|
right ''The Education of Everett Richardson: The Nova Scotia Fishermen's Strike 1970-71'' is a non-fiction book by the Canadian writer, Silver Donald Cameron published in 1977. It ranked 47th in a listing of ''Atlantic Canada's 100 Greatest Books'' where it was praised for giving a "gripping account" of "this pivotal moment in Canadian labour history".〔Adams, Trevor J. and Clare, Stephen Patrick. (2009) ''Atlantic Canada's 100 Greatest Books''. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing Limited, pp. 120-121.〕 Large sections of the book are presented as an oral history in which main participants in the strike speak directly to readers. As its title suggests, the book is partly about what one fisherman learns during an acrimonious, seven-month strike and its bitter aftermath in Nova Scotia's Strait of Canso area. Everett Richardson was one of 235 trawlermen from the tiny ports of Canso, Mulgrave and Petit de Grat who fought for better pay, safer working conditions, job security and most of all, for the right to belong to the union they had chosen, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union or UFAWU. Their main adversaries were two, huge, foreign-owned fishing companies, Acadia Fisheries, part of a group of about 61 British companies directed from Hull, England and Booth Canadian Fisheries Ltd., a subsidiary of Consolidated Foods a Chicago-based company with annual sales of more than a billion dollars. However, the fishermen also faced stiff opposition from what they called the "cod aristocracy," rich members of the Nova Scotia elite, as well as from leading politicians, judges, government bureaucrats, members of the clergy,''The Chronicle Herald'', the province's main daily newspaper, and the Canadian labour establishment itself. "In the end," Cameron writes, "this is not a story of the fishermen, or even of the labour movement. It is a story about privilege and poverty and injustice in this country, and about the social and political arrangements which cheat and oppress most Canadians, which stunt our humanity and distort our environment.〔Cameron, Silver Donald. (1977) ''The Education of Everett Richardson: The Nova Scotia Fishermen's Strike 1970-71''. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.〕 ==Nova Scotia's feudal fishing rules== Cameron points out that, in Nova Scotia, deep-sea fishermen had no legal right to strike because they were not considered employees, but rather "co-adventurers" sharing the costs and profits of each voyage with the big fishing companies.〔In 1947, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court had upheld the fishermen's "co-adventurer" status thereby defeating a union's attempt to organize trawlermen working for a fishing company based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. See pp.32-33.〕 He writes that the typical division of the profits was from 60 to 70 per cent for the boat share and from 30 to 40 per cent for the crew who also paid expenses including the cost of their own food. They also paid to use the companies' electronic gear.〔 Cameron reports that a trawlerman who worked steadily was paid between $3,000 and $5,000 per year or about a dollar an hour at most, considering that such a fisherman might make 27 trips and work 5,000 hours which is about triple the annual working hours of the average Canadian industrial worker.〔 In 1967, when the British Columbia-based UFAWU began an organizing drive in Nova Scotia, it found, among other things, that the fishermen had no job security; no say in the price of fish or division of the profits for the trip; no representative present when the fish were tallied and weighed and no proper statement of weights, prices or trip expenses in most ports.〔 Cameron reports that the UFAWU successfully signed up a majority of the fishermen in the Canso Strait area. However, the fishing companies refused to deal with the union partly because they continued to argue that fishermen were "co-adventurers" and therefore, not eligible to join unions. The companies also made it clear that they did not want a militant, West Coast union to get a foothold in Nova Scotia, especially one that was led by Homer Stevens, a member of the Communist Party of Canada.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Education of Everett Richardson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|