Organizing oil workers in a time of crisis

By Chelsea Carrick - Socialist Worker, February 24, 2016

The transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources is discussed primarily through an environmental lens--and for good reason. With the rapid depletion of planetary resources and the growing frequency of extreme weather events, it has become increasingly clear that capitalist forms of fossil-fuel extraction will continue to ignore the world's natural limits--even to the point of obliterating the possibility of life on earth.

But in addition to drawing awareness to environmental devastation and organizing resistance to it, it's also critical to organize in defense of the interests of the people who actually work in the fossil-fuel industry. The recent and dramatic collapse in oil prices illustrates why this is essential.

In circumstances like now, workers are more likely to harbor grievances against their employers as it becomes apparent just how precarious their seemingly stable jobs actually are. In recent months, workers are being laid off every day, and those once able to rely on overtime pay are seeing their hours cut. In communities where fossil fuels are the primary engine of economic growth, the entire local economy slumps.

In these communities, layoffs and spending cuts at energy firms mean increasingly unsafe working conditions for the workers who remain. Entire communities are facing a painful and rapid transition from boomtowns into economic wastelands.

CASPER, WYOMING, is one of these places. Nicknamed "Oil City" because of its long history as an oil-producing town, the oil industry is touted as the ultimate job creator. But the problem is that the industry that created this community is the same industry that's destroying it. And workers are noticing.

Workers in oil extraction facilities are six times more likely to die on the job than the average worker. Major oil companies can avoid responsibility for on-the-job deaths because federal regulators do not have a systematic way to record deaths in this field, and certain fatalities do not need to be included in OSHA reports. Additionally, diseases with a long latency are rarely reported.

Dennis, who has spent more than 25 years working in the oil industry, considers himself to have one of the safer jobs in the extraction process--while he simultaneously speaks of his inevitable death by lung cancer. He works in a warehouse that contains various petrochemicals and eight gas-powered forklifts, but there is no ventilation system in place.

When asked about the corporate logic that deprives workers of something so fundamental to their health, he responds simply, "Costs too much." This is what workers are realizing: to their companies, they are nothing more than a small part of a cost-benefit analysis in which their lives and livelihoods can be discarded for the sake of profit.

Dalton, a drill technician for Sperry Drilling, suffered from an attack of acute inflammation in the lining of his lungs after working in -23 degree cold a few winters ago. When asked why he didn't receive medical compensation, he responded that it was "his fault because he wasn't wearing his mask"--but he wasn't wearing his mask because "it made his goggles fog up so that he couldn't see what he was doing."

It's evident that worker safety is never high on an oil company's list of priorities, but this becomes completely obvious when oil companies hit hard times. Layoffs, skimping on safety standards, and speedup for remaining workers to make up for lost production in order to raise their bottom line become the order of the day.

Dennis explains the situation this way:

[The companies are] just not loyal to their people. They say they are. They say they're about safety. But they're not...We have one guy in Brighton, [Wyoming]. They said we're never going to have one person working by himself. But then they just laid the other guy off. It doesn't matter. They don't care about safety.

They should never have one guy working in a big warehouse by himself, handling all these trucks, but they laid off the one guy that worked with him. So I'm just saying, they're not about safety. They're not about anything except the bottom line...I used to like my company. I don't like my company anymore. The thing I hate about Halliburton is that they can afford to keep these people on. But they don't.

Vernon is a 67-year-old man who worked at an oil company for 34 years. He, like most people in the industry, had relied on the oil industry for this long because it is one of the few industries in the region that provides workers with enough compensation to support themselves and their families.

Due to his age and a history of health problems, he especially relied on the health benefits and higher-than-average salary, but since he was laid off, he has been forced to take a job at Walmart, where he earns less than half of what he earned previously.

DRUG ABUSE and addiction is also rife among workers in the oil sector. Andi, a woman who has always lived in oil-producing communities, cited long hours and difficult work as obvious contributors to the problem.

