I would not want to comment on this, because, after all, this is an expression of the conclusions reached by Mr. Balinger and not you. But if Mr. Morrison should be correct in his declaration that between 50 and 70 percent of the final cost of the fish is attributable to the price of the fish when caught and Mr. Balinger states that the American tuna industry has been wrecked by imports, wouldn't the American industry be put in an even sorrier and worse competitive situation if fish prices were to go up and if those prices were to be reflected in the cans of tuna bound for the grocery shelves?

Mr. HAWK. Well, there is a passage in his brief here that states that the tuna canners had made arrangements to buy fish at a very high price from the Japanese, although his boats had been coming in with loads of tuna, and the canners pay less for tuna here. His boats are tied up with a belly full of tuna.

I have seen 10,000 tons of tuna laying in the bellies of those boats down in San Diego Harbor, laying there for a month or longer while they are processing Japanese fish, imported fish, or trucking fish up from Mexico.

I think that the solution lies in this bill, inasmuch as we could all sit down at the same table.

We have been beating around the bush-there's no question about it-for years insofar as the price is concerned.

Of course, we have been considered within the law for years, except from time to time up crops this question of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

I mean for years to my knowledge the boatowner goes in and negotiates a price of fish, for tunafish or sardines or mackerel or anchovies, and then he comes back to the union and says, "Well, this is what I'm offering."

So the union says, "Well, as far as we're concerned, it's not good enough for us. We're not going to go fishing."

So I mean this is folderol. Sure, we're going to negotiate, and which we do. We're within the law. We can negotiate working conditions, shares. We can negotiate all of that. And how much the boatowner is going to take off the top for expenses.

But then the principal thing, which is the price, we can't negotiate. We have got to go around the corner. Everybody knows that, I mean. But we don't sit down. We simply deal with the boatowner. But now since this order came out, when the boatowner goes over, how much negotiating he does these days I don't know. But if we don't like the price or if our fishermen don't like the price, we are going to hang the button anyway, I mean, so we might just as well clear the situation up and have the right to sit down and negotiate, the three of us together.

And as far as the consumer is concerned, it isn't going to cost the consumer any more on the consumers' market.

And then we could head off deals like this paying more for fish over in Japan as the penalty to our own boats and our own fishermen. Senator BARTLETT. Mr. Pelly?

Mr. PELLY. No questions.

I would certainly say that this adds a great deal of clarity to the picture. I think that it is a very fine statement. It indicates the community of interest of the boatowner and the crew, and that cer

tainly is a three-way negotiation that would be very helpful to all concerned.

Mr. HAWK. Well, that is the way it has been going on down in San Pedro and San Diego for years. The boatowner goes in and deals with the canner. Then he comes back to us. We tell him we don't like it. He maybe agrees with us. But he needs our strength, because we're the ones who have the right to hang the button if we don't like what the price is going to be, because our wages are going to be based on the price.

And the fishermen and the canneries have been in business down there for years, and it isn't growing smaller as far as the industry is concerned. The industry is expanding. It is only the pocketbooks of the fishermen that are getting smaller.

Senator BARTLETT. Thank you, John.

Mr. HAWK. Thank you.

Senator BARTLETT. Mr. Balinger ought to be proud of your presentation of his statement.

Mr. HAWK. I think he could do a better job.

Senator BARTLETT. I think you had something further to offer, Mr. Vance.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF J. DUANE VANCE, ATTORNEY, ON BEHALF OF THE SEAFARERS INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA, SEATTLE, WASH.

Mr. VANCE. Senator, Mr. Pelly, I just want to briefly make one more statement in view of the statement made here by Mr. Luketa.

I did not realize that Mr. Luketa was going to testify, and I am concerned that the record might indicate that there is some conflict between Mr. Luketa's position and that of the Alaska Fishermen's Union and the Seafarers International Union of North America, when, as a matter of fact, there is not.

We have not much quarrel with Mr. Luketa. As a matter of fact, on page 24 of the brief which I have submitted and which is in the record I discussed the type of situation that Mr. Luketa is engaged in. Among other things I say:

Such an arrangement is now in fact in operation as regards beam trawl fishing in the Puget Sound area with the full approval of the regional offices of the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. We understand similar arrangements are working in connection with certain fisheries in California.

And I further go on to point out that these devices have proven totally useless in Alaska, that the device in the beam trawl industry, the success of this operation, whereby the union represents the crewmembers, the boatowners belong to a marketing association, and the processors, the canners deal with them, is a tripartite arrangement, and, as Mr. Hawk has just said, one runs to the other, then the other one runs over there, and then you go back around the horn and back down.

This can only successfully work, as in beam trawling, where it is almost a year-round operation. The fishermen, the boatowners live here. The offices of the association are here. The buyers are here. And this tedious and endless running back and forth can be accomplished.

Now, as I pointed out, in 1954 we tried to set up four cooperatives in Alaska with the idea that this same enterprise could be engaged in, and it just fell flat on its face because it won't work. The captains are scattered all over from California to the northern part of Alaska. The canneries are not there together. The crew is not together. You cannot have this tripartite separate but simultaneous negotiation. It just won't work.

I think that what Mr. Luketa overlooks is that this legislation doesn't mandatorily require any particular segment of this industry to conduct its business in any particular way. It would be permissive only.

