health and safety

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. 

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 2022

On April 29, activists from the environmental group Greenpeace USA and oil workers and Steelworkers Local 5 deployed a “boat picket” at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA composed of three Greenpeace boats floating in formation near the oil tanker delivery dock, with striking refinery workers, banners and picket signs on board.

According to Greenpeace Co-Executive Director Annie Leonard, “The boats intend to notify all incoming and outgoing tankers and tugs of their presence as a “picket line” and ask that they do not cross it by refusing to arrive at or leave the refinery’s dock.”

Why were Greenpeace boats and activists, famous for blocking whale hunts, supporting a strike by oil refinery workers? Annie Leonard explains:

Fossil fuel executives and their lobbyists have maintained their dominance by pretending to have the best interest of workers and communities at heart. But while they are raking in record profits (just this morning Chevron announced they brought in $6.3 billion in just the first quarter this year), they are holding out on fair pay and safe working conditions. That’s why we chose to show up for fossil fuel workers. The only way we can break these companies’ stranglehold on our wallets, our communities, and the planet is by standing together in the call for a livable future.

She adds,

Nearly 500 workers from Chevron’s Richmond refinery have been on strike for over a month as they demand a fair contract from Chevron’s greedy executives. Greenpeace believes that walking our walk in our commitment to a just economic future for all communities means that in the meantime, we must be dedicated to struggle alongside oil workers against the industry that is not giving them a fair shake. Today’s protest is the next step in displaying a powerful front of environmentalists and workers united against fossil fuel corporations. If we stand (or sometimes float) together, we can win.

Greenpeace activist Ben Smith tweeted from a floating picket boat, “We’re also out here to walk the walk. It’s past time for the workers movement and the environmental movement to build bonds of solidarity because our fates are bound up together.”

By Ian Lindsley and Tony Musu - European Trade Union Institute, May 2022

(Including cytotoxics and based on the EU CLP classification system of Carcinogenic, Mutagenic and Reprotoxic (CMR) substances)

Workers exposed to hazardous medicinal products (HMPs), or hazardous drugs, which are carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substances (CMRs), within the meaning of the recently adopted Carcinogens, Mutagens and Reprotoxic Substances Directive (CMRD – Directive (EU) 2022/431), must be given specific training by their employers to prevent risks of adverse effects on their health.

In order to help employers meet their obligations, the European Commission has to publish European guidelines for the safe management of HMPs at work, including cytotoxics, by the end of 2022, and must draw up a definition and establish an indicative list of HMPs that are CMRs, no later than 5 April 2025.

The objective of this ETUI report and the list included is to identify which HMPs fall under the legislative scope of the CMRD in Europe, so that users of the European 2022 guidelines know which specific HMPs the guidelines now apply to, well ahead of the Commission’s indicative list, to be published by 2025.

Read the report (Link).

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 2022

A growing convergence between climate protection and worker justice is embodied in a new report from Warehouse Workers for Justice titled “For Good Jobs and Clean Air: How a Just Transition to Zero Emission Vehicles Can Transform Warehousing.”

Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ) is a worker center founded in 2008 to win “stable, living wage jobs with dignity” for the hundreds of thousands of workers in Illinois’ logistics and distribution industry. WWJ “provides workshops about workplace rights, unites warehouse workers to defend their rights on the job, builds community support for the struggles of warehouse workers and fights for public and private policies that promote full-time work at decent wages in the warehouse industry.”

The new report, which includes both scientific information and vivid accounts by warehouse workers themselves, documents the toxic, diesel-driven air quality, public health, and labor impacts of warehousing at the nation’s largest inland port, Will County, IL. Its findings were generated by community-driven air quality monitoring, truck counting, and interviews.

The report finds that through environmental racism and poor labor standards, companies like Amazon put their predominantly Black and Latine workers at a “double jeopardy” of exploitation on the shop floor and toxic air pollution in the community.

The report shows that the transition to electric trucks creates an opportunity to uplift labor standards for warehouse workers and truckers while mitigating diesel-related public health crises — but only if the shift to EVs adequately prioritizes workers and residents.

