Alaska Jobs Info posted to alt.culture.alaska

Subject: Re: Working in the fishing industry this summer.  Info needed
 
Q:  A Lot of companies advertise on college campuses, Work on a fishing boat this summer, and make $3000+ a month.  My question is: Is this true? If it is, what are the jobs like?  Any other info or suggestions are more then welcome.  I would also appreciate a name, address or email of a reputable company that finds these kind of jobs. 

A:  No.  These companies want to charge you $50 for an Alaska business license list that is several years out of date.  The fisheries jobs that *are* available are cold, wet, dirty, slimy, smelly cannery jobs gutting fish while standing in cold water for 12+ hours per day with base pay of around $6.50-$7/hr. 

There is no "reputable company" in Alaska that charges for finding seafood jobs. Check with the Alaska Department of Labor seafood labor home page at http://www.labor.state.ak.us/esd_alaska_jobs/ak_jobs.htm

Be aware that some processors may have had contested wage claims, so you may want to phone the Department of Labor and ask about the wage claim record of a potential employer. 

Finally, PLEASE DON'T COME TO ALASKA LOOKING FOR WORK WITHOUT A ROUND TRIP TICKET AND SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS. 

This is the land of the $7 burger and $800/mo 1 bedroom apartment, and we have lines outside our soup kitchens and homeless shelters every summer of folks that thought they would come here and get rich quick. 

With salmon prices at a historical low, there will be less cannery work this year than ever.  Yours was the first question of this type this year, but these questions come up every year. Please tell your fellow students (and your campus paper) that these ads are a scam. Write a letter to your campus paper telling them what you found by posting to this group. 

The following story from the March 13 edition of The Paper, a Juneau weekly newspaper, is reproduced on the Net with the permission of the publisher. It recounts the experiences of those who come to Alaska to get rich and end up at the Glory Hole, Juneau's homeless shelter:

HELP WANTED ADS 
LURE JOB SEEKERS TO ALASKA 

By Margaret Thomas 
Staff writer, The Paper 

Glory Hole treasurer Bob Carrier let the phone salesman's spiel unfurl like fly paper. For about $59, the pitch man promised the secrets to getting a high-paying job in one of Alaska's natural resource industries. Some people make $30,000 in just two months!

"Oh yeah," snapped Carrier. "Well, I live here and if I see this ad again I'm calling the state attorney general." It was a small triumph in a never ending battle. 

Before the salmon arrive each spring a wave of job seekers wash into town, lured by unscrupulous job ads in newspapers says Glory Hole director Ellen Northup. "These guys who come up here are hunting for the pot at the end of the rainbow and it just doesn't exist." The homeless shelter's 38 beds quickly fill up with the discouraged and still unemployed. 

New Juneau resident William Thomsen has more going for him than most. The nattily dressed 20-year-old has an athletic build and most of a college education. Before Christmas, he quit a Midwest managerial job and went home to Vancouver Island, B.C. to see his sick mother. He landed a job at a sawmill there and was making $22 an hour until the business shut down. 

Thomson had seen advertisements for Alaska jobs in newspapers in the Minneapolis and Chicago areas. He had never called the 800 numbers --- he's too smart to send money to a phone salesman. He figured if the work was here, he'd find it. "I'd always wanted to go to Alaska," he says. "I was planning to be employed in a week or two. 

Headed north on the ferry, he met three or four other guys who had seen similar ads. Thomson realized his mistake after repeated visits to the Juneau employment office. "There was nothing there." 

When his money ran out, Thomsen talked to a policeman who directed him to the Glory Hole shelter and soup kitchen on South Franklin Street. "When a person checks in here they have to have a little conversation with me," says Northup. "I told him I'd sure like to have one of those stinkin' ads." 

Thomsen's sister clipped and mailed the ad that angered Carrier enough to call the company. Her brother has since found two jobs and moved out of the shelter.  During the day he works at Capital Copy, evenings and weekends he's a bellman at the Baranof Hotel. 

Things don't always turn out so well. "One year we had six guys from Kentucky saying there was actually a poster in their airport saying 'high paying jobs in Alaska'" says Northup. "We had all these guys that spent their very last cent to get get here." 

The men stayed long enough to scrape together airfare home. Northup called the Kentucky airport and asked them to take down the job posters, but like weeds they always spring up again. 

The most disastrous results Northup can remember occurred a couple of years ago. Two Midwesterners responded to an ad and wound up at the shelter. Before long, someone convinced them to buy a Taku River gold mine. 

The young men couldn't wait to get there. The pilot who dropped them off in January noted that they hadn't packed any fuel. 
When he flew over a couple of weeks later, the pilot checked on the cheechakos. He found a giant HELP stamped in the snow and two emaciated miners. 

The men lost 30 pounds each on a diet of instant potatoes and ice water. "We weighed 'em" says Northup. "They came real close to dying." 

Reproduced with permission of The Paper, Juneau, Alaska. 
Copyright 1996 Highway 7 Publishing Co. 

Another poster  wrote: 

>Cannery work sucks, work on a boat instead. Watch out for your own >ass. Too many drunks. 

A:  First of all, green college students don't stand very much chance of getting on a fishing boat, and I wouldn't want to work for a skipper that hired inexperienced college students (unless they were hired to be the cook). Second, boat work sucks, too. 

I don't think these students understand the kind of grinding physical labor involved in working on a boat, the lack of sleep, the 48 hour days, and the kinds of accidents and injuries that can happen. 

Greed makes folks do strange things, and I've never met a skipper yet that was happy while there were any uncaught fish anywhere near.  They will risk their boat, their crew's lives, and their own life just to make one more set.  Worst of all, crew work only pays if the boat makes a profit. 

With the kind of fish prices we've had the past two years, crews won't be making much this year. If students really need to work to pay for college, they'll be more likely to make enough if they stay home and work two jobs for the summer.  The hours and pay will be about the same, without the fish guts, smell, cold, wet, and danger of drowning if someone makes a mistake.. 

Yet another posted: