Work Satisfaction and Community Attachment among Fishermen in Southwest Nova Scotia

Abstract

Social scientists have examined the problem of attachment to the New England fisheries in terms of two interacting influences: work satisfaction, based on questionnaire interviews, and attachment to kin and community, based on ethnographic field research. There is a paucity of equivalent information for the Maritimes. This study replicates the New England work satisfaction studies, and includes additional questions concerning community attachment. We demonstrate that fishermen in southwest Nova Scotia are, in contrast with their New England counterparts, satisfied with all questions about their work (save for the common dissatisfaction with government officials found in both the Nova Scotia and New England samples). In particular, although offshore fishermen in southwest Nova Scotia tend to be somewhat less satisfied than those who fish inshore or both inshore and offshore, they have, by comparison with the New Bedford fishermen, scores that are over the "neutral value" on all time and adventure questions. The underlying factors of job satisfaction are comparable with those in the New England studies, except that the factors in our data are more numerous and simpler to interpret. High job satisfaction is combined with strong community attachments in southwest Nova Scotia.