British Petroleum (BP)

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 15, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• Support the USW Oil Workers ULP Strike and Defense Fund - USW Fundraising Appeal

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• [Photos] USW Tesoro Picket 2/12/15 (Martinez, California) - United Steelworkers, February 12, 2015
• At my oil refinery, my life is worth the price of a pie; We don’t want to be exposed to potentially fatal hazards unnecessarily. That’s why we’ve organised the largest strike since 1980 to demand worker safe - By Butch Cleve, The Guardian, February 12, 2015
• Health and Safety Concerns Forced Workers into a Work Stoppage [Podcast] - By Steve Garey, United Steelworkers, February 9, 2015
• The same fight; Nurses support the United Steelworkers on their strike lines - By Lucia Hwang, National Nurses United, February 15, 2015 [related] Nurses support refinery protest - By Rick Hurd, San Jose Mercury News, February 13, 2015
• Shell, union spar over picket line etiquette - By LM Sixel, FuelFix, February 13, 2015
• Three U.S. Oil Plants Targeted by Union Strike Report Upsets - By Lynn Doan and Daniel Murtaugh, Bloomberg, February 11, 2015
• USW Striking Oil Workers Speakout For Health And Safety At Tesoro Refinery [video] - By Steve Zeltser, Labor Video Project, February 12, 2015
• Washington Refinery Workers Protest for Better Working and Safety Conditions; Thirteen workers were killed in accidents at two refineries in the state in recent years - By Jonathan Rosenblum, Alternet, February 10, 2015
• [Another Strike?] 1,100 natural gas utility workers on Long Island eye walkout - Associated Press, February 12, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Apache slashing Eagle Ford drilling rigs - By Jennifer Hiller, FuelFix, February 13, 2015
• Cenovus to cut 15% of staff, freeze pay - By Michael Allan McCrae, Mining.Com, February 12, 2015
• Driller: More than 1,000 field hands out of work as rigs decline - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 12, 2015
• Hercules Offshore lays off 30 percent of workforce - By Ryan Holeywell, FuelFix, February 12, 2015
• Mirroring oil, this fossil fuel is plunging, too - By John W. Schoen, CNBC, February 11, 2015
• Texas idles more drilling rigs - By Jennifer Hiller, FuelFix, February 13, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• California labor: "There are no jobs on a dead planet" - By Michelle Kern & Alex Farr, People's World, February 10, 20155

Global Anti-Capitalism:

• The Debt Slavery Must End to Prevent Environmental Catastrophes: Will Greece Kick Start a Paradigm Shift? - By Stefano Balbi, Common Dreams, February 10, 2015

Other News:

• Constitution Pipeline Threatening 7 PA Landowners With Un-Constitutional Eminent Domain - Energy Justice Summer, February 14, 2015
• Death toll in Brazil offshore oil platform explosion climbs to 5 - Natural Gas Watch, February 11, 2015 [related] Death toll of Brazilian oil ship explosion rises to 5 - Associated Press, February 12, 2015
• Enormous Toxic Cloud Shrouds Six Towns In Spain After Blast At Chemical Plant (VIDEOS) - By Dylan Hock, Addicting Info, February 12, 2015
• Exclusive: Exxon wants five-year Beaumont pact to avert strikes during buildout - By Erwin Seba, Reuters, February 12, 2015
• Growing voices say gig workers need protections, benefits - By Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2015
• Homophobic culture permeates mining industry - By Ashley Renders, Corporate Knights, February 6, 2015
• Libya reopens strike-hit oil port as U.N. convenes talks - By Ahmed Elumami, Reuters, February 10, 2015
• The Lumber Man In Charge of Climate Policy; Bay Area billionaire Robert Fisher profits by logging California's North Coast forests, even as Governor Jerry Brown has tapped him to help implement the state's anti-global warming agenda - By Will Parrish, East Bay Express, February 11, 2015
• Peru anti-oil protest leaves 1 dead, 22 wounded - Associated Press, February 11, 2015
• VT Gas pulls the plug on pipeline expansion to NY - By Dan D’Ambrosio, Burlington Free Press, February 10, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 10, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• An Oil Worker & a Union Staffer Explain Why 1,000s of Oil Workers Across the Country Are On Strike - By David Bacon, In These Times, February 12, 2015 [related] USW Web Petition: Safe Refineries Save Lives!

