Greg Pretty (left) and Eric Day met with FFAW members in Harbour Breton Feb. 3. Pretty said the workers are tired of waiting for the community’s fish plant to reopen.
Greg Pretty, the director of industrial/retail/offshore of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers/Unifor, met with union employees in Harbour Breton on Feb. 3. They’ve been out of the aquaculture processing sector for 15 months.
“The members here tonight have sent us a strong message”, said at the meeting.
“The message is that the wealth of the aquaculture industry in the province should not be just for the companies involved but should be shared among workers as well, especially those in the processing sector.”
Cooke Aqua started a salmon processing operation in Harbour Breton at the Bill Barry Group of Companies plant in 2008.
The plant employed about 150 people, but it closed on Jan. 31, 2014 when the Barry Group didn’t renew its lease with Cook Aqua.
Barry promised a smooth transition from one operator to the next, and later said the plant would be reopened by Northern Harvest Sea Farms in October 2014.
But that date came and went, which is a considerable source of the former employees’ frustration.
The target date then changed to February 2015. Now workers have been told the facility will reopen in October 2015 at the earliest.
FFAW officials met with Bill Barry in Grand Falls-Windsor on Feb. 2 to discuss the situation, and the same day the Barry Group of Companies met with Mayor Roy Drake and several councillors.
One of the holdups in getting the plant reopened is that the wharf adjacent to the plant needs repairs.
Drake said the town reached a tentative deal on that matter with Barry on Feb. 2, and the town expected to sign off on the deal Feb. 6.
“This is a major roadblock that will be removed once the deal is signed,” the mayor said.
“There’s no reason why work can’t proceed on the wharf in April once the tendering process is completed.”
Drake said the deal would give ownership of the wharf to the Town of Harbour Breton.
Pretty said that’s good news, but said if it doesn’t happen, the union won’t sit silently by.
“The workers here will be watching this deal very closely,” he said. “They’re certainly hoping the deal will go ahead. However, if it falls through they want to hold public demonstrations in St. John’s against a province with a public policy that allows fish to go out of the province to be processed elsewhere.”
Eric Day, vice-president of the FFAW’s industrial council, is also a plant worker in Harbour Breton. He’s not happy with how the situation has unfolded.
“I think that things in this situation should have moved along a lot faster than they did,” he said.
“I think the entire membership fell down on this, but we came together here tonight to help move the situation forward in a positive direction. October is better than no date to look forward to … but we need to get moving on this as soon as possible.”
Day said the FFAW’s local union executive resigned on Feb. 2 but a new group will be in place soon.
Lionel Molloy, who’s also a plant worker in Harbour Breton, said Monday night’s meeting didn’t leave him feeling a whole lot better.
“We have no time frame on when we get back to work, no time frame for wharf repairs, no time frame in place to get maintenance back to work to complete things that need to be done to get the facility up and going. I don’t think we moved very far ahead here tonight,” he said, adding that the government should put legislation in place to ensure that fish raised in Newfoundland waters are processed in the province.
“All the work from the aquaculture industry now is in New Brunswick,” Molloy said.
“We have to put pressure on Bill Barry to have a production line in place to get some numbers back to work here.
“If we are only going to HOG the fish (a reference to head on/gutted fish for shipment), then we’re only going to need about 30 employees.
If the plant reopens in October, they will need to start the wharf repairs and plant renovations in April. I can’t see that happening.”
Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Vaughn Granter told the Advertiser the provincial government has closely monitored the developments in Harbour Breton and discussions with Barry Group and the town indicate an agreement is imminent that will see the plant reopen.
Granter said all farmed fish produced in the Coast of Bays is processed within the province, in accordance with minimum processing requirements.
There is fish being processed into fillets at the Hermitage plant, he said, and Northern Harvest has indicated it wants to do filleting, but the St. Alban’s plant can’t accommodate a filleting line.
The issue is expected to be resolved when the Harbour Breton plant is upgraded and reopened, since Northern Harvest will then be able to produce both head on/gutted and filleted product.
