Union studies strike deadlines
Association holding firm with substandard offers
Despite strong strike votes and rotating job action by shore-workers in Prince Rupert and Vancouver during the week, Fisheries Association negotiators remained inflexible in their apparent determination to force substandard contracts on industry wage earners.
Although the forest industry has been able to avert strike action by pulp and wood unions with an offer of an 11 percent pay increase in the first yearof a new contract, association bargainers claim they are stretched
to their limit with offers of 8.5 percent for tendermen and 8.7 percent for shoreworkers in a one-year agreement.
Only painfully slow but steady progress in minimum price negotiations remains to bolster the companies' claims to be sincerely seeking an agreement.
I Full details of the current bargaining positions are printed below.)
A joint meeting of the union's three negotiating committees July 19 voted to lay the ground-
Shoreworkers take job action
Hundreds of UFAWU shore-workers coastwide walked off their jobs this week to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the Fisheries Association's niggardly wage offers in contract negotiations.
The spontaneous job actions started in Prince Rupert when scores of shoreworkers left their jobs at Canfisco's Oceanside and B.C. Packers' Seal Cove fish processing plants .July 16. More job actions followed the next day at McMillan Fisheries and B.C. Packers' Port Edward plant.
Then the protests spread south, leading to job actions at Canfisco and B.C. Packers' plants in Steveston, where indignant shoreworkers walked off their jobs to protest the slow pace of negotiations.
Dissatisfaction was not limited to wage earners. In a standing vote in Prince Rupert July 5, about 150 fishermen voted unanimously to reject the association's offer at the time.
UFAWU organizers now report seine crewmen are particularly unhappy with company offers for pink salmon, still below those agreed upon in Alaska weeks ago.
A study session in Namu July 19 won a pledge from management to take immediate action replace decrepit and substandard housing provided by B.C. Packers for the mostly-Indian work force. The company has promised to construct a mobile home park to replace existing facilities.
Workers also demanded inclusion of Namu in the contract's northern differential clause to cover the high food costs they encounter at the company store.
In the meantime, however, the UFAWU's joint negotiating committee has called on industry workers to hold back on job action until astrikedeadlinehas been set by the committee to maximize impact on the processors.
NEGOTIATIONS
This is where contract negotiations with the Fisheries Association stood at Fisherman press time July 20:
• Minimum prices for net-caught salmon — The
UFAWU-Native Brotherhood negotiating committee had revised its demands to $1.30 a pound forsockeye, $1.15 for coho, 80 cents for pinks, $1.15 for chums, $1.90 for large springs, $1.30 forsmall springsand $1 a fish for jack springs. The association offer was: sockeye 99 cents, coho 70 cents, pinks 40 cents, chums 57 cents, large reds $1.32, small reds 70 cents and jacks 75 cents each.
The union was seeking 1.4 cents a pound for the welfare fund; the association offered one cent. No progress had been made on a medical-dental plan for fishermen. Negotiations were continuing.
• Shoreworker negotiations — Negotiations continued without mediator Clark Gilmour, who reported out of the dispute at 6 p.m. July 17, putting the union in a legal position to strike. The union is seeking $l-an-hour increase across the board, protection against technological change and contracting-out, creation of a 1,000-hour universal rate, a 20 cent-an hour increase to 53 cents in the northern differential and a two-stage 55-cent increase in pay for tradesmen.
The company has offered a 65 cents-an-hour increase across the board, two cents for northern differential, minor improvements for tradesmen and nothing on the other outstanding issues.
• Tendermen's negotiations — Negotiations continued without mediator Clark Gilmour, who was asked to report out of the dispute July 19, leaving the tendermen in a legal strike position.
See TALKS — page 2
work for an industry-wide strike to back demands but delayed selection of a strike deadline until developing fish runs increase pressure on the association.
"The companies say they want a settlement," said union president Jack Nichol, "but they're not offering anything. Between June 25 and July 19, they didn't make a single move in shore negotiations.
"They have yet to make a single proposal on technological change, contracting-out and the
1,000-hour rate, all issues that must be resolved in an agreement."
Tendermen's negotiating committee chairman George Hewi-son reported the association had offered absolutely nothing that the committee could recommend to the membership.
"The offer is very, very light compared to other industries. They have to get realistic and fatten the package up."
"And survival suits are still a
major issue. Safety must be a cost of production."
Fishermen's committee head Bill Procopation reported equal resistance from the association on the question of suitable minimum prices.
Although the two sides had agreed on contract wording that would guarantee payment of quality premiums to all fishermen in an area, regardless of gear, the association's price offers are far below what they have already conceded in Alaska.
Vol. 44, No. 15
Vancouver, B.C
25 cents July 20, 1979
Sheila Graceffo photo-
• Seine boat Argent found some rough going July 10 at Walker Point in Burke Channel when she wound up high and dry on the rocks. Z Brothers, Harriet E and M/V Seiner stood by to assist, but the Argent eventually floated free, completely undamaged.
Labor needs new tactics to protect gains: Parrot
Trade unions face an employer-government offensive against bargaining rights more powerful than anything they have confronted in the past, says Jean-Claude Parrot, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and only unprecedented unity can defeat it.
In a speech to the Vancouver and District Labor Council July 17 and more extensive remarks to the national convention of the Confederation of Canadian Unions July 14, Parrot said the labor movement needs new ways to wield its collective strength if it is to survive.
NFFAWU fishermen vote 80% to take strike action
ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - More than 6,000 Newfoundland inshore fishermen, members of the Newfoundland Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union, have voted 80 percent in favor of a province-wide general strike in the fishing industry to back demands for improved prices.
The union's general executive baord will meet July 2',\ to set a date for what would be the first such strike in Newfoundland's history. The vote was taken during several weeks in 28 regional meetings.
In releasing the vote results, union president Richard Cashin said the union is ready at any time to resume bargaining.
Newfoundland is the only province in which fishermen have collective bargaining rights. Picketing will affect the Newfoundland trawl fleet and 84 shore plants and camps.
The union is seeking a four cents-a-pound increase in fish prices. Prices for cod, just one of the many species involved.
See NFFAWU — page 2
The right to strike is only a small part of the battle, he said. "What's at stake is our right, as workers, to some control over our lives, to decent living standards and working conditions and to the minimal protections, on and off the job, that workers have won over hundreds of years of struggle."
Business and government have decided on a policy of confrontation with labor. Parrot said, to convince workers that collective bargaining is fruitless and that management-dominated consultation is superior.
Employers are able to mount these attacks, using police, back to work laws, injunctions, casual labor and a host of other weapons, because "employers as a class have grown stronger and more organized."
"Just look at the strength of the multinational corporations when it comes to negotiating with their workers, corporations that are so large that they are able to withstand strikes be-
See PARROT — page 2