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• Climate activists have to stand with the strikers - By Ragina Johnson, Socialist Worker, February 12, 2015
• Labor talks to resume Tuesday - By L.M. Sixel, FuelFix, February 9, 2015 [related] Oil Union Says Shell Talks to Resume in a Week Amid Strike - By Lynn Doan, Bloomberg, February 11, 2015
• Nurses Stand in Solidarity with Steelworkers Amid Safety Concerns - National Nurses United, February 9, 2015
• Oil Workers Are Striking Because They're Underpaid and Overworked—and It's Killing Them - By Rebecca Leber, New Republic, February 10, 2015
• Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the USW Oil Workers’ Unfair Labor Practice Strike - By Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO, February 11, 2015
• Striking Oil Workers Say They’re Fighting Deadly Working Conditions - By Rebecca Burns, In These Times, February 11, 2015
• Tesoro Refinery strike moves into second week - By Laura Anthony, KGO ABC 7 News, February 10, 2015
• USW Building International Solidarity; Steelworkers President Seeks Meeting with Shell CEO - United Steelworkers, February 9, 2015

Rail Safety:

• Teamsters give CP Rail 72-hour strike notice; 3,330 locomotive engineers and conductors could walk off the job this weekend - By Tracy Johnson, CBC News, February 10, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Abandon ship! Riggers flee the collapsing shale oil industry - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, February 11, 2015
• FMC Technologies to cut about 2,000 jobs - By Collin Eaton, Fuel Fix, February 11, 2015
• Fracking Industry in “Severe Crisis” - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, February 11, 2015
• Global oil layoffs exceed 100,000 - Bloomberg, February 12, 2015
• Halliburton to cut 5,000 to 6,500 jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 10, 2015
• Oil budgets slashed to protect shareholder dividends - By Joshua Cain, Fuel Fix, February 9, 2015
• Oil layoffs could come back to haunt the industry - By Tom DiChristopher, CNBC, February 10, 2015
• Why Public Banks Outperform Private Banks: Unfair Competition or a Better Mousetrap? - By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog, February 10, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• Solar Jobs Boom Makes Keystone XL Pipeline Look Like A Tinker Toy - By Tina Casey, Clean Technica, February 12, 2015
• Texas solar jobs increasing - By Ryan Honeywell, FuelFix, February 12, 2015

Global Anti-Capitalism:

• Can Bolivia Chart a Sustainable Path Away From Capitalism? - By Chris Williams and Marcela Olivera, Truthout, January 28, 2015
• Naomi Klein on how to build a more kick-ass climate movement - By Staff, Grist, February 10, 2015
• Photos: Coal strike in Poland intensifies - Al Jazeera, February 9, 2015
• Polish Farmers Blockade Motorways Across Country - La Via Campesina, February 10, 2015
• Syria’s Kurdish Revolution; the Anarchist Element & the Challenge of Solidarity - By Bill Weinberg, Fifth Estate, Spring 2015 [related] The No State Solution: Institutionalizing Libertarian Socialism in Kurdistan - By Alexander Kolokotronis, New Politics, November 2, 2014

An Injury to One is an Injury to All!:

• Rising Tide North America Statement of Solidarity with Anti-Fossil Fuel Activists in the Northwest - By Rising Tide North America, February 9, 2015

Other News:

• A City Where Everyone Works, There is No Police, and the Salary is 1200 Euros - Live Travel Enjoy, February 6, 2015
• Court denies appeal by worker who claimed fracking chemicals blinded him - By Matt Miller, The Patriot News, February 11, 2015
• The looming climate catastrophe - By Chris Williams, Socialist Worker, February 4, 2015
• Making occupational illness visible: a call for a coalition between scientists and workers - European Trade Union Institute, February 10, 2015
• Market no solution to climate catastrophe - By James Plested, Red Flag, January 29, 2015
• It May Not Be Making Headlines But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Over….Update on EBOLA [audio] - By Pattie Lockard, Nurse Talk Radio, February 10, 2015
• Oil ship explosion in Brazil kills three, union says - Associated Press, February 11, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 10, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• Demanding Respect for Worker Safety - by Leo Gerard, International President, USW, Huffington Post, February 9, 2015 [related] USW Web Petition: Safe Refineries Save Lives!
• Thousands of USW Oil Workers, Supporters Take Action in National Day of Action for Safe Refineries, Secure Jobs, and Healthy Communities - By Kate Aronoff, United Steelworkers Press Release, February 9, 2015

