Oil cleaners siphon Valdez labor force dry

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the Anchorage Daily News on April 20, 1989.

A group of senior employees of VECO Inc., the oil field services firm coordinating cleanup of America's ugliest oil spill, dined Monday night at a Valdez restaurant and left with more than full bellies.

They took the waitress, too.

"Those people are on my . . . list right now because they stole one of my waitresses," said Connie Harrison, owner of the Totem Inn, which like other local businesses, has been losing employees to a many tentacled cleanup machine dabbing at hundreds of square miles of oiled sea and shore.

"VECO people will come in for dinner and ask them (hotel employees) to come to work for them. I have ads in the newspapers for everything, dishwashers, buspeople, waitresses, housekeepers, bartenders, cooks, you name it."

She needs 16 additional people to keep up with the furious commerce at her 24room hotel, bar and restaurant. "It's really swamped down here. People are having to work long hours. There is a lot of stress."

Amid the biggest boom since construction of the transAlaska pipeline, which ends in Valdez, a shortage of workers is gumming up the gears of the local economy.

And even when the Totem Inn, the Pipeline Club, the Village Inn and other employeestrapped Valdez businesses can find workers, they don't stay long. It seems like everybody in town is on the spill hiring list, waiting for good dough.

A massive hiring campaign by VECO, named as the labor coordinator of the spill by Exxon Co. USA, is soaking up hundreds of workers from fishing docks, canneries, restaurants, souvenir shops and other local businesses. They're leaving their $6 and $7 an hour jobs to make more than $16 an hour on the spill.

The worker shortage is spreading almost as fast and wide as the spill itself, disrupting the labor market not only in Valdez, but in Seward, Homer, Cordova and other nearby coastal towns, according to state employment officials.

Although no one knows for sure how much, if any, long term damage has been done to the important tourism and seafood industries, Exxon's invasion of the body snatchers has removed key employees from these businesses just at a time when they should be gearing up for the busy season.

A dearth of workers on seafood processing lines could force the industry to turn away boats even if fish and crab escape the gooey deluge and fishermen are allowed to set their lines, pots and nets to harvest them.

Already more than 1,280 laborers are scrubbing rocks or floating around on barges in the Sound, and employment is expected to peak at about 4,000 by midJune, according to Dennis Stanczuk, an Exxon spokesman. The company's tanker, the Exxon Valdez, speared itself on Bligh Reef on March 24, loosing more than 10 million gallons of crude oil onto the vast, islanddotted waters.

Alaska residents will fill most available jobs in the cleanup, Exxon said Wednesday. An overwhelming number of people in the Lower 48 have sought cleanup work, but enough Alaskans are available to satisfy its labor needs, Exxon said.

Consider that the economy of the Prince William Sound region supports an average of 2,400 to 2,600 employees, and the size of this massive employment shock can better be measured, said state labor economist Neal Fried.

"It's a typical response to a boom atmosphere." A similar situation occurred statewide in the 1970s when workers abandoned their jobs to toil on the pipeline construction, he said.

The crucial test will come this summer, when college kids and adventurers arrive with bedrolls and dreams of big bucks.

"Some of them who don't get those jobs will leave right away. Some won't have any choice, the college students who can't afford to fly home," said Fried. "They'll get that $6 or $7 and have that real Alaska experience."

If enough show up, and they are willing to do the drudge work at low pay, the crisis will evaporate, he said.

Mary Delucia, who helps manage the 80room Village Inn, is not impressed with many jobseekers who have appeared at her door. "They work for two days and then they go out on the spill," she said. "I think I've gone through six bartenders and eight or nine dishwashers since it started."

At the Valdez office of the Alaska Job Service, manager Doris Giusti said the prevailing wage for cleanup work is $16.69 an hour, and VECO appears to be honoring its pledge to hire locals, including some union workers.

"They are pretty much exhausting the labor market here," she said. "We don't have any local applications left."

Job Service workers have thumbed through more than 1,200 applications, she said.

"We are all very tired and getting so many calls. It's averaging about 300 calls a day. We tell them Exxon stated they would only hire from the Alaska labor market."

People ask themselves, why work on a slime line for $6 an hour when you can join the cleanup, be an ecological hero and earn good money too?

"I don't think we can compete, there isn't that kind of money in fish. We might as well close the doors," said Ray Cesarini, owner of Sea Hawk Seafoods, in past years the largest seasonal employer in Valdez.

A load of black cod from the Gulf of Alaska slid down the chute Tuesday and Sea Hawk started up its processing line with only seven people. "We needed 40," said Cesarini's wife, Sandy, who manages the plant. An emergency call to the Job Service brought enough muscle, barely, to do the job.

Sea Hawk had planned to employ about 350 people during July and August, the peak months of the salmon season. An estimated haul of 46 million salmon had been predicted for the Sound. The company spent "several hundred thousand" dollars to refurbish bunkhouses and modernize its line in anticipation of the biggest catch ever from the rich waters, she said.

"I can't double my wages, I'll be out of business. It's as simple as that."

Alaska's first major harvest is scheduled to begin in midMay at the nearby Copper River flats, but processors in Cordova say they aren't ready.

"With the oil company paying the high hourly wage for the cleanup we are losing a lot of regular people, we can't possibly compete," said Mike Schomer, general manager of the Copper River Fisherman's Coop, which processes salmon, halibut and other seafood for about 100 fishing boats.

An unskilled line worker earns about $6 an hour and the salary goes up to $9.50 based on seniority, he said. Copper River hires about 50 people each summer, but needs its key mechanics and line chiefs to start operations. Other processors report similar concerns.

At least one employer in Valdez said she hasn't had any problems hiring help.

"My work force is mostly high school students," said Kathy Shier, owner of the Tastee Freeze, where a new hire was stumped by the gleaming complexities of a hot fudge machine. "And that doesn't appeal to Exxon, so it hasn't been so bad."