Employees believed the employers were responsible for compensating their inability to work. The employees often believed that since they were injured at work the injury and compensation was the companies' responsibility to pay. Further, employees comments often noted, "unsafe conditions, long hours, and unsanitary working conditions." Working conditions in the fishing industry The fishing industry in relation to the booming canning industry became tied in terms of income and eventually supplies. Early on the canning industry heavily relied on First Nation fishermen. Historian Douglas Harris argues of the preexisting fishing rights of First Nation's people and of the importance of fishing to many coastal First Nations. Furthermore, societies that were knowledgeable and capable in many aspects of fishing provided fish for canneries. Eventually, with capitalist tendencies, canneries began hiring and equipping more Japanese fishermen as a means of cheap labour. Working conditions in the perspective of the fishermen seemed quite good. Fishermen often felt greater freedom in their work in the responsibility of maintaining their boats, larger amounts of choice compared to other employment, the outdoor experiences, and escaping factory type employment. Within the canneries, housing and work was segregated by race and gender. Chinese men, typically, filleted and butchered the fish. However, this occupation slowly became obsolete with the innovation and implementation of the derogatory, "Iron Chink" or in more correct terms, "Iron Butcher". Hazards included knife cuts, pinched or crushed fingers in the case of machinery, and fish cuts and subsequent infections. First Nations women were responsible for the cleaning of fish. Early on this was done in large basins filled with cold sea water and later through a mechanized process involving conveyor belts. The cold water and repetitive motions involved in cleaning away fish slime and guts made for not entirely pleasant conditions. Injuries likely consisted of back strains, wrist strains, infections, and repetitive motion disease. Housing conditions are also relevant to workplace conditions in the canning industry as most employees lived on the work-site. The North Pacific Cannery, one of many canneries which operated on the Skeena Inlet, and now a National Historic site, reveals racial segregation. Japanese houses were on one end of the cannery site, the First Nations housing on the opposite, European housing in between, and remains of Chinese housing suggests they were furthest away from the cannery's main factory. The Japanese, Chinese and First Nation houses all consisted of single rooms not