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• Carson’s Tesoro refinery one of 9 U.S. locations being picketed by United Steelworkers during strike - By Sandy Mazza, Daily Breeze, February 2, 2015
• Largest Steelworkers Strike in Decades Shows No Signs of Abating - By Kate Aronoff, Truthout, February 9, 2015
• Members from District 12 Rally on National Day of Action; Photos from Carson, CA., of the rally of members, their families and supporters for oil workers. Early crowd estimates set at 2,000 people - United Steel Workers Press Release, February 9, 2015
• Steelworkers rally at two local refineries to support strikers in other states - By Jane M. Von Bergen, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 7, 2015
• Two BP refineries join steelworkers’ strike; One BP plant is in Toledo; consumer worries could push gasoline higher - By David Koenig, Associated Press, February 9, 2015
• USW, Allies in Europe United in Fight for Safety at Oil Refineries; Striking Union Members Join Forces with Workers in UK, Netherlands - United Steel Workers Press Release, February 9, 2015
• USW Local 241 Members and their Families Rally in Support of National Oil Bargaining Policy Committee - By Jane M. Von Bergen, United Steel Workers Press Release, February 8, 2015
• United Steelworkers Widens Oil Refinery Strike - By Jane M. Von Bergen, Al Jazeera and Reuters, February 8, 2015

Rail Safety:

• CP Rail train conductor speaks out on her firing after Banff derailment - CBC News, February 9, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Baker Hughes to lay off 110, close plant in North Texas - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 9, 2015

March for Real Climate Leadership:

• KPFA FM Livestream of the March for Real Climate Leadership in Oakland, California | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | - February 7, 2015

Other News:

• Environmental justice sought for people of color, poor; Symposium participants share stories, strategies of taking on big industry, agriculture - By Rona Kobell, Bay Journal, January 15, 2015
• Pink Is Not Green: Companies That Support Fighting Cancer Should Not Use Chemicals That Cause It - Annie Sartor, EcoWatch, February 9, 2015
• PA Gov. Wolf Issued 73 Fracking Permits in Two Weeks, On Pace for 7,300 in First Term - By Jane M. Von Bergen, Energy Justice Summer, February 9, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 9, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• BP Cleanup Crews, Refinery Workers, Fenceline Communities and the Effects of API-Funded Science - By Karen Savage, Bridge the Gulf, February 6, 2015
• Building unions return to Kentucky refinery despite Steelworkers' Picketlines - By Jarrett Renshaw, Reuters, February 6, 2015
• CBE Supports Striking Refinery Workers - Communities for a Better Environment, February 7, 2015
• First Nationwide Oil Worker Strike In Decades Grows Even Bigger - By Ari Phillips, Think Progress, February 8, 2015
• Steelworkers strike extends to BP plants outside Texas - By LM Sixel, FuelFix, February 7, 2015
• Supporters join steelworkers on strike at Tesoro: Union leaders call for nationwide “Day of Action” as a sign of solidarity - By Evan Marczynski , Go Skagit, February 8, 2015
• Union says U.S. refinery strike widened; cites unfair labor practices - By Erwin Seba, Reuters, February 7, 2015
• US Oil-Worker Strike Reaches BP Plants With Talks on Hold - By Lynn DoanAngela and Greiling Keane, Bloomberg, February 6, 2015
• USW Oil Workers at BP Refineries in Indiana and Ohio Join Unfair Labor Practice Strike - By Lynne Hancock and Tony Montana, USW Press Release, February 7, 2015
• United Steelworkers rally in downtown Houston after rejecting Shell contract offer - By LM Sixel, FuelFix, February 6, 2015
• White House urges USW to strangle oil workers’ strike - By Jerry White and E.P. Bannon, World Socialist Website, February 6, 2015

Crude by Rail:

