CANNERY WORKERS FACE CLAIMS CHOICE

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News reporter

VALDEZ- Norman Rogers would rather work in fish slime 15 hours a day than talk to a lawyer or an insurance adjuster. He is proud of being a cannery worker, and he doesn't want to gamble his livelihood on signing papers to get paid off by Exxon for the damage done to Prince William Sound and his industry.

Like everyone else here, Rogers' occupation is taking an unexpected detour into the realm of oxford shirts and leather shoes. People whose work called for wellworn jeans, baseball caps and tall rubber boots are heading for territory where they expect they'll need a lot more than a rain slicker to protect themselves.

They'll need lawyers.

Rogers spent Monday morning at Sea Hawk Seafoods, a processing plant, with about 20 other workers. They were pulling staples from 5,000 cardboard boxes they had put together to hold herring roe before the 10 million gallon oil spill on March 24 canceled the season. Lunch time came and they punched the clock.

If herring season were on, the break room would be full of 90 noisy workers, but now only a small knot of worried people sat at one end. The rough plywood tables were clean and whitewashed. Rogers drew on a cigarette through his ragged teeth and counted his cribbage hand.

"If there's easy money, people are going to cash in on it, because this isn't their life," he said. "If it's your life, you want to really take a look at it."

Don Heathman moved his pegs on the board. "I'm going to take a long hard look before I sign anything," he said.

Scott Robinson decided to make his move. He worked in Dutch Harbor most of last year and doesn't have as much on the line as the yearround Valdez residents at the cannery. He said he didn't want to be part of a class action lawsuit in which Sea Hawk is offering to include its workers. Such a suit is intended to compensate everyone in a similar situation who sustains damages.

"I don't want to get mixed up with a bunch of lawyers and everything," Robinson said, looking down, his voice almost too low to hear.

Robinson went to town for his lunch hour. He wore a torn denim jacket and a Sea Hawk baseball cap and his tall sea boots were turned down at the top. Long, brown, fine strands of hair hung around his pale face. He walked into the office under the chiropractor's office on Egan Drive, where Exxon's claims center is, and extended his hand to a balding, middleaged man. A city man.

Robinson was suspicious, but he sat with the claims adjuster and another man, and when he left 15 minutes later he was fairly well satisfied, with a pledge from the company of $5,000. They were ready to write him an advance on the claim Thursday, but first they wanted documents showing his earnings and an employment letter from Sea Hawk.

Robinson has been working all the time he can at the cannery and busing tables at night, and he needs the money.

Michael Basham, a University of Minnesota art and design student, called the claims office days ago. He migrates to Sea Hawk Seafood with several old friends from Grand Rapids Senior High School in Minnesota, a small papermill town. They're not as worried about filing claims. Basham likes the idea of getting paid by Exxon for his lost work while he finds another summer job.

"Double income, no children yep, I'd be a DINC," he said.

He said the claims adjusters were cordial when he called. "They're unbelievably nice. It's pathetic," Basham said.

Exxon can afford to be nice. It is facing 16 lawsuits, and every claim it can settle now is one that it doesn't have to pay later if higher damages are set by a court.

Don Marston, who heads the claims operation, said 400 claims have been filed so far, although little money has been paid. Marston said Exxon has established a $10 million bank account locally to make advances on claims for people who are financially strapped, and to keep the smalltown economies of Prince William Sound breathing until the big money starts to flow.

Marston said people can limit their claims to specific losses without losing the chance to sue Exxon later for other losses.

Who will actually pay the damages remains an open question. Under the TransAlaska Pipeline Authorization Act of 1973, Congress set up the TAPS fund, which was supported by oil company fees to cover cleanup work and damage claims in the event of a spill. Fault was not supposed to be an issue after Exxon paid the first $14 million, the fund would kick in to pay the next $86 million.

Then the payments would stop.

The law put a $100 million limit on the nofault claims. If negligence were not proved in the spill of the Exxon Valdez, the company would stand to lose no more than the first $14 million it paid. And when Exxon officials first began arriving in Alaska immediately following the spill, before the captain's drunkenness and the ship's piloting by an uncertified officer became known, the issue of negligence was not as clear as it might be now.

An army of lawyers says in court that Exxon was grossly negligent in the spill. They are suing to prove Exxon's fault, and to make it pay fishermen, processors, cannery workers and subsistence users of fish and game in the Sound as much as it costs to make them whole.

"They're probably better off if what Exxon owes is decided by the courts rather than by Exxon," said Fred Boness, the plaintiffs' attorney in one of the classaction suits.

Boness said he believed it was clear that Exxon was negligent as soon as its tanker showed up on Bligh Reef gushing oil from eight large holes. If the managers of the TAPS fund feel the same way, they could sue Exxon to recover any of the money it pays from the $86 million.

Most fishermen are working on the spill for generous pay and waiting to see what happens.

"Our family, we're not even going to discuss it for a couple of months," said Tim Lopez, who is Valdez harbor master and a member of an old fishing family. "You can save money on lawyers. They're going to have class action suits up the yinyang. Once one of those is settled, it'll be clear what everybody is going to get. Most of the guys who are doing it now are the ones who need money the worst."

Even if Exxon does not get to use the TAPS fund, few people here expect their claims to be significant to one of the largest companies in the nation.

"That makes me mad that Exxon can have a spill, damage the environment, then pay claims and write it off their taxes, and raise the price of gasoline at the pump," Basham said.

Exxon Alaska Coordinator Don Cornett said the company will write off the spill. "In the normal course of things in any business, the expenses you incur are deducted on your income taxes, and that may end up being passed on to the consumers," he said.

Wholesale gasoline prices doubled on the West Coast after the spill while the price of Exxon stock has remained stable.

Robinson returned from the claims office with a few minutes of the lunch hour remaining. Workers around the table devoured him with questions.

"I've never been in no situation than this where it affects my yearly income," Rogers said, having forgotten his cribbage game. "Now if I go in, how do I know what's going to come through? Exxon is a pretty big company to go up against."

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