USW Local 5

By Virginia Parks, Robert Zardeneta, Norman Rogers, and Tracy Scott - The Climate Center, May 24, 2023

By Tracy Scott - Newsweek, May 3, 2023

When John Bayer got the call that the Marathon Martinez oil refinery was shutting down, he was sound asleep after his graveyard shift at the facility, where he worked a union job as a health, safety and emergency response resource. For John, the phone call did more than wake him up after a night of hard work. As an employee at the Marathon refinery for nearly two decades and as the sole provider for his wife and two kids, it shook the foundation of his life and career.

John was just one of nearly 350 workers represented by United Steelworkers Local 5, the union I lead, who lost their jobs when the Marathon refinery shut down in October 2020. John's story echoes that of thousands of oil and other workers across the country who are facing an uncertain future amid the changing energy landscape.

To be clear: In California and across the country, working people support addressing climate change and transitioning to renewable energy. But when refineries like the former Marathon facility shut down without a clear plan in place that involves unions from the outset, workers and the community inevitably get left behind.

In order to guarantee that California has an economy that works for everybody, impacted workers must be at the center of planning for the ongoing transition to clean energy, and they must have access to union jobs that guarantee financial security, strong protections, and good benefits.

By Lynn Fries and Robert Pollin - The Analysis News, March 27, 2023

By Ted Goldberg - KQED, February 5, 2023

Chevron has fired five workers who went on strike at the oil giant’s Richmond refinery last spring, according to their union. The apparent termination of United Steelworkers Local 5 employees at one of the West Coast’s major oil refining facilities prompted the union to file complaints with federal labor regulators.

The workers Chevron fired — two during the walkout and three in the months that followed — were mostly safety operators at the refinery who played leadership roles in the strike, according to union president Tracy Scott.

The firings “were unjust,” Scott said.

One of those fired was B.K. White, a top union negotiator who became the face of the labor action and had worked at the refinery for nearly three decades.

“You could just tell it was retaliatory or punitive in nature,” said White, vice president of USW Local 5. “It appears there’s a concerted effort to break the union.”

In a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board, the union alleges that Chevron ordered its members to train contractors to do union-covered work and then punished them for their labor activities. The NLRB has deferred action on the Local 5's unfair labor practice charges pending arbitration of a grievance the union had already filed with the company.

News of the firings comes months after a 10-week-long strike by hundreds of USW workers. It was the first walkout at Chevron’s Richmond refinery in 40 years.

The marathon labor action ended up delivering only modest gains to workers. The contract, approved by a slim majority of union members, gave a small bump in pay and medical benefits to refinery employees who went without paychecks for more than two months.

By various - Labor Rise for Climate, Jobs, Justice, and Peace, July 14, 2022

We are writing to you as rank-and-file California trade unionists to request revision of the 2022 Draft Scoping Plan to incorporate the California Climate Jobs Plan based on “A Program for Economic Recovery and Clean Energy Transition in California.” 

While making frequent references to equity, the Draft Scoping Plan fails to present a credible roadmap for the massive economic and social transformation that will be required to protect and promote the interests of workers and communities as California confronts the climate crisis and emerges from the fossil fuel era.

Four years ago, United Nations scientists reported that it would take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to limit increasingly catastrophic changes to the global climate. Among these rapid and far-reaching changes, the redesign of our economy requires an honest accounting and plan for the tens of millions of California workers whose lives will be changed dramatically in this decade and beyond. If there is to be a plan for transformation, it must center the aspirations and possibilities for working people. 

In this aspect, the Draft Scoping Plan falls short. Labor is treated as an externality. The draft lacks any discussion of public funding to create green jobs or protect workers and communities who depend on fossil fuel industries for their livelihood. The only union mentioned in the 228-page draft is the European Union. The draft’s abstract commitments to a job-rich future are based on crude economic modeling rather than concrete planning. We need more than vague assurances that economic growth guided by corporate interests will provide for the common good.

