Frustration boils over

By AARON BESWICK

FOR THE SOU'WESTER

Transcontinental Media/Northern Pen

There's shrimp being caught - but it's not putting many to work.

Someone's making money off it, but no one in Anchor Point, Port au Choix, Black Duck Cove or St. Anthony, N.L.

Rage boiled over Friday, June 26, at a protest in Anchor Point - a Nova Scotia plant is paying a 50-cent per lb. flat price for shrimp while Island processors are offering a 37-cent top price (which works out to about 33 cents per lb. average).

The 65-foot fleet say they can't afford to untie their boats for less than 42 cents per lb. The consequence is that 1,000 people directly employed by shrimp on the Northern Peninsula are out of work this summer while the factory freezer trawlers keep fishing. "They're trying to drive us out - instead of buying us out, they're gonna freeze us out and take all our shrimp for the factory freezer trawlers," said Cook's Harbour fisherman Barry Decker.

He said he caught his Gulf quota 30 miles from the Ocean Choice International (OCI) plant in Port au Choix and steamed more than 200 nautical miles south to land it in North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Decker joined the Anchor Point protest a day after the Fish Price Setting Panel sided with a claim pitched by Newfoundland and Labrador processors that they can't afford more than an average price to harvesters of 33 cents per lb. "And when I went to Nova Scotia, OCI had the nerve to call the plant there and accused them of stealing their boats. The nerve they got," he charged.

Northern Peninsula shrimp plants have been shut down for a month. As of June 25's price ruling there's little hope the season will restart and the only government representative to show up at the protest was St. Barbe MHA Wallace Young. "I wrote the premier on Jan. 8 and warned him there was going to be a crisis this year and I asked that us and processors sit down with him and find some solutions," Fish, Food and Allied Workers' union president Earle McCurdy told the crowd. "And I'm still waiting for that meeting - that's disgraceful. When Corner Brook Pulp and Paper faced shutdown, the premier and his ministers hopped on a plane and were there in three hours - the Northern Peninsula has had 1,000 people out of work for months and he's not even come to visit."

One speaker after another drew cheers as they accused the government of forgetting the Northern Peninsula and of their unwillingness to challenge the processing companies. "I heard Fisheries Minister Tom Hedderson on the Fisheries Broadcast last night and he's got the nerve to say that 'the union and processors haven't given him evidence that people are going bankrupt'," said McCurdy. "That's our minister? That's how he thinks? Wouldn't it be better to do something before boats are repossessed? Before people go bankrupt? It's time for him to go."

But what should the provincial and federal governments do? What can they do?

Roland Genge has an idea.

The skipper of the 65-foot dragger Newfie Pride wants to see the factory freezer trawlers shut down for the season. "Yes, there needed to be a break because of markets and oversupply. These factory freezer trawlers should have been stopped in the winter if there was no market so at least we could have fished this season and put people to work."

Factory freezer trawlers land what's called industrial shrimp - it's processed and frozen at sea with the shell still on. Much of it is bought in Iceland and Greenland, unfrozen, cooked and peeled and frozen again before being sold. The inshore draggers, meanwhile, land shrimp fresh at Newfoundland plants where it's processed and only frozen once.

In the past, the two kinds of shrimp were sent to different markets, but according to fisheries analyst John Sackton, the markets are blurred this year. "This year, since the economic crisis, the Russian market for shell-on industrial shrimp shrank drastically - so factory trawlers looked around for new places to put their shrimp. One of the places is into the cooked and peeled market," explained Sackton. "Because of Iceland's market collapse, its exchange rate has become more favourable - Iceland can process shrimp so cheap because of its low dollar. They can then sell to the United Kingdom (UK) for a drastically lower price."

That's a market that belonged to the inshore fleet in previous years.

But Sackton warned processors are having a bad year as well - getting significantly less for their shrimp than in previous years. The UK price for processed shrimp has dropped to $1.75 per lb. from $2 last year, and their currency is worth 10-15 per cent less. "The offshore guys are making a lot less money this year as well," said Sackton. "The fact that the full quota is not being caught will affect the price. As the amount of supply is cut back, prices are going to come back to a more economically viable range. Long-term the inshore fleet is absolutely viable - cold water shrimp is a good product."

But what to do in the meantime?

Bonnie Genge shudders at the mention of make-work programs. "We already got all the rocks on the right side of the road - are they gonna make us put them back on the other side?" asked the chairperson of the Anchor Point plant workers' committee. "We don't want that welfare, we got more dignity than that - we want to work. It would cost the province six million dollars to subsidize the extra five cents per lb. fishermen need, but $15-20 million to put off make-work programs. And they're talking about make-work programs - how degrading is that?"

If there are make-work programs to help plant workers and fishermen qualify for Employment Insurance benefits this fall, Anchor Point Mayor Gerry Gros wants help from the province to make it meaningful. "This town needs good sewer and water systems, pavement," said Mayor Gros. "There's lots of things that can be done to offer meaningful employment, but municipalities need help."