Among the multitude of unionized occupations that have been analysed by labour economists and others, fishing, for some reason or other, has received scant attention. Few articles and no books, as far as the authors are aware, have been written about unionism in the fishing industry of the United States. College text-books and surveys of labour rarely if ever mention the subject. Yet fishermen's unions in that country have been organized and active for more than a half century, and the International Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union today is an important affiliate of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Their origins and history remain hidden in obscurity.

Much the same situation exists in Canada. Some incidental attention has been paid, in regional surveys like that of the Dawson Commission published in 1944, to trade unions and co-operatives among fishermen in the Maritime Provinces. The far larger, more active, and more important fishermen's unions of British Columbia have been virtually ignored. The 1948 edition of Professor H. A. Logan's Trade Unions in Canada, for instance—by far the most thorough and authoritative survey of the organized labour movement in Canada to date—gives passing reference to the Canadian Fishermen's Union of Nova Scotia, but makes no mention whatever of the Deep Sea Fishermen's Union or of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, both of British Columbia. Yet these two organizations are, or should be, of considerable interest and importance to labour economists and other students of trade unionism. Their history reaches back through more than a half century of diverse organizational growth, numerous and sometimes violent strikes, and generally turbulent labour relations. Both unions are today affiliated with the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress. The U.F.A.W.U. has a membership of some 8,000 fishermen and allied workers and jurisdiction over several thousand more. It negotiates province-wide master agreements with employer associations, governing labour matters in all major branches of one of the most important primary industries in British Columbia. Over one special group of fishermen it shares jurisdiction with the much smaller organization, the D.S.F.U.