Photo courtesy of National Sea Products

I asked, "What's it up to?"

He said, "3.2 cents."

Well my head turned like a whiplash and I looked at our foreman and I started shaking my head. He knew that I knew what I was talking about. And I said, "Well, if it's up to that, just out of curiosity sake, would you like to tell me what it was down to?"

And he said, "2.9."

"Fine," I said, "and you're complaining."

But they didn't like people speaking up like that. They like to think that you have no idea what they're talking about. They think they're talking to a bunch of idiots because you're working in a fish plant. And that's not the case. I was always outspoken - I think probably Nat Sea made me in that point of view because you had your union behind you and you could afford to be outspoken. But then when you went to the small plants and there was no union, it didn't come off so good.

I can remember going down to the small plants in the summer and the first day we'd all be up in the lunchroom and they would come in and say, "Now, you're back to work, you're only here for a few short months, we don't want to hear tell of no sick youngsters, no 'I got to get groceries,' none of this stuff. That don't exist. We don't want to hear tell of none of that." That would be your first "How do you do" when you walked in. It didn't matter to me 'cause if my child was sick they could go to hell.