The morning crew at the Goodnews Bay plant. CVRF photo
Now here's something Deckboss has never seen before — a processor bragging about what it pays workers on the slime line.Coastal Villages Region Fund says it's bumping up beginner pay to $10 an hour, "believed to be the highest starting wage for processors in the history of the Alaska seafood industry."
The company's flagship plant is the Goodnews Bay regional facility near the village of Platinum.
Processing hands are an essential, but often overlooked, component of Alaska's commercial fishing industry.
Many come from out of state, and ethnic minorities are predominant.
The work is monotonous and messy. Workers stand for hours in wet, noisy conditions heading, gutting, cleaning and packing fish.
Coastal's starting pay rate does appear favorable compared to other processors in the state.
Icicle Seafoods, one of the state's biggest seafood processors, pays $7.75 an hour to start, which is the minimum wage in Alaska.
Because seafood processing is so labor intensive, companies have a strong incentive to control payroll costs.
In 2009, they lobbied against a state minimum wage hike.
Coastal Villages suggests it is different from other processors. And it is.
It's a nonprofit company operating under the federal Community Development Quota program. The goal of the program is to improve economic conditions in Western Alaska villages.
Coastal says better than 80 percent of its processing hands are Alaskans, including village residents.
The company acknowledges it actually loses money on its salmon, halibut and herring operations in Western Alaska.
Coastal subsidizes those operations with the lucrative income stream from its Bering Sea pollock, cod and crab harvests.
