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United Steelworkers of America (USW)

Solidarity with strikers at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California

By Workers' Voice, East Bay - Socialist Resurgence, March 28, 2022

On March 23, members of Workers’ Voice went out to support striking refinery workers at the Chevron facility in Richmond, Calif. This strike is taking place in the wake of the United Steel Workers’ national oil pattern bargaining agreement with the oil companies, which covers some 30,000 workers at refineries and chemical plants across the country. The pattern bargaining agreement now only covers those 30,000 USW-organized oil and chemical workers whose contract expired this year on Feb. 1, which union locals had to ratify.

In Richmond, over 500 oil workers represented by USW Local 5 rejected the tentative agreement, as it was insufficient to meet their needs. They are thus striking over wages, hours, and other workplace issues, including being forced to work during the peak of the COVID pandemic. They have set up 24-hour pickets, with six-hour shifts. The union has created a solidarity fund and will cover basic expenses of workers who can’t pay their mortgage or get health care or food costs covered.

When we visited, the workers were picketing in shifts of a few dozen workers in front of the refinery gate, keeping up an optimistic mood of camaraderie and humor on a chilly, foggy day.

Many of the drivers of vehicles passing by the picket line honked their horns in support. However, a bothersome Richmond cop and one or two surly truckers wanting to drive into the facility—which the workers were trying to block—attempted, unsuccessfully, to dampen the positive atmosphere.

The grievances of the workers relate to wages and to other grievances as well. They need a raise to keep up with cost of living increases, especially in the brutally expensive Bay Area. They’re also confronting increased health-care costs. A worker told us that their new health-care plan would barely be covered by the wage increase of 2.5% currently on offer. This increase would also not keep up with inflation, which was 7% last year alone. Shopping for groceries is much more expensive now, workers we talked to said. In fact, they added, everything is more expensive.

Workers also talked about a manager who got a 10 percent raise to move up from Los Angeles. This upset workers because that manager is already making a good salary. Moreover, Chevron recently reported billions in profits, the most since 2014; but the boss always says there’s no money for workers.

But workers say they’re not just striking about money.

On The Line In The Fight For Justice: USW 5 Chevron Richmond Refinery Workers Strike

By Steve Zeltser - The Valley Labor Report - March 28, 2022

USW Local 5 striking Richmond Chevron refinery workers rallied with community members and supporters on March 28 2022 in front of the plant. Operators talked about the attack on health and safety conditions, 30% increases in healthcare costs and increasing stress, dangerous long hours and rotating shifts. Last year Chevron made $15.6 billion but obviously that is not enough for the company. Community and labor supporters also talked about health issues for workers and the community and the ongoing efforts that have been made to keep the plant safe.

The strike which included 500 union members started on Monday March 25, 2022 after the company according to workers continued to demand concessions and even wanted to negotiate away health and safety inspectors to keep the plant safe. In 2012, a major explosion nearly killed a fireman. The company managers even though they knew of a serious leak refused to shut he plant down to protect their profits according to workers. It also heavily contaminated the community which is still facing flaring and other dangerous practices by the company.

Additional media:

Hundreds of Chevron Workers Begin Strike as Company Refuses Further Bargaining

By Sharon Zhang - Truthout, March 21, 2022

On Monday, hundreds of Chevron workers in the San Francisco Bay Area went on strike after voting down the company’s latest contract offer, which workers say contained insufficient wage raises.

The contract, covering over 500 workers, was struck down by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5 members on Sunday. Workers were forced to go on strike after the company said that it had already offered its “last, best and final” contract, according to the union.

“It’s disappointing that Chevron would walk away from the table instead of bargaining in good faith with its dedicated work force,” Mike Smith, USW’s National Oil Bargaining Program chair, said in a statement. “USW members continued to report for work throughout the pandemic so our nation could meet its energy needs. They deserve a fair contract that reflects their sacrifice.”

The company has brought in workers to replace the union members, which it has been training for a year. The latest contract expired in February and workers have been operating under a rolling daily extension, according to the union.

The refinery workers say that one of the main reasons for the strike is insufficient wage raises. USW, which currently represents about 30,000 oil workers in negotiations with oil and chemical employers, reached a national agreement with refiners in February to raise wages by 12 percent over four years.

Local 5 had asked for an additional pay bump of 5 percent in order to account for higher costs of living in the San Francisco area, where it’s estimated that individuals must make at least $80,000 a year just to survive.

