Photo courtesy of National Sea Products

The union talked the company into giving us a radio in case anything happened. If one of us took a heart attack or fell down going through the plant, you'd have to be there till the next morning when someone come in. The first night they gave me the radio I had it shoved in a pocket and I forgot about it. I was going through the meal plant about two o'clock in the morning, and the trawler night attendant called out over the phone. When the phone came on I jumped right off the floor forgot about the radio. Jeez, soon as I heard that voice I thought I was gone, what a fright!

A few years ago, during the dispute between UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) and FFAW (Fish, Bood and Allied Workers), I went on a leave of absence and worked with the union as a business agent. That is the years that count for TAGS (The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy) eligibility. That is the reason I'm going to be cut off. I was down at the plant for 23 years and that's all I ever done, but I gets cut off on my TAGS May 1996. And there's people have only been there five or six years that's good till '99. So it's not a very fair system. I've been trying everything to get that changed, but they wouldn't even look at it because the main goal is to get people out. If they can see a loophole to get you out they don't care if you spent 23 years or 55 years, you're going anyway. The thing is, it's common known practice that the union representatives have a lot of time away from the plant on union business. We have never had any problems getting leave of absence. At that time I went as the business agent for the UFCW, I was still dealing with the people and I was in the plant. It's just that I wasn't out working at the fish.

I was 17 when I got involved in the union. I used to see a lot of things going on. This was a favourite: if there was any overtime or something extra, it seemed like it used to always go to somebody who was related to the foreman, or somebody he knew. So I just wanted to get involved and speak up. I don't think I was in the plant any more than a year when I decided to run for shop steward. There was a shop steward for every department -packers, trimmers, boners, clobbers - about six, seven different departments, and then you had stewards on different shifts. I started as a shop steward for the packers on my shift. If they had any problems with management or anything concerning work, they called me and I'd go to the office to fight for them. It was just more or less somebody to speak up to the company if they weren't being treated fair, say, if there was work in the night and someone should have got called in.