this basis will kill coastal communities and kill the fishing industry as we know it."
Bedard's unity theme was taken up in part by Harold Barton, a Nishga fisherman who said he regularly reads The Fisherman and was disappointed to see union criticism of tribal council action's on the gillnet deal.
"We have to stick together now," Barton said. "Compromise would be better before you make statements about native organizations."
Bedard rejected suggestions by North Coast Tribal Council president Francis Lewis that the $10 million gillnet deal "is nothing compared to what other corporations are getting."
B.C. Packers deserves nothing, Bedard said. "Speaking as a Haida, I remember we had a fleet. Those licences and boats were stolen. After making millions from those boats, B.C. Packers is getting paid again, and again, and now again."
they could and sell the production. He challenged the government to help. MacLeod's response was to increase the cash available to B.C. Packers. Within 24 hours he phoned Gosnell to say, "Jimmy, go back to the negotiating table. You'll have more money than you need."
The settlement was achieved at $10 million. Gosnell said, but he noted that on May 31, B.C. Packers will receive between "$10 million and $12 million."
Have Indian fishermen's jobs been guaranteed? Gosnell confirmed in his report that "many vessels" will be beached.
Indian fishermen will be required to buy their vessels from a new corporation, make annual payments at reduced rates on the vessel mortgage and pay an annual licence lease fee.
In the past, B.C. Packers bore the $1.5 million annual cost of outfitting the fleet for the season. In 1982, the government will pay B.C. Packers $2.5 million to fulfill this service at rates recently increased to $48 an hour. This year, the public will pay. In future years, the fishermen must bear this burden.
Spokesmen for the tribal councils denounce this gloomy assessment and point to costly consultants' reports which
EDITORIAL
say the scheme will work. The UFAWU hopes the consultants are right. What is certain is that such onerous obligations need never have been undertaken.
The UFAWU argued that B.C. Packers should not be paid a cent for the licences, which account for a substantial portion of the purchase price. They should have been transferred for nothing.
The prospects are even worse for non-Indian rental fishermen. Those who could find financing have assumed massive financial burdens. The rest simply have been driven from the industry which was their life.
What were the union's alternatives? The UFAWU advanced three different proposals to meet the two objectives of preserving fishermen's jobs while guaranteeing and, if possible, enhancing Indian participation.
The first would have seen confiscation of the licences and their transfer into a public pool managed by rental fishermen. The level of Indian participation would be guaranteed.
When B.C. Packers announced its intention to sell the fleet piecemeal and imposed a Feb. 15 deadline for fishermen to indicate an interest in purchase, the union proposed the government buy the fleet and recover the cost through rentals. Again, protection of Indian participation was emphasized.
In February, the union again modified its position in the face of government criticisms that no money obtained from the department of Indian affairs could be used to help non-Indians. The union proposed that title to the fleet be transferred to the tribal councils, but that the company be compelled to rent boats operated by non-Indians to those individuals for 20 years or until the operator turned 65, whichever came first. This proposal would have eventually transferred 100 percent of the fleet to Indian ownership.
Some have charged that the changes in the union's position made it difficult for the tribal councils to respond, that the union acted in bad faith by mounting its final lobby to Ottawa to seek job guarantees for its members and that the tribal councils made proposals to which the union never responded.
The facts are otherwise. The changes in the union's position were designed to accomodate the tribal councils, which refused until Feb. 19 even to sit down with the union. No written job guarantees or proposals have ever been received by the union. The UFAWU would not and could not ever renounce its obligation to publicly defend its members' jobs.
What guarantees do exist? B.C. Packers is guaranteed a massive injection of cash. Non-Indian fishermen are guaranteed they are out of work. Indian fishermen are guaranteed the financial burden of paying for vessels again that their production has paid for many times over in years past. Disaster is not too strong a word for what has transpired.
THE FISHERMAN — APRIL 23, 1982/5