California Climate Jobs Plan Continues to Gain Union Endorsements

By That Green Union Guy - IWW Environmental Union Caucus - March 11, 2022

The California Climate Jobs Plan, popularly known as "the Pollin Report"--which has been described as a "sholvel ready just transition/Green New Deal" plan--and was immediately endorsed by nineteen California based labor unions, including three United Staeelworkers Union locals which primarily represent refinery workers upon its unveiling has since gained the support of many additional unions. The following unions (so far) have since endorsed the plan (knowing that while the plan isn't perfect, it's at least a step in a positive direction):

November 2021:

  • Inland Boatmen's Union (IBU), SF Bay Region (an affiliate of the ILWU)
  • Railroad Workers United
  • IWW San Francisco Bay Area General Membership Branch

February 2022:

  • International Lonshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Northern California District Council (NCDC)

The council is composed of delegates from the following ILWU Locals:

  • ILWU Local 6 (Bay Area Warehouse)
  • ILWU Local 10 (Bay Area Longshore)
  • ILWU Local 34 (Bay Area Shipping Clerks)
  • ILWU Local 75 (Bay Area Dock Security Guards)
  • ILWU Local 91 (Bay Area “Walking Bosses”)
  • ILWU Local 14 (Eureka; combined)
  • ILWU Local 18 (Sacramento; ditto)
  • ILWU Local 54 (Stockton)
  • Bay Area IBU (already endorsed individually)
  • and the pensioners from all of the above.

However, the NCDC's endorsement does not automatically mean that each of its constituent locals have individually endorsed the plan.

The more unions that endorse and take an active role in motivating the proposal either by lobbying at the California state level, engaging in public actions to promote the goals of the plan, or even engaging in workplace actions (whereaver relevant and practiceble), the greater chances the plan has of being realized.

(That said, it should be noted that this is not an IWW organizing project, although IWW members have been active in securing additional union endorsements).

A sample resolution (a copy of the text adopted by the SF Bay Area IBU) is available here.

Download the plan - here.

Richmond Progressive Alliance Listening Project, Episode 8: Union Proud

‘Just transition’ bill for oil industry workers exposes labor rift

By Jesse Bedayn - Cal Matters, February 17, 2022

A leading environmental lawmaker has proposed a bill that would create a state fund to support and retrain thousands of oil industry workers as California tries to phase out fossil fuel production.

The idea of guiding California’s 112,000 oil industry workers out of their current field and into other careers is often referred to as “just transition,” and is considered by policy researchers a necessary step to counter job losses as the state strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

But even with a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature, such a proposal faces an uphill battle because it’s pitting unions against unions.

Community and environmental groups say the state should start moving half the industry’s workforce out of oil fields, refineries and plants now in order to meet California’s goal of cutting 40% greenhouse gas emission by 2030. But a union that represents a portion of these workers has opposed efforts in the past. 

The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California – known as the Trades – which represents labor groups that include Ironworkers, electrical workers and Teamsters, worry about losing good-paying jobs. Last year, The Trades opposed a bill that would have prevented oil drilling near schools and communities, citing job losses. 

This time, however, the Trades is being countered by another group of unions including steelworkers, municipal workers and teachers. Although the current bill doesn’t specify an amount, those unions hope the state will dedicate $470 million annually for wage subsidies and training to help workers move into the growing green energy sector. 

Trades leaders say that beginning to dismantle the industry now will only push workers into lower-paid jobs. Instead, Trades officials say, the state should invest in big-ticket infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail and offshore wind projects that will create comparable jobs to what workers have been doing for decades.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi’s bill exposes a rift among labor unions on how the state should address the transition to a green economy at a time of growing income inequality and fewer well-paying jobs for middle-class workers. 

It also puts labor’s main organizing body, California Labor Federation, in an uncomfortable position after Steelworkers requested that the organization convene “labor to labor” talks on the subject. Both sides say talks haven’t happened yet.

Chevron refinery workers rally as contract expiration nears

By Joel Britton - The Militant, February 14, 2022

RICHMOND, Calif. — “Power in solidarity” read one of the signs carried by the more than 100 members of United Steelworkers Local 5 outside the main gate of the Chevron oil refinery here Jan. 27. The maintenance workers and process operators mobilized to press the union’s demand for a “significant” wage increase in the national oil bargaining negotiations with industry representative Marathon Petroleum. This is crucial to help workers meet the effects of rising prices.

And they were putting the company on notice that they’re ready to strike over working conditions and other local issues at Chevron, issues that are negotiated refinery by refinery after wages and other industrywide issues are settled.

On Jan. 31 the union rejected the company’s latest proposal — a 3% wage raise for each of next three years — and offered to keep working as long as further negotiations are fruitful.

“The corporations are making profits galore,” BK White told the Militant. White, an operator for 28 years and Local 5 vice president, highlighted how Chevron has taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to cut back on preventative maintenance. “The public will pay for these decisions,” pointing to the history of serious fires and explosions at the refinery.

Short staffing and lots of forced overtime, increasing burden of the costs of medical care, tightened disciplinary measures, and the soaring cost of living were among the issues the unionists discussed on the picket line with worker-correspondents for the Militant.

On Jan. 28 Steelworkers union negotiators rejected Marathon’s offer of a pay hike of only 1.3% for each of three years of new agreements for the 30,000 refinery and chemical-plant workers represented by the union. The current contract, which expires at midnight Jan. 31, had included 3.5% wage increases for the first two years and 4% in the final year.

