FPI, union avoid strike with tentative deal

The union representing plant workers employed by Newfoundland and Labrador's leading seafood company will organize a vote Tuesday on whether to approve a tentative deal reached this weekend.

About 1,700 employees of Fishery Products International were poised to walk picket lines on Monday, after workers earlier this month rejected a company offer that included wage cuts.

However, Earle McCurdy, president of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union, said negotiators came up with a new proposal over the weekend.

"The maximum pressure you have on an employer is just on the very eve of a strike, right at the 11th hour," McCurdy told CBC News.

"Once you get past that point, and once the strike starts and harvesters take their raw material elsewhere, then that becomes a very difficult one to resolve."

McCurdy would not give any details on the tentative deal.

FFAW members, who work at FPI facilities in seven communities, will learn of the details on Monday. A vote is planned for Tuesday.

Ford Parsons, who has worked at the FPI plant in Triton for more than 20 years, said FPI has pushed employees to the limit. When he was able to work last year, he said, most weeks had fewer than 20 hours of employment.

"I'd just as soon starve to death on the picket line as starve to death working, when you only got X number of hours and X number of dollars," he said.

Voting on the tentative deal will conclude Tuesday evening.

The FFAW has had strained labour relations with FPI for years, particularly in the wake of a hostile 2001 takeover led by Nova Scotia processor John Risley.

FPI's processing employees— who work in six plants and one offloading facility— have been without a contract since last year, when negotiations started.

At the time, FPI said it could not continue to operate without concessions from its unionized workers. The FFAW said FPI's earlier demands amounted to wage cuts equivalent to about $2 per hour.

FPI still negotiating with possible suitor

The very future of FPI, meanwhile, remains uncertain.

The company's directors have been trying to sell core harvesting and processing assets, although the Newfoundland and Labrador government— which retains some legislative control of the former Crown corporation— rejected its plan to sell plants and trawlers to the Corner Brook-based Barry Group.

Instead, the province directed FPI to negotiate with St. John's-based Ocean Choice International, on grounds that that bid was broader and better for the province's interests.

FPI was formed in 1984 from the ruins of three failed processing companies. It was privatized in 1987, but— like much ofNewfoundland and Labrador'sfishing industry— was battered by the collapse of groundfish stocks in the early 1990s.

The FFAW represents workers at facilities in Bonavista, Burin, Dildo, Marystown, Port au Choix, Port Union and Triton.