• CP Rail, Teamsters union tensions near boiling point; Latest fight involves union members training management to drive trains - By Kyle Bakx, CBC News, February 6, 2015
• Teamsters Membership Authorize Strike Action at CP - By Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, CNW, February 7, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Baker Hughes to close plant, cut 60 jobs in Louisiana - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 6, 2015
• Siemens to cut 7,800 employees - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 6, 2015
• The Oil Price Collapse Is Not Just Another Bust Cycle - By Michael T. Klare, The Nation, February 4, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• Syriza can show ‘another energy is possible’ - By Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, February 7, 2015

March for Real Climate Leadership:

• Anti-Fracking Protest Shuts Down California State Building, Street - Earth First! Newswire, February 6, 2015
• Anti-Fracking Activists Stage Direct Action in San Francisco, 12 Arrested - Rising Tide North America, February 6, 2015
• Californians March for Real Climate Leadership Against Fracking - Revolution News, February 7, 2015
• 'Game-Changing March for Climate' as Californians Rise Up Against Fracking; Thousands kick off protest to demand Governor Jerry Brown halt toxic drilling in stated - By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, February 7, 2015
• Protesters march in Oakland, push for Jerry Brown to ban fracking - By Victoria Colliver, San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 2015

Other News

• Bulgarian anarcho-syndicalists protest railway cuts, privatization’ - By Karetelnik, Libcom.org, February 5, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By Naomi Wilkins, Frack Free Manchester - People and Planet, November 10, 2014; image by Ianthe Sinferno

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.

For the last few months, we have faced an onslaught of unpleasant, greenwashing advertising from fossil fuel companies. Shell and their “we’ll keep the lights on when she’s grown up” billboard, featuring a photo of a child reading in bed, complete with an oh-so-ironic polar bear toy on her bedside cabinet and a brief note about their investment in “mixed energy sources”. BP’s sickening, “we’re inspiring young people in our schools to think innovatively” nonsense campaign. And, of course, Southern Electric with their strange and downright confusing ghostly orangutang images. All of these seek draw our attention away from the horrors of fossil fuels to thoughts of sustainability, education and cute children.

But BP’s new campaign is taking these diversion techniques one step further with a pinkwash. A new poster advertises their LGBT specific careers event with large (and environmentally green) text that reads, “I discovered a business that takes pride in all its employees”. This sickening advert is, once again, attempting to paint BP as a friendly, responsible company who do nice things like being “committed to diversity”. But this thin facade quickly crumbles to reveal a company dripping in environmental disaster.

BP’s reckless conduct led to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, named by Obama as “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced”. It has caused untold destruction to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as harm to human health. And this is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the havoc BP are wreaking on this planet and its inhabitants.

By Esther Kaplan - The Nation, November 2, 2014

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.

Jessica Wheeler works the night shift as an oncology nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania—but her patients are usually wide awake. “When they have a new cancer diagnosis or they’re going to have a biopsy in the morning, they don’t sleep,” says the 25-year-old Wheeler (which is not her real name). “They’re scared.” Other patients are in their final hours of life, surrounded by grieving family. What she wants is to be there to comfort them, to talk them through those difficult hours, to hold their hands and attend to their pain. But, mostly, she can’t.

According to hospital policy, night nurses on her floor should care for no more than six and a half patients, but they typically have ten. When things go bad with one or two, the floor quickly tips into chaos.

Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn’t breathe and several others under her care. “I called the supervisor to ask for anybody—a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn’t get it, and my patient ended up coding.” Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early the next morning, her heartbeat became irregular just as another patient was dying. “Those nights are scary,” Wheeler says. “I think I’ve seen everybody on our floor cry.”

Another young nurse describes a shift when she had only been on the job a few months and was saddled with ten patients, including one whose incision was leaking badly, requiring her to administer blood all night long. “I was drowning,” the nurse says. She called for help multiple times, but it never came. At the 7 am shift change, she confused two patients’ blood-sugar numbers and medicated the wrong one.

