Crew accused of mutiny over 16.5-hour workday

WENATCHEE — In the storm-racked Bering Sea, where winter fish-factory crews routinely labor 16 hours a day, the captain rules the workplace.

But on Feb. 2, aboard the Seattle-based Ocean Phoenix — North America's largest processing vessel — 25 Latino crew members defied their skipper in what the vessel owner claims was a modern-day mutiny.

The spark for rebellion was a workday expanded to 16.5 hours — an extra 30 minutes of labor that workers said was more than they could or should have to bear.

The workers did not wield knives, cutlasses or pistols. They wrote a letter denouncing the longer shift, which they said robbed them of precious downtime to eat, shower and sleep and had a drastic effect on their job performance.

Then, at a rancorous meeting with the skipper and factory manager, they refused to go back to the factory floor unless the 16-hour shift was restored.

"You just didn't have time to rest," said Luis Verduzco Sr., a 10-year veteran of the Ocean Phoenix. "I was sleeping only four or five hours a day, and it just wasn't enough."

The men, who lost their jobs, scoff at the company's mutiny charge. They say they fought for a basic human right — a reasonable workday — and have mounted legal challenges that could help define labor rights for more than 2,000 factory workers who process fish in offshore vessels.

"This certainly does have the potential for making new law, or establishing unanticipated applications of existing law," said Mark Manning, an Anchorage-based attorney who publishes a maritime-law newsletter.

The workers, all legal U.S. residents, have sued in King County Superior Court seeking back wages and sanctions against the company for violating Washington state labor-organizing laws. They also have asked the National Labor Relations Board to help them win back their jobs.

Company officials say the workers quit and broke a fundamental tenet of maritime law when they disobeyed the skipper's order to return to the workplace.

"The captain is the master," said David Bratz, an attorney representing Premier Pacific Seafoods, the vessel's Seattle owner. "He has got to have discipline upon the ship at sea. ... "

In a countersuit, the owners upped the ante: The worker protest amounted to mutiny that sought to "usurp the command" and foment a broader revolt among the vessel's crew of more than 200.

Under maritime law, mutineers can face prison terms of up to 10 years. But Bratz said the company has no interest in "trying to lock up" the workers. Instead, Premier Pacific wants the workers to pay for damages suffered by the Ocean Phoenix when the vessel stopped work to set the workers ashore.

Opportunity on the sea

Most of the 25 men caught up in the Ocean Phoenix protest live in Wenatchee and other Eastern Washington towns. They and their families came north from Mexico and Central America, drawn by the opportunity to work in the fields and orchards.

But in the late 1980s, Latino workers began to find opportunity in a Bering Sea fishery. Several thousand workers are needed at shore plants and on factory vessels to process pollock, a small white-fleshed fish that now sustains North America's biggest seafood harvest, yielding more than 4.4 billion pounds annually.

Ocean Phoenix pollock workers, paid in crew shares, can earn $20,000 to as much as $40,000 in less than six months. That's a lot more than the average wages on the farms and in packinghouses, which now range from about $15,500 to about $17,600 a year, according to Washington Employment Security statistics.

Verduzco first worked aboard a Bering Sea pollock vessel in 1992. Within three years, he had earned enough to make a $6,000 down payment on a three-bedroom home in Wenatchee for his family of six.

The temptation of the pollock money has drawn hundreds of other men from the Wenatchee area. Last year, those recruits included Verduzco's eldest son, Luis Verduzco Jr. He chose the same vessel as his father — the Ocean Phoenix.

On the ship

First launched in 1966 as a cargo ship, the 680-foot Ocean Phoenix is showing its age. Its upper-deck paint has streaks of rust. Workers bunk four to a room and complain of toilets that occasionally plug from overuse.

But the vessel — converted in the '80s for Bering Sea duty — is a processing powerhouse that on a good day can handle more than 1.7 million pounds of pollock delivered by a half-dozen catcher boats. Shipboard machinery heads, guts, fillets, minces and transforms the fish flesh into a white paste known as surimi used to make fake crab and many other products.

The biggest, most lucrative pollock harvest unfolds in the winter, when the fish yield both flesh and roe valued in Asian markets. Workers process fish day and night in 16-hour shifts that carry the constant risk of injury.

In one of its worst years, the winter of 1997, the Ocean Phoenix reported 15 workplace incidents that resulted in strains, crushed fingers, fractures and a concussion caused by a falling object, according to reports to the Coast Guard. Since then, company officials say, the safety record has improved.

