Fighting the FFAW

By Aaron Beswick

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Transcontinental Media

A welder from Port aux Basques, a retired RNC officer, a former plant processing plant owner, a fisherman and a retired medical doctor are trying to overthrow the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union (FFAW).

Stuart Pearce has been meeting with fishermen since he began trekking around the province in November to build support for the Coalition of Fish Harvesters. “Basically I’m going around the province talking to fishermen, hearing their anger and frustration with the union and collecting signatures,” said Pearce in mid-January. “I have 400 signed up right now and I intend to keep travelling until I visit all fishermen. It’ll take quite a few months. When people sign up they’re signing up for change, for a new consortium.”

Discontent with the FFAW is a common topic on this province’s wharves and on CBC Radio’s fisheries broadcast. A previous attempt to create an alternative to the FFAW in the Port Saunders/Port au Choix area (ironically where the FFAW was founded) floundered and hasn’t been resurrected.

Another organization, the Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesters Associations, was re-established a year ago to campaign for the over 40 foot fleet in area 3k (Northeast coast). “The FFAW represents many groups and it creates huge problems,” said Wild Cove fisherman Lyndon Small of the Fish Harvesters Association. “As a result every group is being compromised, especially the harvesting sector. We had a huge discrepancy between the raw material price here for shrimp this summer (38 cents a pound) and what was being paid to our Maritime cousins (50 cents a pound in Cape Breton) and the union didn’t say ‘ boo’. It goes back to them representing too many groups and results in them being too afraid of upsetting the apple cart.”

The FFAW represents fish plant workers, the over-40-foot fleet, under-40-foot fleet and the small boat fishermen that fish from traps. The problem, explained Small, is that all those groups often have different interests. An example being that the union opposes allowing fish buyers from outside the province from coming to the island, purchasing fish and shipping it to other provinces for processing. Small said that as a consequence the price paid to fishermen for their raw material is often significantly lower in Newfoundland and Labrador because island processors don’t have to compete. If the FFAW sided with fishermen, it would risk seeing the plant-workers it represents lose out on hours of work. “There’s real need for some sort of uprising - an organization of fish harvesters to see if we can create change in the representation fishermen are getting,” said Small. “There’s no where to go but up. I welcome such a movement, I just hope it gets off the ground.”

Small’s group is concentrating on three issues: •Continuation of the buddy-up program, which allows more than one licence to be caught from one boat, in the over-40-foot fleet. The program was discontinued by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), with the FFAW’s support, on the basis that it doesn’t encourage enterprises to combine. •Get a separate price for larger premium crab caught in area 3k from the offered to boats on the South coast. •Have their say in the Memorandum of Understanding being worked on by the provincial government, FFAW and processors.

Pearce, meanwhile, has been identifying issues for the coalition to campaign on. “The union and DFO get together and make up all these regulations that govern the fishery that are putting lives in danger. Things like boat length requirements – if a fisherman has a quota to catch, what business is it of their’s what length his boat is? They open and close seasons on short notice, forcing fishermen to go out in bad weather.”

Like Small, Pearce argues that outside buyers need to be allowed into the province and both the union and DFO have to get out of the way of fishermen once quotas are established – let them catch their quotas in the best way they see fit and not create inefficiencies that burn gas, money, time and nerves. “All they do is harass fishermen and they call it doing their job,” said Pearce. “The union advises DFO on all these regulations, like limiting the buddy up program, against the will of fishermen. They are going to destroy the fishery if we don’t do something to stop them.”

The Coalition, explained Pearce, doesn’t intend to style itself as a union but as an independent body to campaign for fishermen and eventually to offer benefits packages such as medical and pension plans.