The Daily Astorian - Bonamici talks business on the coast

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Rep. Suzanne Bonamici wanted to see the seafood processing workforce of the North Coast up close and in person. She came face-to-face Tuesday with Anna Albertson, fish processor since 1961 and an employee of Skipanon Brand Seafoods since 2000.

"We can cut 1,200 pounds of tuna and can it all in a day's time," said Albertson, who'd just finished helping prepare canned albacore tuna for Josephson's Smokehouse.

Bonamici, D-Ore., a week after voting to authorize strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), visited Skipanon Brand in Warrenton to see how the second-generation family-owned operation has been making it and to talk with local workforce trainers at WorkSource Oregon in Astoria.

Giving Bonamici and her staff a tour of the cutting, smoking and canning operations were owners since 2010 Mark Kujala, also mayor of Warrenton, and his wife, Alana Kujala, who works for the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce. Started in 1978 by father Norm Kujala, Mark said Skipanon originally exclusively exported fish to large cities. But the company's had to expand over the past 36 years in a changing seafood market.

"Mark's been doing the Beaverton Farmer's Market for 20 years," said Alana about the company's programs to offer fresh seafood in the Portland metro area. It's gone so far as to offer community-supported fish boxes out of the Astoria Co-op Grocery.

Mark then mentioned the 800 cans of tuna Skipanon Brand sent to Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Mich., near where Bonamici grew up. "Every tuna salad sold at Zingerman's uses our tuna in it."

Skipanon Brand added smoking and canning in the mid-1990s, becoming one of only two canneries on the North Coast, along with Bell Buoy Seafood in Seaside. They do custom smoking, canning and freezing for anyone, from Josephson's Smokehouse down to the recreational fisher wanting to preserve his or her catch.

"There's only a couple months out of the year that we don't have a full crew," said Mark, whose company employs between eight and 10 people.

For its efforts, Skipanon Brand was recently honored by Oregon State University's Austin Family Business Program for its Excellence in Family Business Awards.

Skipanon Brand still uses a sealing machine and hand-glues the labels on its cans, but Mark said they still label up to 4,000 cans in a day if needed, with a crew of several women sitting around a table with glue sticks and a stack of labels. The company's developing pouched products and uses an online wholesale marketplace, https://food-hub.org, that links suppliers with restaurants wanting fresh products.

"What we've learned in the seafood industry, because it is subject to environment, to the fish -- which we'd love to control but we can't -- we have to do a little of everything," said Alana.

The company's had a busy year, said Mark, because of the strong run of salmon, often referenced as the strongest run since records started being kept in the 1930s.

"The hatchery programs were meant to sustain salmon runs," he said, crediting hatcheries and local wildlife management with the stable, resurgent salmon runs and, in part, Skipanon's strong summer. "I think Bonamici can support federal hatcheries."

Soft skills

"I frequently hear concerns such as the skills gap," said Bonamici at WorkSource Oregon, the local arm of the Oregon Employment Department at 450 Marine Drive in Astoria.

On her second stop of the day, Bonamici surrounded herself with local workforce training groups, from Clatsop Community College to Tongue Point Job Corps Center, and state workforce analysts tracking the state's performance, asking them about their issues with workforce development.

Topics varied from the need to retrain returning veterans and people dealing with developmental issues to providing opportunities for senior citizens in the workforce and getting employers to help train new tradespeople.

But several attendees agreed that a gap in soft skills -- timeliness, time management, responsibility, teamwork and others -- has formed among the young, largely because of a lack of investment in education.

"We used to have really large summer youth programs, and now they're almost nothing," said Joyce Aho, a manager with the Oregon Employment Department.

Kristin Wilkin, dean of workforce education and training for CCC, said that in the 1980s, every high school had a class about finding a career and teaching soft skills.

The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 provides federal funds to develop the academic, career and technical skills of high school and community college students. But the college is limited, said Wilkin, in what it can do, because of bureaucratic red tape and a decrease in funding. The Perkins programs, she added, basically need to go back to how they were in the 1990s.

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, said Bonamici, testing has become so high stakes, that anything not tested for is simply not a priority, which has resulted in electives and curricular activities being cut and student engagement lowering, while dropout rates increase.

In terms of building soft skills for students, Bonamici introduced the Opportunities for Success Act (HR.2659) in July 2013, which directs the Secretary of Education to award grants to institutions of higher education for use in providing their students with financial support to engage in internships reasonably associated with their studies. The bill was referred to committee but never made it to the House floor.

"There's so much short-term thinking in my world," said Bonamici of Congress, adding that there needs to be more long-term investments in youth, seniors and veterans. "Just a year ago, the government was shut down.

"That's why we're here, to help keep our economy growing and get people back to work."

Bonamici is Cannon Beach Sunday on the campaign side for the Race the Wave race and tsunami preparedness fair. Bonamici's Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2014 (HR.5309) recently passed the House and is headed to the Senate, with a 38 percent chance of enactment, according to http://bit.ly/ZQNJCo

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