So many people are on meth because it's the only way to work all those hours. I had a friend up in Sheridan [Wyoming] who was working the oil field. He would leave at four in the morning to get to the oil field and then just work insanely long days. I don't know if he was on salary, or if he was compensated for all of those hours, but he started a mega meth habit. He was spending something like four to six grand on meth every couple of months. He worked two weeks on and two weeks off, so he would get really high for two weeks and then just crash for two weeks.

Halliburton was recently sued for $18.3 million for not adequately compensating workers for long hours in the field. Many were paid on salary and therefore did not receive an hourly wage, even though some were working up to 87 hours per week.

Despite the safety concerns, workers continue to flock to oil-producing jobs--when they're available. The high-school dropout rate in these communities is consistently high, because the lure of decent pay and benefits that can cover living expenses is too appealing to ignore for many young people.

But if they're later laid off or forced to leave due to injury, few alternatives exist. One woman who has lived in Wyoming her entire life remembered how vehicles were abandoned all around town during the collapse in oil prices in the 1980s.

Decades after the 1980s oil bust, Casper's economy still hasn't diversified--and the oil industry maintains its economic stranglehold on the city. Finding a way out of this cul-de-sac will require communities to recognize the cyclical damage caused by oil booms and busts. And it will require recognition that the fate of these towns is today intertwined with organizing to defend workers in the oil fields--and tomorrow to demand a transition away from the fossil-fuel extraction that threatens to render the planet uninhabitable toward green jobs that create energy using sustainable methods.

ORGANIZING OIL workers, however, poses a unique set of challenges. For one, workers who dare utter the word "union" usually find themselves immediately terminated. As Joe, who has worked on the periphery of the oil industry, put it:

There's no protection for you as an employee. So the culture is designed to keep you proud and happy so you show up the next day. They [the workers] have all of these extremely life-threatening things to do, but they don't have the luxury to pick apart their situation. They're like, "I get paid as much as I do to just shut up and fall in line and do whatever. And that's what I'm gonna do. And I'll adopt the work habits and ideologies of everyone that I'm working for because they're handing me more money than I could expect to see anywhere else."

There are also cultural difficulties associated with organizing in the oil industry. Antiquated notions of masculinity combined with a distinctive sense of industrial pride create a climate that is hostile to change.

In Casper, the industry is lionized: A statue depicting a group of young men gathered heroically around a drill marks entry into town. Downtown shops sell wine glasses and watercolor paintings imprinted with a romanticized image of the oil rig. There are whole murals dedicated to the industry and restaurants with names like Black Gold Grill.

This convinces workers on a daily basis that they are participating in a vital part of their town's success--that oil is essential, and their labor is the only way the town will survive.

So oil-producing communities as a whole are going to have to abandon industry patriotism in favor of workers' rights. We have to challenge the idea that workers' value is inseparable from the labor they perform, and we must explain that they can contribute more effectively to the community by organizing to demand better treatment and better, greener jobs in the future.

The role of climate activists is certainly crucial--but environmental activism in isolation can be alienating for workers because they feel as though their livelihood is being attacked--that their sole means to provide for themselves is being threatened.

This is a legitimate fear. Unless environmental activists stand with workers on issues like workers safety--unless they simultaneously argue to improve workers' lives now while standing for a sustainable future for the energy sector and the workers employed by it--then oil-field workers will not feel as though they have a reason to join such a fight.

OIL WORKERS are entitled to economic stability without risking their lives, without being denied basic dignity. The oil field, due to its dangerous conditions and inevitable cycle of destruction, will never offer this.

We need to address the underlying level of desperation in communities that make people take a job they know is unsustainable, one that may eventually kill them--or kill them very rapidly. We must look at the hardship that forces workers to ignore the persistent and undeniable fact that the companies employing them are causing the planet to deteriorate.

When workers are willing to overlook the dangers inherent in a job because it's one of the few that pays a living wage, then the problem runs far deeper than fossil fuels themselves.

Despite the challenges associated with organizing in this field, mass organization of fossil-fuel workers holds potential like little else. Because of heavy reliance on the industry and the workers' essential role in maintaining a consistent supply of fossil fuel based energy, this labor has a highly strategic location at the point of production.

These workers have the power to rapidly shut the system down. Whether they exercise that power and to what ends depends on how and when they get organized.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.