Obviously, if it were passed, each segment of the industry would tend to fall back to a certain degree into its customary, traditional patterns which were developed over the years.

Now, Dick Jansen, for example, has said he had no concern about belonging to the same union with his crewmembers. That was done in Cordova for years.

An even better example was the United Fishermen of Alaska in Kodiak, which was a very excellent union and a great organization, but in an area where the owner traditionally is on the boat, where he has a large crew, where the use of the facilities of the Board is available.

We had to go to the Board recently in this matter.

And you can use all these technical procedures that will work, but I don't think there is any intention on the part of the unions that I represent to try to force Mr. Luketa or anybody else into any particular form of procedure. We seek permissive legislation that will permit each type of fishing and each type of canning to operate in a manner that is either traditional or best suited to the needs of that particular fishery.

Senator BARTLETT. Thank you.

Mr. Foster has a question, I believe.

Mr. FOSTER. Just one quick one here.

The other day in the paper-and I read this quickly so I am not certain-they spoke of a situation in Canada in terms of a strike or anticipated strike by some fisherman's union in their negotiations, and this just at that time raised the question in my mind as to what the Canadian law was.

How does Canada, our neighbor to the north and between here and Alaska, solve this problem?

It sounded like, although this may be incorrect, they did have some negotiations under the Canadian law. I don't know whether this might be pertinent or not or whether you had any information on it or could get it very easily for the committee.

If you can, I would only say that you might include that in any type of correspondence you would add to the record, and I think it might be helpful if you have an opportunity to do that.

Mr. VANCE. I will be glad to add that. The Seafarers International has attorneys there, and I can get information. However, I certainly don't have it.

All I can tell you is that the labor laws in Canada are so much different than they are here that I just shy away from it as hard as I

can.

Mr. FOSTER. It may not be any help at all.

Mr. MORRISON. Mr. Joe Jurich may have an answer.
Senator BARTLETT. Mr. Jurich?

Mr. JURICH. Mr. Chairman, the answer to Mr. Foster's question is that the Canadian fishermen and our fishermen down here when we were sister organizations, virtually one organization at one time, operated pretty much in the same way by at one time negotiating directly with the canners as the Canadian fishermen are still doing today.

They negotiate directly with the companies and are proceeding to do so and have been doing so with the exception over there they have a mediation and conciliation program, and it is a little different than we have here.

I was trying to think of the name that was thrown into the problem up there. It is the same thing as the Federal Trade Commission. What do you call it, Herald? Do you know?

Mr. HERALD O'NEILL. It is an arbitration procedure.

Mr. JURICH. No

Mr. O'NEILL. It is an adjustment deal, but-
Senator BARTLETT. Please identify yourself.

Mr. O'NEILL. Herald O'Neill, executive secretary of the Association of Pacific Fisheries.

Mr. JURICH. It is the Combines Act. Excuse me.

Mr. O'NEILL. The Combines Act is an act somewhat similar to the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Government can move in and have these hearings, which they have done now over a period of about 3 years that I guess it has been going on, and it still isn't settled.

They haven't told the fishermen, have they, as I recall, or the canners, whether

Mr. JURICH. No

Mr. O'NEILL. They have given them a period. Like the Department of Justice gave the Alaska salmon industry. They have been letting them go for the meantime and continuing negotiations.

Mr. JURICH. They are still in negotiations. They still draft contracts, and they are currently in negotiation with a segment of the British Columbia industry. That is herring industry for the present time.

Senator BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

The committee will now stand in recess until sometime tomorrow morning in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Let the record show the committee is deeply appreciative of the courtesy and hospitality of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for permitting us to use this hearing room. The chief judge of that court is Richard H. Chambers.

(Whereupon, at 4:58 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to be reconvened in Ketchikan, Alaska, on Tuesday, October 16, 1962.)

The committee met at 1:40 p.m., in the Fish and Wildlife Labora

tory, Hon. E. L. (Bob) Bartlett presiding.

Senator BARTLETT. The committee will be in order.

Off the record.

(Remarks off the record.)

Senator BARTLETT. We will go on the record now.

The first witness on my list is Walter Pihlman.
Walter, are you here?

Mr. GEORGE ANDERSON. He is working. He won't be here until later.

Senator BARTLETT. Oscar?

STATEMENT OF OSCAR ERICKSEN, KETCHIKAN, ALASKA

Mr. ERICKSEN. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity of appearing here today regarding S. 3093. I am a resident of Alaska and have been a fishermen's union agent for 12 years and now here completely independent of any organization. I wholeheartedly support S. 3093, the bill to give fishermen collective bargaining rights. An individual unorganized fisherman is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty of contract and protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment; it is necessary that he have full freedom of association and designation of representatives of his own choosing for the purpose of collective bargaining.

That is pretty short, and that is all I have in that line.

The reason I got this here is because the fishermen have to work long hours from dark in the morning to dark at night, and none of them know when they are leaving the fishing bank and getting to Ketchikan or to home port wherever they are going to sell their product how much they are going to get.

I think this bill is the best that has happened for many, many years, and I thank you, Bartlett, very much for that, including Senator Magnuson.

So all the fishermen hear of nowadays is the closing and the opening of fishing season and how many days they can fish. Of course, I believe most of them live up to it almost 100 percent. I wouldn't say 100 percent.