Bay de Verde mayor wants 'income supplement' for displaced plant workers
Gerard Murphy takes issue with Dwight Ball's 'no ask' comment, prior to meeting with town
The mayor of Bay de Verde says he's asked the provincial government to supplement the income of workers who found themselves out of a job, after a fire razed the community's fish plant earlier this week.
"I specifically asked the premier for an income subsidy for those people that are affected," Mayor Gerard Murphy told CBC's St. John's Morning Show Thursday.
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Murphy said he took issue with an interview Premier Dwight Ball did with Here & Now Wednesday night, before even meeting with the mayor.
In the interview, Ball said he had met with town officials and Quinlan Brothers Ltd., owners and operators of the Bay de Verde plant, but nothing had been asked at that point.
"The objective here will be raw material from the harvesting sector that will come ashore and this raw material will have to be processed, so right now there is a plan in place, those 350 workers will have work available to them, so there's been really no specific ask of the provincial government right now," said Ball.
"But if there is a place and a role for us to play in all of this, we will certainly be there. But right now we will just work with the company, we will work with the community and when the provincial government needs to step into this we certainly will."
'Not a request that we take lightly'
According to Murphy, those comments were made before the provincial government officials had actually sat down with the town and discussed the situation.
"I'd like to call the premier out this morning. He made comment in his interview with Debbie Cooper — and Debbie Cooper pressed him on it — as to what the town requested. And up to that, his response was there was 'no ask.'"
Murphy said he had sat in on a meeting the premier had with Quinlan Brothers, but that was more as an observation rather than an official town meeting.
We are looking for an income subsidy or an income supplement to help these people in the short term.- Bay de Verde Mayor Gerard Murphy
Later in the evening, Murphy said he "tried to put a human face" on the situation and formally requested an income subsidy for all the workers at the Bay de Verde fish plant.
"The group that I consider to be the most marginalized now as a result of this will be the inside workers who are directly involved in the processing," said Murphy.
"Predominantly female, these workers now, even with all the best efforts of Quinlan Brothers Ltd., will have their hours basically cut … which in turn will result in a half cut in benefits, which will basically give them hardly even a subsistent standard of living," he said.
While the total workforce at the plant includes people from outside Bay de Verde, the mayor said he wants a "one size fits all" subsidy to ensure no workers fall through the cracks.
"Bay de Verde is absolutely looking for something … it's not a request that we take lightly. We are looking for an income subsidy or an income supplement to help these people in the short term," said Murphy.
"I think it's incumbent upon the government to step forward and offer some short-term remedy to this, and the only way to remedy it is through an infusion of money."
Murphy added he doesn't expect the income subsidy would make the provincial budget coming down Thursday "any worse than what it's gonna be today."
With files from the St. John's Morning Show