Some of the toughest jobs were held by the senior Verduzco and other leaders of the protest. They were "fish drivers," whose deft hands stuffed tens of thousands of pollock each day into slotted metal trays of fillet machines. Verduzco, by all accounts, was one of the best drivers and received outstanding reviews from his bosses.

"Luis did an amazing job. ... He is always on top of his game, in my opinion," wrote assistant foreman Jesse Hill in a 2000 evaluation. "You couldn't ask for a better co-worker."

The 16-hour day grows

When the Ocean Phoenix left Seattle in mid-January, Verduzco and the other fish drivers knew what was coming: the standard 16-hour shift. They would work from 8 a.m. to midnight for days on end, with a half-hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks.

But a few days out of port, the crew got word of a new plan — a 16.5-hour shift that would end at 12:30 a.m.

Company officials say the extra half-hour was needed to try a new processing strategy that involved carefully "finger-packing" the pollock roe to create a better-looking product for Asian marketplaces.

But fish drivers bridled at the news, which came on top of earlier company moves that trimmed back the number of workers assigned to the fillet machines. Some said the first few days working the hours pushed them over the edge of exhaustion.

"I thought I could finish the shift, but it was just so much," said Miguel Martinez, a third-year fish driver from Quincy, Grant County. "Every time I went to bed, my bones were so achy from throwing fish all day. I was just hurting so much that I didn't feel like going to work. But I had to."

So the fish drivers helped draft and circulate a protest petition, which gained 70 signatures, roughly a third of the crew. They say they submitted the petition to the ship's purser Jan. 27, with instructions that it be passed on to the factory foreman, Pat Hermens.

The purser and Hermens say they never saw the petition.

One thing is certain, the shifts did not shorten. The workers' anger grew.

On Feb. 2, they drafted a second, sharper protest letter labeled "Voice of the People." It demanded a decision on a return to the 16-hour shift "either by today or first thing in the morning" and was signed simply by "The people."

Hermens confirmed he got the letter, and then met with Verduzco.

"He was angry and wanted to know who wrote the letter," Verduzco recalls. "I said, 'The people. You don't see what's on the paper.' "

Verduzco said Hermens consented to talk with the workers, several dozen of whom then assembled in the ship's library.

In a statement released by the company, Hermens offers a different account.

Hermens said he agreed to meet with the workers only after the evening processing shift was over and was surprised to find the workers assembled in the library. Indeed, he termed it a "walk out" timed to disrupt the 9 p.m. resumption of surimi production.

At the meeting, Hermens and skipper Marc Smith said the workers had to go back to the fish factory and process pollock. Anyone who failed to obey that order would be considered to have quit.

A few workers obeyed the command. Most stayed put. Within a day, the 25 holdouts were set ashore in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the cost of their tickets back to Washington deducted from their final paychecks.

The Ocean Phoenix went back to sea. Company officials say that the "consensus" of the remaining crew was to keep the 16.5-hour shifts, and that the rest of the season unfolded safely.

Shut out of fishing

In the more than seven months since they left the Ocean Phoenix, most of the workers have failed to find new jobs in the pollock fleet.

"When the other companies call the Ocean Phoenix, they say that these guys quit and basically had a little strike," said Noel Cornelio, a fish driver who helped draft the petition. "So any of the boats we want to get on — right away, they get scared."

Premier Pacific officials say they have not discussed the protest with other companies. But company officials do disclose dates of employment, and they say the Feb. 2 termination makes it obvious that these workers failed to complete the winter season.

In the months ahead, the workers are hoping for a change in fortune. Their attorney, Brad Bagshaw, is trying persuade the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to investigate the Ocean Phoenix for possible violations of federal laws that require employers to bargain in good faith.

An NLRB official has interviewed the workers, and the board's lawyers are determining whether it has jurisdiction in the matter.

Company officials have said the NLRB has no jurisdiction over the maritime workplace and should stay out of the dispute.

Sometime next year, the lawsuit is expected to come to a jury trial.

In the meantime, the workers have scrambled to find work, some returning to the orchards and fields.

Luis Verduzco Sr. worked cherries this summer, then moved on to apples. He's now picking Golden Delicious, rising each morning before dawn to begin picking at 5:30 a.m., and working into the afternoon.

"This is the first time in 10 years," Verduzco said. "These are the jobs I thought I left behind."

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com