OCI granted injunction as fishermen block out-of-province crab
CBC News | Posted: April 26, 2020 9:28 PM | Last Updated: April 27, 2020
Producers association wants fishery to open, FFAW concerned about safety
The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador has granted Ocean Choice International an injunction ending the Fish, Food & Allied Workers union's blockade on the highway near South Brook.
The injunction prohibits FFAW members from blocking the route to OCI's processing plant in Triton or interfering with customers or contractors entering the property.
It's the latest development in an argument between the union and Association of Seafood Producers over whether the fishery should be up and running during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The union says its members do not want to go to work on boats or in plants until their safety is assured, while processors maintain precautions have been taken.
Union members blocked two fishing vessels from the Magdalen Islands from offloading crab in Port aux Basques on Sunday evening.
On Monday, about 50 FFAW members blocked the trucks, with crab caught outside the province, near South Brook. In a news release, OCI said the trucks were headed to its plant in Triton.
Fisherman Byron Oxford of Springdale said the blockade was intended to make a statement and show the Association of Seafood Producers that harvesters are not satisfied the fishery can start up.
"Plant workers are scared," he said. "Fish harvesters are scared. This crab is not going to the plants."
Meanwhile in Clarenville, the intensity of the protest there appeared to ramp up during the day.
A truck allegedly loaded down with crab from Prince Edward Island was attempting to offload early Monday morning at the Terra Vista plant in Glovertown. One fisherman told CBC News of a high speed chase where FFAW members followed the truck from Glovertown to Clarvenville along the Trans-Canada Highway.
More than 20 cars and trucks are lined up at Blackmore Venue in Clarenville to protest the importation of snow crab where the transport truck is currently parked.
FFAW staff representative Jason Spingle said the union voted to recommend the fishery be delayed until May 11. He said processors and harvesters have to negotiate a price for crab.
"The processors have failed to do that. They walked away from the table and they failed to come back, clearly trying to force harvesters' hands here, trying to get workers back into the plants," said Spingle.
Price dispute
The FFAW has asked for $4.25 a pound for snow crab and a formula for when the market for crab returns. The union said the association offered one cent per pound, in return, but the association says that's the standard offer made every year, and it's willing to negotiate crab prices with harvesters.
"It is a technicality, and the FFAW knows that," said executive director Derek Butler.
Butler said without a firm start date on the fishery, discussions are pointless.
"The other Atlantic provinces are harvesting and producing crab, so why can't we?" said Butler.
In a news release, Ocean Choice said it's unacceptable for the FFAW to block crab destined for its processing facility in Triton.
"It's valuable product. It could spoil," said company president Blaine Sullivan.
OCI said the trucks of crab came to the province unmanned on a Marine Atlantic ferry, and two local drivers picked it up in Port aux Basques.
The company said its COVID-19 plan has been accepted by Occupational Health and Safety and they held orientations with workers last week. According to the company's statement, new safety measures include a health survey for workers entering the plant, stringent cleaning and sanitation, modification to production lines, and mandatory safety masks.
"We have all the plants retrofitted. We have the [personal protective equipment] in place," said Sullivan.
OCI said the plant, which employs 120 workers, processes millions of pounds of crab caught in the Gulf of St. Lawrence annually.
Meanwhile the FFAW wants the provincial government to step in.
"The government needs to step there and see if it is safe," said Oxford at the blockade in South Brook.
But at Monday's daily COVID-19 briefing, Premier Dwight Ball gave no clarity.
"It's safety first," said Ball. "If you're not comfortable in going to work, well, then you can stay home. But all the processors have said, from what I know, is that there will be no ramifications, there'll be no loss of benefits, in terms of seniority and so on. So the workplace must be safe if you decide to go there."
Marilyn Clark, a fisheries consultant from New Brunswick who helped harvesters from the Magdalen Islands find a market for their crab, was on the wharf in Port aux Basques Sunday night.
She said two vessels docked around 8:30 and 10 p.m. NT, but FFAW members blocked them from offloading.
"We got messages that [said] 'If you don't get the boats out of there, you know, your or your crab is probably going to have diesel poured on it,'" said Clark. "Police approached the boats and said that they could no longer guarantee their safety and it was best if they left."
Little processing capacity
Clarke said there is little capacity in processing plants in other parts of Atlantic Canada because about 2,500 foreign processing workers couldn't get into the country.
Clark says the dispute between processors and harvesters here has nothing to do with coronavirus safety and physical distancing.
"We have, like, dozens of pictures of people standing, definitely not six feet apart. And without their faces covered," said Clark.
"Anybody that was there last night huddled and acted like a mob was not worried about the pandemic."
Clark said the dispute is really about crab price negotiations between processors and harvesters, noting harvesters in the rest of the Atlantic Canada and Quebec are getting $3 a pound, while harvesters here want more.
"The price is $3 and nobody wants it to be $3. It's like half of last year. But we all understand that this is not last year."
"How do they expect to get $4 when there is 50 million pounds on the market that's going to be there at $3?" she said.
Butler accused the FFAW of spreading misinformation, and also accused the union of throwing this year's fishery away.
He said the FFAW, which voted to request delaying the crab fishery to at least May 11, is pushing for the federal government to expand employment insurance, rather than open the fishery.
"I don't know if you would work if you had 95 per cent of your income paid through an EI program," said Butler.
"That would effectively, I think, shut the fishery down. That would throw the Newfoundland fishery away."
FFAW president Keith Sullivan said they're prioritizing safety.
"We've seen when they tried to jump the gun in Quebec on opening a seafood processing plant and we had infections. So we want to be as safe as we possibly can," he said.
Last week, the FFAW sent a proposal to federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan, asking her department to extend EI for harvesters, plant workers and other workers for 12 months, waive or reimburse all commercial fishing fees, implement a wage subsidy program, offer interest-free loans for inshore enterprise owners and extend personal and business tax deferral for a year.