By Kenny Stancil - Common Dreams, April 30, 2022

In an act of solidarity with Chevron workers fighting for a new labor contract as executives boast of a record-breaking quarter, Greenpeace USA campaigners joined United Steelworkers Local 5 union members on Friday to expand the picket line onto the waters of San Francisco Bay.

Nearly 500 workers from Chevron's oil refinery in Richmond, California have been on strike for more than a month in what USW Local 5 vice president B.K. White calls "a movement of working people rising up to challenge a corporation." 

Chevron announced Friday that its profits surged to $6.3 billion during the first three months of 2022—four times as much as the fossil fuel giant pulled in over the same period last year, as Common Dreams reported. That prompted fresh calls from progressives for a windfall tax to prevent further price gouging and war profiteering by Big Oil and underscored one of the reasons why workers are demanding better pay.

"What's the answer to corporate greed?" Greenpeace asked on social media. "Solidarity!"

By B.K. White and Steve Zeltser - Labor Video Project, April 27, 2022

By Emily Hofstaedter - Mother Jones, April 19, 2022

At 5:30 p.m., December 10 of last year, they heard the unmistakable wail of tornado sirens. Some of the workers crafting cinnamon, pumpkin spice, and vanilla candles asked to go home: Western Kentucky’s Mayfield Consumer Products plant, with its vulnerable wide-span roof, was the kind of building to avoid in a storm.

Staff were first told to shelter in a hallway. But they were soon ordered back to the factory floor to finish their ten-hour shifts. Leave, managers warned, and you’re fired. The threat worked.

Just after 9 p.m., the sirens wailed again. The tornado obliterated the Mayfield plant. Eight workers died.

Mayfield’s management, according to a survivors’ class-action suit, was aware of the danger—forecasters had been predicting major tornadoes all week—and had rejected a request by floor supervisors to stop work for the day. But the firm’s other plant, just six miles away, did shut down for the storm. The difference? The first factory was working overtime to ship candles for the lucrative Christmas rush.

The company now faces a state investigation, but it doesn’t have much reason to worry: thanks to weak state and federal worker protections, companies responsible for on-the-job deaths pay an average fine of $12,000. That’s if the laws are enforced—a 2019 federal audit found that Kentucky “failed to properly investigate nearly every single worksite death” in a two-year period, and its safety record’s far from the worst.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, April 2, 2022

On the 5 year anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people, the Clean Up Kingspan campaign held a vigil in Downtown Los Angeles at a Capitol Group HQ building– one of Kingspan’s largest outside stakeholders. An ongoing UK government Inquiry revealed that for over 14 years, Kingspan’s UK insulation division misrepresented fire safety issues with Kooltherm K15, one of the products used in the Grenfell Tower. The vigil was attended by SMART members, clergy, environmentalists, and local activists.

This tragedy is not the first time the building materials manufacturing company, Kingspan, has betrayed the public’s trust. Kingspan workers in Santa Ana, CA are standing up to Kingspan and its so-called ‘green’ manufacturing processes that are polluting the indoor air and local watershed. These factory workers are organizing to demand safe working conditions, including addressing unhealthy levels of PM2.5 pollution inside the workplace that they measured in collaboration with UC Irvine pollution scientist Dr. Shahir Masri. The workers also blew the whistle on Kingspan for misrepresenting its daily operations and water pollution clean-up efforts to the CalEPA.

The Labor Network for Sustainability was proud to organize a virtual teach-in about the Kingspan factory worker’s efforts for our environmental and climate allies. Together, we gathered over 45 organizational signatures to pressure the Green Buildings Community to stop partnering with Kingspan.

At the vigil, I shared an important update; the pressure worked! The U.S. Green Buildings Council has responded by removing Kingspan from the USGBC-Live Platinum Sponsor list!

Now it’s time for Capitol Group to join them and do the right thing. We call on Capitol Group to divest from Kingspan!

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.