A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison Page A

prevent us from pulling too hard on the crab legs, showing us how not to bruise the meat. Their manner is always abusive and rude. Sometimes, after a brief instruction session from a Japanese buyer, workers spit or blow their noses on the crabmeat before shoveling it off into the freezer.
    The place where we work is a giant warehouse, the former hold of the ship. Windows and doors are open everywhere, allowing the cool, damp November air in. We bundle up. There is also seawater flying everywhere, and the cooking steam from the tons of packed crab legs that we drop into boiling vats produces a foul and abrasive odor that clings to our clothes and hair. Because of the wetness and smell, we wear plastic outer garments called rain gear.
    The shifts are sixteen hours long, so a tiny pin prick sized hole in your rain gear can let enough water in over the course of a day to completely soak you by half-time. If you’re working wet, you’re one miserable bastard. Your clothes chafe against your skin, you’re cold, and the wetness keeps expanding. By the time you take off your gear at the end of the shift, that same pin prick can let in enough water to completely fill your boots. So we try to keep the pin pricks down to a minimum.
    I’m getting off work after my first shift, having just been flown in from Seattle that morning. There was no orientation, no ceremony. The crab are coming in and Rayford Seafoods isn’t playing around.
    Next to me, as I take off my rain gear, is an angry Filipino, flipping through the sheets of wet yellow-and-orange plastic to find someone else’s rain gear. Our names are written on the gear in black marker. He finds what he is looking for, looks around quickly, and sticks it several times with a pin. Then he drops the pin on the floor and walks off, not looking at me.
    Someone has pissed him off. Someone else’s battle, not mine. I want to mind my own business and get to bed. I hang my gear on a hook and climb the stairs up to the bunk rooms.
    The bunk rooms are similar to what I remember from old movies of German prison camps, except in Stalag 17 there wasn’t always an inch of water on the floor. Also, in Stalag 17 they had windows, and we’re below decks. It’s impossible to change your clothes without splashing your pant legs and soaking your feet, and when the lights are out, which is when anyone is sleeping, the room is blacker than a coal mine. And because we’re on shift work, there’s always someone sleeping.
    The first morning, I forget about the water and put on my last pair of dry socks while still in my bunk, then soak them through the second I touch down. Then I try blundering over to the sliver of light that sneaks through the door to the passageway, or head, or galley, or whatever the hell they call a hallway on a ship, and bang my knee on something. So, my second day, I stand on the slime line with a swollen knee and wet feet for sixteen hours.
    My roommates are a nineteen-year-old Klansman from Seattle, a muscular black man, and a white guy named Jeff who likes to start trouble. All of them own guns. I get finished after my second day and stumble up to my bunk to find Hale, the black guy, cleaning a pistol. Billy the Klansman is sleeping and Jeff is sitting on his bunk sharpening a hunting knife. Billy has drawn shut the curtain across his bunk. Jeff mimics throwing the knife into Billy’s bunk, and Hale points the pistol and silently mouths, “Bang!” They look at each other and smile.
    â€œHow was work?” Hale asks me, as I crawl into my bunk and take off my pants.
    â€œIt’s over.”
    â€œYou like butchering crab?”
    â€œNot much.”
    â€œYou’re a big guy. We got other jobs here.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œLoading boxes in case-up.” Case-up is a dream job compared to most of what Alaska offers. The work is physical, but I much prefer that to the standing still and monotony of