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The Fish, Food & Allied Workers union (FFAW) and Association of Seafood Producers (ASP) have agreed to a snow crab pricing schedule after a two-week long dispute.
Harvesters will be paid $6 per pound up to and including April 18. That price will be adjusted to $5.75 per pound starting April 19, and then will be set in relation to market quotes from the food market intelligence company Urner Barry.
On April 2, this season’s minimum price for snow crab was set at $5.30 per pound by the Standing Fish Price Setting Panel, which is tasked with setting a price when the two sides can’t come to a deal. The union did not make a submission to the panel and the ASP’s offer was chosen.
The new agreement on Thursday confirmed that the panel’s minimum price decision was final, but that there is now a system to adjust in-season snow crab prices based on market conditions.
Under the new agreement, harvesters will be paid upfront rather than having to wait for a post-season settlement adjustment.
Weekly prices will be posted to the FFAW website, according to a press release sent out Thursday.
In that release, the FFAW called it “an uneasy agreement to resolve the current dispute and allow the snow crab fishery to move forward.”
The agreement comes just shy of a week after Newfoundland and Labrador’s Supreme Court granted an injunction against the FFAW over allegations it was stopping its members from fishing.
Separately, the ASP launched a lawsuit against two FFAW leaders over allegations they engaged in an “unlawful conspiracy” to prevent crab harvesters from fishing.
“ASP and FFAW are clear that threats and violence have no place in today’s fishery and respect each harvester’s individual choice to fish, and the choice of each processor and buyer’s decision to buy,” the ASP said in its Thursday press release.
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