Por Joe Allen
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| Photo by Alex Waldbrand |
Big Oil flush with cash from wartime record profits and political support from the Trump White House has gone on the offensive against unionized refinery workers across the country. Global oil giants BP, Marathon, and Phillips 66 have locked out their workers with little fear of the federal government intervening. In an election season defined by rising gasoline and diesel prices, along with the soaring costs of daily living, the lockouts have garnered little media coverage beyond the local news or small pro-labor outlets.
Despite winning support from local businesses and governments and well-known Indianan politicians, including Democratic Congressman Frank Mrvan and Governor Mike Braun. Nor have the lockouts have not become a national campaign issue for the Democrats or the Republicans. With less than a week before the midterm elections, there is little time for the lockouts to take center stage, and will likely continue into late autumn and possibly longer.
Lockouts are difficult for workers to win in the oil industry these days given the highly automated nature of the plants. It takes a long time, usually after chronic production problems or explosions, before refinery management is willing to come back to the table and settle with the unions. In 2015, last time there was a national refinery strike led by the United Steelworkers Union (USW), it began in February lasted five months through the beginning of July. The USW, however, was in a stronger position then. The Christian Science Monitor reported:
They began the strike at nine oil refineries and chemical plants on Feb. 1 after negotiations with the US arm of Royal Dutch Shell failed to produce a three-year agreement covering 30,000 hourly workers. The strike spread to two more sites on Feb. 8, with the union accusing the companies of bad-faith bargaining and even making threats against union members. It expanded yet again on Feb. 21, now affecting 15 facilities, including 12 oil refineries with one-fifth of the country’s refining capacity. It is now the largest strike in the US oil-refining sector in nearly 35 years.
“The industry’s refusal to meaningfully address safety issues through good faith bargaining gave us no other option but to expand our work stoppage,” USW International President Leo Gerard said in a statement.
Since the 2015 strike the oil giants have been in revenge mode against the USW that has certainly weakened the union. USW locals in Whiting, Indiana and Martinez, California this time around are fighting alone. Back in January before the USW union’s contract expired, USW 7–1 President Eric Schultz, sensing trouble from BP, told the media:
“The less BP invests here, the more they endanger our community. We want BP to be successful and can show them ways to operate more efficiently. But it cannot come at the expense of the men and women who’ve dedicated their careers to BP’s success. “We’ve seen firsthand the impact of the cuts BP has made since our last contract and how it has impacted operations,” Schultz added. “Our friends and neighbors in Northwest Indiana have personally experienced the impact of those cuts, as well. We’re just not willing to bargain away a safe workplace and good, stable union jobs so that BP can be more profitable.”
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, In 2015, “Whiting had around 1,100 union workers. Today, there are roughly 300 fewer union employees there. BP has been filling hundreds of vacant positions with lower-paying contract workers from across the U.S., even asking union workers to train those less-experienced, non-union employees.”
The Steelworkers reported in February:
USW leaders in the oil industry reached agreement in February on a new contract that will cover more than 30,000 workers in the oil and petrochemical industry. The national pattern agreement sets wages and benefits and other terms for members of more than 200 USW bargaining units that are part of the National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP). The program includes workers in oil refining, production, pipelines, maintenance, storage, petrochemical and renewable facilities that, together, represent about two-thirds of U.S. refining capacity. NOBP Chair Mike Smith [said], “These negotiations were about ensuring fair wages, safer workplaces, quality health care and dignified retirements.”
However, the USW continued:
At the BP refinery in Whiting, Ind., after engaging in widespread bad faith bargaining, management locked out more than 800 members of USW Local 7–1 in March in an effort to force members into cutting jobs and eliminating union rights. In addition, members of Local 5 at Marathon’s facility in Martinez, Calif., launched an unfair labor practice strike in April after local negotiations broke down when Marathon unlawfully refused to apply the national agreement terms that it negotiated for the industry and applied at its other USW-represented locations.
The Martinez strikers were soon afterwards lockout by Marathon. In June, the Bay Area Current reported:
After almost two months on strike, the union [USW Local 5] and workers sent a letter to management agreeing to return to work unconditionally as long as the company continued to negotiate in good faith — Marathon then locked them out. Rather than workers voluntarily withholding their labor, the bosses have refused to allow the striking workers to return and have forced them into an employment limbo. Their picket on Arnold Industrial Way in Martinez is still active, but workers and their supporters seem demoralized given how long they haven’t been working. There is a feeling that Marathon is trying to make an example of them.
BP clearly wants to make an example of the Whiting local. Recently, BP went into court to deny state unemployment benefits to its locked out workers just as unemployment benefits were running out. “British Petroleum made a deliberate choice to challenge our members’ unemployment benefits after the Indiana Department of Workforce Development determined they were eligible, says Eric Schultz, president of USW Local 7–1, which represents the locked-out workers, told Sarah Lazare of In These Times. “It is another attempt to increase financial pressure on our members and their families and achieve through economic coercion what the company has been unable to achieve at the bargaining table.”
Whiting, Indiana is a small industrial city located in the southwest corner of Lake Michigan. While there are many rust belt towns and cities in the Northwest Indiana, most notably the former steelmaking behemoth of Gary, Whiting is an old fashioned, one industry town with well-paying blue-collar jobs that keep the city alive. BP’s massive refinery dominates the landscape of the city during the day and at night its glowing towers light up the sky. Due to Whiting’s close proximity to Chicago on a clear day you can see the city’s famous skyline. It is the largest refinery in the United States processing 440,000 barrels of oil daily and BP’s largest in the world.
BP’s vindictive behavior towards its locked out workers is a reminder, if one needed one, that it is in the top tier of arrogant, if not straight up, evil corporations operating in the world today. It is most notorious for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in 2010, which killed 11 and injured 17 oil rig workers forty-four miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico BP had a long record of workplace and environmental disasters from Tyler, Texas, to Alaska, which led to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history of the United States. The disastrous impact on marine life and the livelihoods of many Louisianans continue to this very day, including the negative health impacts of oil spill cleanup workers.
Last week, workers represented by the Teamsters were locked out at Phillips 66 Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, the largest refinery on the east coast. “We put our health, safety, and livelihoods on the line to keep this refinery running, and we expect to be compensated accordingly,” said Fred Trachsler, an 18-year operator and Local 877 steward. “We’re not going to accept weaker safety standards, blatant concessions, or policies that punish workers. If management keeps this up, we’ll have to fight on the picket line.” Teamsters Local 877 members had voted overwhelmingly to strike in September, and voted down a tentative agreement. Phillips 66 responded by locking out 385 workers.
The lockouts will only become national political issues if the rank and file workers along with their unions force it into the elections. Workers should picket and flyer candidates from all parties and elections and demand they take a position. Refinery workers deserve better.
Joe Allen is the author of Teamsterland: Reports on America’s Most Iconic Union and The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS. He lives in Chicago.
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