Seward daily gateway., 1927-03-02
MORE 0|V ATTY. GEN.
(Continued from Page One)

experience with business methods, for
 their contract, which was entered into
 by one of them on behalf of all, pro-
 vided that they would do all the. work
 for the season at fixed price per
 case and board themselves, but did
 not hold the cannery bound to any
 minimum pack. As it happened to be
 a very small run of salmon in the
 waters tributary to this cannery, the
 entire crew was idle nearly all sum-
 mer, without receiving even as much
 as their board during the time of idle-
 ness Under the terms of their con-
 tract they had bound themselves to
 stay all season whether they made
 expenses or not, and they did stay
 perhaps largely because they could
 not get away. In this particular case
 the business experience of the can- ner had enabled him to discover and take advantage of the ignorance of the employees. How many of such con- tracts are made, I am not in posi- tion to say.
 Somewhat similar, though less gall- ing, system prevails at the herring salteries. Most of the gibbers and
 white women, hired in the States to packers at these establishments are work through the season at fixed price per barrel. Before the contract is signed the employer explains to the women that the herring runs 700 to the barrel and is so plentiful that the employees must agree to work over- fy,on D.,f yryho %1o tract is executed, which is on a print ed form and very long, no minimum is guaranteed by the employer, nor is anything said as to the size of the herring, nor is mention made in the contract of the refilling of the barrel after the herring settles. All that the written contract provides is that the
 packers shall pay a fixed price "per barrel of fish" and furnish the em- ploye with transportation, lodging and board. The employe guarantees that she is experienced as gibber and a packer; that she will remain the en- tire season; that she will work week days and Sundays and extra hours if necessary, etc. Very frequently it hap pens that for weeks or even months, there is no herring brought to the saltery and the help remains idle without the opportunity of earning
 anything and still under agreement to remain all season. Then, again, if l the herring does come in may happen, and generally does, that it is so small it requires 1000 or more instead iof 700 to fill barrel, and then only after these have had to be selected from catch where possibly only one out of five or six is of a marketable l size, the sorting of which must be done by the gibbers. After a barrel
 has been filled it is left to stand in
 order to settle, when it is "reflled" before headed. The question under l these contracts frequently arises as to whether or not it is the duty of the original packer to refill as part of | the work for which the price per bar
 rel is fixed by the contractor.
 All the contracts to which my at- tention has been called provided that l the superintendent of the cannery or saltory shall be the sole judge of the efficiency of the employe, and that if | he finds the latter unsatis factory he shall have the right to discharge him of her for such cause, in which event the employe loses the right to free transportation from the place of work and subjects his or her earned credits to deduction for cost of transportation from the States to the Alaska sta tion. Under this clause of the con- tracts interruptions canners do not hesitate to discharge employees when they can no longer use them to their
 profit on the pretext that they have violated their contract, of which fact the superintendent is made the sole and absolute judge.
 Complaints from laborers who claim
 to have been unfairly dealt with un-
 der these contracts are numerous.
 Entirely independent of the fairness
 or unfairness of the contract, a large
 number working at salteries, more
 especially, have at the end of the sea-
 son discovered that their employer
 was without means to pay the wages
 earned. Not infrequently is the whole
 seasons work lost through the in-
 solvency of the employer.
 For this evil, I do not think the Legislature can invent any more ef-
 fective remedy than the lien law of 1923. That statute is about as dras- tic as it can be made without materi- ally crippling the industry. My atten- tion has been called to no case where that law would not have been effect i've in protecting the employees if 1t had been properly taken advantage of.
 The problem of how to protect the employees against unfair contracts is