An arbitrator has found the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW) will have to pay damages related to costs incurred by seafood processors in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, when snow crab fishermen refused to fish for six weeks in 2023.
The Association of Seafood Producers (ASP), which represents seafood processors in the Canadian province, issued a release on 20 February providing an update on arbitration relating to the organization’s claim that the FFAW breached the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act (FICBA) and the Master Collective Agreement (MCA). According to documents shared by the ASP, the arbitrator found that the FFAW declared a cessation of business – which runs “contrary” to the text of both the FICBA and the MCA.
The FFAW operates under both the FICBA and MCA, which establish rules for fishers and associations of fishers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Both of the rules make a fishing strike illegal, and the arbitrator found that the actions of the FFAW constituted a strike.
Committees throughout the province vowed not to fish in April 2023 after the Newfoundland and Labrador Standard Fish Price Setting Panel – which sets the minimum price processors must pay fishermen for their catch – chose the ASP’s suggested CAD 2.20 (USD 1.62, EUR 1.50) per pound price for snow crab over the CAD 3.10 (USD 2.29, EUR 2.12) offer presented by the FFAW. That lower amount, the FFAW maintained, was not enough to be economically feasible.
“People can’t fish at [CAD] 2.20. They can’t hire crew, and they can’t generate enough to pay business loans, insurance, fuel, or bait and still break even at the end of the day,” FFAW President Greg Pretty said at the time. “When it comes to dollars and cents, this catastrophe rivals the cod moratorium. It’s absolutely remarkable that the largest crab fishery in the world can induce poverty right across our province in the blink of an eye.”
While the FFAW maintained that the tie-up was not a strike – insisting, rather, that it was a response to the economic realities of the price – the ASP pursued arbitration on the grounds that the tie-up constituted a strike that violated the FIBCA and MCA and also cost processors and the snow crab industry millions.
“It’s imperative that neither the FFAW or ASP seek to circumvent or ignore the price-setting process and undertake what is effectively economic warfare,” ASP Executive Director Jeff Loder said in a release. “The FICBA exists to restrict this type of behavior and ensure the value associated with the fishery, which is a public good, is realized for harvesters, processors, plant workers, and businesses who rely on the fishery.”
The ASP said its goal with the arbitration is to “ensure a shutdown of the provincial crab fishery never occurs again.”
The FFAW, meanwhile, said that the arbitration demonstrates that the FIBCA and MCA are outdated legislation that make it impossible for the union to do its job.
“The arbitrator acknowledges that if that the price is so low, no harvester has to fish. However, the arbitrator decided that FFAW has to wait for the tie-up to happen before we are allowed to start talking about it,” Pretty said in a release. “Because the Union relayed publicly what we were hearing from our members before they made the ultimate decision to delay the fishery, we were, therefore, liable of ‘declaring’ people would not fish. In the future, to comply with legislation, the arbitrator states the Union would have to wait until the problem actually occurs and boats stay tied up before we were to start talking about it.”
Pretty also criticized the ASP for initiating the arbitration six months after the fishery’s issues were resolved and fishing was completed.
“Instead of helping to resolve the catastrophically low prices in the spring of 2023, ASP sat back and watched the fishery fall,” Pretty said.
Now that the arbitrator has decided the FFAW is liable, it will begin to consider what damages the union will actually have to pay. The ASP said it is seeking recovery of losses, costs, and damages from the union.
In response, Pretty said the FFAW “looks forward” to receiving the financial records from crab processors in the province, which ASP will need to provide in the arbitration.
“ASP has sought millions of dollars in damages in the grievance it filed, so if they truly expect us to believe that they suffered losses when they were able to get crab for so cheap, they must produce the paperwork to prove it,” Pretty said.
The arbitration result also comes just before the FFAW and ASP will once again have to negotiate on a snow crab price for the upcoming season. In 2022, a tumultuous negotiation and price-setting process led to calls for management changes by fishermen. While the two organizations said they wanted more cordial negotiations in 2023, those negotiations failed in late March 2023, forcing the price-setting panel to make the decision that led to yet more turmoil.
