Through collaboration with a private contracting company that the village corporation had hired and the Army Corps of Engineers, the design of the harbor was finally complete in 1984. I had wanted a harbor that would support only the local small boat fleet. However, there were national laws governing the use of public funds for construction, which dictated the size of what was eventually built.
As the village corporation president, I had been part of the team that negotiated with the private contracting company that eventually won the contract to build the port. I insisted that local people be hired to at least drive the large Terex trucks needed to transport rock to the proposed harbor site. The contractor agreed. I subsequently insisted that the company hire local women to drive the trucks. This took some doing, but eventually they agreed and asked me to identify those women who would be trained as drivers. For Saint Paul, this was revolutionary because local women did not even drive personal vehicles in the 1980s. I knew there would be resistance. The attitude was that women had their place, and that place was not doing the work of men; driving trucks was men’s work.
I intentionally picked two of the brightest young women in town because they were not afraid of doing something completely new. I recall teaching one candidate who happened to be my cousin, Anita Zacharof, how to drive my pickup truck, which had a stick shift. Terex trucks were much, much bigger than the pickup, but I assured her that the principles were the same. When I told Anita she was ready, she said, “really? I don’t know. I can drive this pickup now, but a big Terex truck? Those trucks are so big. The tires are as tall as a man!” I assured her that size didn’t matter. It was the attitude.
I then approached another young woman in town, Zenaida Lestenkof. She was going to college at the time and knew how to drive a car. She readily agreed as she wanted to, among other things, show off to the guys who thought women should not drive any vehicle, let alone a monster Terex truck. I remember Z, as we all called her, driving the Terex truck from the rock quarry to town, waving to the driver of a car who was a man. The two women drove those big trucks the entire summer with only one mishap.
During this time, the U.S. government contracted with the village corporation to conduct the seal harvest. Though the contract was short-lived, lasting only two years before the North Pacific Fur Seal Treaty finally terminated, it gave me another opportunity to bring more women into our local workforce. Until that year, women had not been allowed to be involved with the seal kill. Since I thought that very few people should be allowed to kill seals because of what it does to the person, especially women because they represent life, I decided to place women in the skin processing plant.
I approached Zenaida Melovidov, also called Z, because, knowing that the men who worked at the processing plant would tease and make sexual remarks about their women colleagues, I also knew Z wouldn’t put up with any of that behavior or language. I was there the first morning she showed up for work. Sure enough, the men were gathered and the leader immediately started making sexual remarks in front of everyone about her. Z was prepared for this and said, “Okay, if you want to do it, let’s do it right now in front of everybody. Take your pants down! Let’s see if you are as good as you try to make everyone believe.” The leader didn’t expect this. His face got red, but he didn’t say anything and walked off. From that moment on, no one harassed the women.
Taking over the seal kill was no easy task. I knew that, by now, the men were used to “government time,” which meant officially working at 8:00 a.m., quitting at 5:00 p.m., with two coffee breaks in between. (I had changed the time for sealing from a 4:00 a.m. start to an 8:00 a.m. one as well as a cessation of work at 5:00 p.m. because it was more humane and to avoid having to pay overtime.) And even then, the workers would push the limits because that was how the government had run the town in the past. Many of the men would show up for work at 8:20, take twenty to thirty minutes in coffee breaks, and leave work early. This had to change, but, rather than handing out punishments, I set up a policy that “work offenses” would be counseled. Almost every man in the sealing team was counseled by me, but the pattern continued. Because we were supposed to be a for-profit corporation and this behavior was costing the village corporation thousands of dollars, we had to convert the government-run mentality to private enterprise as soon as possible. I felt that if the villagers couldn’t grasp the principles of private enterprise, we would go under.
Frustrated, I decided to do something that would make me very unpopular and even hated. I chartered a plane and brought in people from Atka Island to conduct the seal kill for one week. Atkans were known to be hard workers and I knew they would do well. They agreed to come and did not tell the local people of my plan. When the plane load of Atkans arrived, I fired all the local workers without telling them I would hire them back at the end of the week. After that week, I thanked the Atkans and saw them off to the charter plane. I then had a meeting with all the previously fired Unangan men.
“You saw that I would not hesitate firing anyone and bring in other people who could do the job. But, you didn’t know that I hired the Atkans to be here only for a week. I did this because I feel that it is important for you men to learn about private enterprise. It will be private enterprise that will make the money for us to continue living here, but these businesses won’t tolerate slacking on the job.” I paused and continued, “Let me show you how much money we as a corporation lose when an employee slacks off.” I proceeded to explain the amount of time lost when everyone goes to work at 8:20, takes extended coffee breaks, and leaves early. I explained that every dollar lost to slacking on the job is money taken away from the shareholders of our corporation, which is every Unangan on Saint Paul. “It is up to you. Either do what you’re supposed to do on the job, or we all lose,” I said. “The ones who want to continue working, you are hired. Show up at the shop tomorrow at 8:00, and we will go out sealing.”
Torn between my actions and the men’s reactions, I felt I had to take the risk. Thankfully, all the men showed up the next day and every day thereafter on time.
After a storm destroyed the first one due to a design flaw, the harbor was finally operational in 1986. The village corporation negotiated a contract to lease land to a processing company, and Saint Paul has been processing fish ever since. In 1991 the City negotiated a rental contract with a processor to moor at the city dock, and they stayed for several years. Combined, the processors and a city tax on processing resulted in a per capita income of $34,000 during the height of the crab and halibut fishing activities, and city revenue increased 400 percent.