By Peter Mencini, et. al. - Amazon Watch, May 31, 2023

By Marisol Cantú, Micheal Hayes, and staff - Richmond Progressive Alliance, May 16, 2022

Flaring at the Richmond Lubrications Oil Plant. April 14, 2-4 pm.

United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5 workers have been on strike at Richmond's Chevron Refinery since March 21, 2022. Since then, workers and community members have carefully documented flaring events at the refinery, which is currently run by strikebreakers who do not have the necessary training to safely operate the equipment. Below are three important documents of this extremely unsafe situation: a) a letter addressed to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) by organizer Marisol Cantú, articulating the current risks to our surrounding community and demands of relevant inspection agencies; b) a photographic gallery of flaring events taken during the strike by workers and community observers; and c) a letter authored by a USW Local 5 refinery worker, describing the extensive training he and his colleagues receive that is necessary to keep the community safe (and that current employees operating the plant do not have).

By Jessica Goodheart - Capital & Main, May 16, 2022

Tefere Gebre’s biography has touched on the major crises affecting the planet: the massive rise in refugees, skyrocketing economic inequality and climate change. The first of those cataclysms was thrust upon him when he was just a teenager. He fled the civil war in Ethiopia, enduring a perilous 2½ week journey through the desert. “Sometimes you’d find yourself where you were a week ago,” he told Orange Coast magazine in 2014. He spent five months in a refugee camp in Sudan before arriving in Los Angeles, where he attended high school.

As an adult, Gebre became active in the labor movement, organizing trash sorters in Anaheim and holding leadership positions at the Orange County Labor Federation and the AFL-CIO, where he served as executive vice president. In February, he took the position as chief program officer at Greenpeace USA, the 3 million-member direct action organization known for its high-profile banner drops, opposition to whale hunting and campaign against plastic waste.

Capital & Main spoke to Gebre two days before Greenpeace held its first-ever protest in solidarity with fossil fuel workers. Two boats with activists from Greenpeace USA and United Steel Workers Local 5 members formed a picket line from land into San Francisco Bay as an oil tanker headed to Chevron’s Richmond refinery in what Gebre described as “a genuine attempt to build a transformational relationship” with the striking workers. Nearly 500 refinery employees went on strike over safety and salary concerns in March. The two sides have yet to come to an agreement. The oil tanker crossed the picket line, according to sources at Greenpeace.

By Shiva Mishek - Richmond Progressive Alliance, May 4, 2022

“To strike at a man's food and shelter is to strike at his life, and in a society organized on a tooth-and-nail basis, such an act, performed though it may be under the guise of generosity, is none the less menacing and terrible.”

—Jack London, The Scab, 1904

This week, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5 enters its seventh week on strike at the Richmond Chevron refinery. Over 500 Chevron employees have been on strike since March 21, rejecting a contract that would codify a meager raise, unsafe working conditions, and Chevron’s so-called “standby” policy.

Chevron would also like to drastically reduce death benefits and pay for the Lubrications plant refinery workers, thereby creating a two-tier wage system and offering wages that do not keep pace with inflation (a reduction from an annual 3% wage increase to .6%).

Refinery operations have continued by employing strikebreakers. Advertisements placed by Chevron offer pay of $70 an hour for non-union workers lacking adequate refinery experience, with the explicit mention of possible work for up to 5 months. Meanwhile, inflation has soared across the United States, and refinery workers must also contend with the skyrocketing costs of basic needs.

Unsurprisingly, the high cost of gas prices in California has been somewhat attributed to the labor action. The day the strike began, the Guardian wrote, “But if the strike were to halt operations at the refinery, that could negatively affect fuel prices in California, which already has the highest gas prices in the US at $5.86 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.” Meanwhile, Chevron just reported earnings of $6.3 billion for the first quarter (Q1) of 2022, compared with $1.4 billion in earnings during Q1 of 2021. 

It’s typical to see workers villainized when they go on strike—teachers are depriving students of needed support; nurses and doctors are leaving patients to die in their hospital beds. But it is Chevron, not the workers, that has put Richmond at risk for decades.