Crab plant workers have punched their time in spades this season and are being called heroes

Workers at seafood processing plants in Newfoundland have been workingall summer long in an effort to make sure snow crab quotas for the shortened 2023 season are met and they say they're ready for a break.

"This season has been one of the hardest seasons that we have worked here, because we had to do a lot of crab in a short period of time," Louise Power, a floor supervisor at the Quinlan Brothersplant in Bay de Verde, saidTuesday.

She's had four days off since May.

"We all got through it, and made the season work," said Power, who has worked at the plant for 46 years. "Right now, [I'm] happy as a lark."

The celebrations come following a push to harvest quotas in a shortened season.

Theopening of this year's fishery was delayed by six weeksfollowing messy price negotiations between the Association of Seafood Producers and the Fish, Food & Allied Workers union.

The price for snow crab started at $2.20 per pound the same price that was negotiated in April but increased with market demandand was at $2.60 per pound as of Sunday.

Worker Brian Rose said the shortened seasonmade for a hectic summer, especially when workers pushed to make sure they worked enough to apply for employment insurance,but he's proud of what heand his colleagues have accomplished.

"It was just steady go, hours and hours of meat every day. We had no breaksand, well, that's what we had to do."

The Association of Seafood Producers thanked workers for a job well done in Tuesday's edition of the St. John's Telegram, writing thattheirstrength and perserverance during the season is "a lesson to us all."

Robin Quinlan, president of Quinlan Brothers, said plants in the province processed10 million pounds of crabper week. Hecalled the work done at his plant "superhuman."

"Weoperated 12 weeks straight this year, round the clock. We had no shutdown of the plant whatsoever," Quinlan said.

"You had to live through it to be able to convince yourself that it became reality."

Association of Seafood Producers executive director Jeff Lodercalled the workers heroes, adding 95 per cent of the quota has been processed.

He said the price of snow crabis beginning to climband he hopes this year's instability is over.

"I think we can all agree that this should never happen again," he said.

Loder said progress is being made with the FFAWahead ofbargaining for lobster prices, which begins Sept. 12, but reiterated his commitment to make public the details ofnegotiations

"Progress is being made, but we need to continue to build on that progress, 'cause there's still a long ways to go."

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