Lobstering is an inherently individualistic pursuit. Most boats are crewed by just two or three people, and some captains go it alone. They leave harbor before dawn, spend the day pulling up traps from the seafloor to gather their catch, and then motor back to the dock to sell the creatures for the best price they can get. It’s hard work that draws rugged, self-reliant people—in other words, not your typical union members.
That’s what makes Local 207—the only lobstering union in the US—so unusual. The decade-old group in Maine represents about 200 lobstermen (as men and most women in the business call themselves). The union members own three 18-wheel trucks, a pair of smaller vehicles for hauling the produce from wharves, and a so-called tank room, a warehouse packed with tubs of refrigerated ocean water in which the crustaceans spend a final few days in something resembling their home environment before reaching their ultimate fate: a quick plunge into a vat of boiling water. “We work for the fisherman,” says Jason Rizzitano, manager of the tank room, near Bar Harbor.
The lobster union offers a potential model for gig economy workers seeking to push back against large companies that siphon off the bulk of profits in many trades, says Rebecca Lurie, a professor of Labor Studies at the City University of New York. By working together, such groups have organized Uber drivers, home health-care workers, and cable-internet technicians. Moreover, they can get a big boost from organized labor, which “offers unparalleled support, as well as an air of legitimacy,” she says.
Cooperatives are common in Maine fishing, and many own wharves, allowing fishermen to pool purchases of bait and fuel to get better prices. But Lobster 207 says the backing of the Machinists has given it a stronger political voice in the state, helping ease regulations that raise their costs and fighting encroachment from offshore wind farms that disturb fishing grounds. When local banks balked at lending to the cooperative, the Machinists helped arrange financing with a bank in Kansas. The tank room and trucks for hauling the produce helped the union get better prices and allowed the cooperative to set up a website to sell directly to customers, which last year booked some $8 million in sales. Virginia Olsen, a Lobster 207 member and fifth-generation lobsterman, says the union hasn’t made anyone rich—but it has given fishing communities a sense of stability.