Political Quotes

“on behalf of Senator Stevens and myself, I am reintroducing the Fishing Industry Bargaining Act, a bill to allow antitrust immunity for certain cooperative activities involving domestic fishermen and processors. This bill will allow collective agreement between fishermen and processors. It is patterned after legislation adopted by the Alaska State Legislature, but which requires congressional action to fully take effect. Under existing law, fishermen are able to form associations for the purpose of collective bargaining with individual processors. This bill will allow them to work with similar associations of processors to establish first-wholesale purchase prices--that is, the prices paid to the processors for fish products, and ex-vessel prices paid to the fishermen. This is intended to counter the fact that prices currently are all too often set by first-wholesale buyers rather than producers. As a result, processors forced to accept a price set by their buyers are in turn forced to set ex-vessel prices based on the buyers' offer, rather than prices that respond fully to other market forces. I want to make it clear that this bill in no way would allow processors to associate solely amongst themselves to set either ex-vessel or wholesale prices. That is the kind of activity our current antitrust law is primarily designed to prevent, and this bill will leave that unchanged.”