Marathon’s “wage proposals to date are paltry,” the union said in a public statement. “In light of their earnings and dividends to shareholders, they are offensive.”

Exxon locked workers out of their jobs. Can workers lock Exxon out of a carbon capture deal?

By Amal Ahmed and Emily Pontecorvo - Grist, January 31, 2022

A union is warning Texas officials not to give Exxon money for carbon capture until it fixes its labor problems.

In Beaumont, Texas, working at one of Exxon Mobil’s plants has long been a way to earn steady wages and support a family in this industrial corner of the Gulf Coast. “We take care of more than just our immediate family,” said Darrell Kyle, the president of the local United Steelworkers chapter, the union representing workers at the plants. “We’re the uncles and aunts,” he said, who help “the struggling nieces or nephews who need a couple hundred dollars to get by, to pay a bill.” 

But for the past nine months, about 600 union employees at Exxon’s refinery and other plants have been struggling to pay their own bills: They have been locked out of their jobs because Exxon has been unable to come to an agreement with the union over a new contract. Kyle said that the company is refusing to honor protections for senior workers that have been in place for decades, while the union is demanding that those protections remain in place. At the end of last April, without a contract finalized and with the threat of a union strike pending, the company began escorting employees out of the complex, the Beaumont Enterprise, a local newspaper, reported. The company stated that the provisions the union was asking for were “items that would significantly increase costs and limit the company’s ability to safely and efficiently operate.”

Some workers, willing to take the deal Exxon was offering, began a campaign to decertify the union, which would end union representation at the plants. The United Steelworkers union believes that Exxon illegally assisted the campaign and has filed complaints with the National Labor Review Board. 

But in addition to using this legal channel to try to protect their union, the Steelworkers tried a different tactic. They started their own campaign to pressure Exxon into a deal — by undermining the company’s push for public money to build a $100 billion carbon capture hub in nearby Houston.

California Weighs Help for Oil Workers in Green Future

By Anne C Mulkern - Energy Wire, January 31, 2022

California officials are brainstorming how to help oil industry workers as the state moves to phase out fossil fuels and replace gasoline-powered vehicles with electric cars.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and legislators are talking to unions representing industry workers, and a new state Assembly document outlines potential solutions. But it’s a complex quandary, raising questions about whether to guarantee workers their current salaries and benefits as their jobs disappear.

“One of the major hurdles in transitioning existing fossil fuels activities to clean energy ones has been the potentially negative economic consequences to workers and communities,” according to a document from the Assembly Office of Policy and Research obtained by E&E News. “As the state implements its ambitious climate goals, there is an opportunity to assist workers impacted by the transition to a green economy.”

Nearly 112,000 people work in 14 fossil fuel and ancillary industries in California as of 2018, according to a report last year from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The total includes oil and gas extraction operations, and support activities, and sectors such as fossil-fuel-based power generation.

What California decides to do about oil industry workers has the potential to ripple beyond the nation’s most populous state, said Catherine Houston, legislative, political and rapid response coordinator with United Steelworkers District 12.That union represents many oil industry workers.

“California typically takes the lead in a lot of these types of things, and we become an example for other states across the nation,” Houston said. “So whatever we do can potentially serve as a federal model.”

Green Unionism against Precarity

By That Green Union Guy - IWW Environmental Union Caucus, January 1, 2022

Editor's Note: all but one or two of the links in this article link to multiple articles, located on the IWW Environmental Union Caucus site, categorized by topic. Therefore, it is to the reader's interest to explore all of the articles brought forth by each link, at their convenience (and that body of information is ever evolving over time).

An edited version of this article appears in New Politics 72.

In a real sense, under capitalism, all workers are "precarious", meaning that they can be downsized, replaced, deskilled, outsourced, etc. It's simply a matter of degrees.

The ultimate peak in precarity is "gig work" (which has actually always existed; the names simply keep changing, but the concept is the same).

Unions represent a check against precarity, though this occurs on a graduated scale. The stronger the union, the less the workers' precarity.

Union strength manifests in various ways: it can result from a well organized, international, militant democratic union (ideal, but rare, with few real world examples, such as ILWU, and the IWW, of course), though more often than not it's a result of concentration of elite craft workers in skilled trades unions, which represents a strong guard against precarity, but only for workers in the union, in which case, solidarity is limited.

Other checks against precarity include high demand for skilled craft workers in rare supply, High demand for hard to replace workers (such as workers that required skilled credentials, such as teachers or transport workers), or tight labor markets (which exist in our semi-post COVID-19 world, due to a combination of factors spelled out in the Vox article).

This is nothing more than class struggle 101, as expertly phrased by Karl Marx, et. al.

There are new forms of precarity emerging due to climate catastrophe (brought on by capitalism). Workers find themselves facing new health and safety hazards and/or threats to their working environment.

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