Wilkes-Barre was not always this out of control. For decades, it was a nonprofit community hospital serving the onetime coal town. It was bought in 2009 by what is now the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare chain, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, which operates 207 hospitals in twenty-nine states. The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), the nurses’ union, counts fifty-one fewer nurses since the CHS acquisition, a reduction of more than 10 percent—and that’s on top of the elimination of dozens of nursing aides and secretaries. The nurses are not only juggling more patients, says Fran Prusinski, a critical-care nurse who’s been at the hospital for thirty years, but “they have to change the linens, empty the garbage and answer the phones.”

Some of the job’s intensity is due to broad national trends in healthcare. The rise of HMOs and cost-cutting in the 1990s mean patients who are stable and ambulatory—some nurses call them “walkie-talkies”—are now quickly released, so those left in the hospital tend to be sicker and harder to care for. “The patients we’re taking care of on a general medical floor now were the patients twenty years ago we took care of in an ICU [intensive-care unit] with a 2-to-1 patient-to-nurse ratio,” says Elaine Weale, an ER nurse who’s been at the hospital for thirty-three years. “Now that nurse may have five patients, six patients, seven patients.” And as technology has advanced, gravely ill patients who once would have died are now being kept alive, requiring constant care.

But the crush of work these nurses face also exemplifies a hidden side of the recent economic recovery: in industry after industry, speedups are turning work into a hazard, with increasing numbers of injuries and dangerous levels of stress. While 18.6 million people remain underemployed, millions of others are working more hours, and more intensely, than ever. This is especially true in certain industries, from oil refineries to retail to publishing, where federal data shows labor productivity has risen at double or more the national rate. A 2010 survey of people registered with Monster.com found that 53 percent of respondents had taken on additional duties since the start of the recession because co-workers had been laid off—almost all of them without any additional compensation. A 2010 report from the Center for American Progress and the Hastings Center for WorkLife Law found that overwork was a particular problem among professionals: 14 percent of women and 38 percent of men were working more than fifty hours a week. But it has become common in industrial occupations as well. “When time and a half for overtime was established by federal law, that was really a job-creation measure, so it would cost less to hire a new worker,” says Mike Wright, the United Steelworkers’ director of health and safety. “But starting in the late 1970s, the cost of benefits exceeded that extra pay cost, and it became cheaper to work your existing workers harder.”

* * *

American workers do work longer hours than we did a generation ago, according to some analyses, and hundreds more per year than our counterparts in France or Germany—the equivalent of six to eight extra weeks a year. We top the Eurozone nations in productivity by 18 percentage points. “Every month the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] releases its worker-productivity numbers, which measure output per labor hour worked,” says Celeste Monforton, a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) staffer. Montforton, now at the George Washington University School of Public Health, points out that the numbers “go up every month. And that’s because businesses are not hiring new workers; they’re just expecting the old workers to work more, and spitting them out after they get injured.” Some of these gains come from the adoption of new technologies, but others just come from pushing workers harder.

A 2013 survey of its own union reps by the United Steelworkers, which represents such blue-collar industries as oil and steel, found that production pressures, the increased pace of work and increased workloads topped workplace health concerns—outstripping more obvious risks such as poorly maintained equipment. When the reps were asked to give an example of a health or safety problem that had gotten worse over the past year, understaffing led the list. The jobless recovery, in other words, is sustained in part by aggressively overworking those with jobs.

Take the meatpacking industry. By age 39, Juan Martinez, who worked at a Cargill beef processing plant near Omaha, had hands so disfigured from making repetitive cuts that he could no longer work; he is now surviving on disability. He still experiences pain so intense it feels like nails are being hammered into his fingers. His crew had to slice up 4,600 twenty- to thirty-pound pieces per shift. In the four years he was at the plant, from 2003 to 2006, the number of people at his station dropped from eight to six or seven, while the parts kept coming. Since they couldn’t keep up with the line when someone took a bathroom break, supervisors responded by simply denying break requests. “There are people who would pee in their pants,” he told me, “because they didn’t give them permission to go.”

Another meatpacking worker, whom I’ll call Porfirio, worked on the kill line at XL Four Star Beef (now JBS) in Omaha for twenty-seven years. When he started, he says, they killed 1,000 cattle in a ten-hour shift; now they kill 1,100 in eight and a half hours. At night, when he goes to bed, his hands hurt so much that he has trouble falling asleep; when he wakes up in the morning, he can’t move them at all. Everyone talked about popping enormous doses of Tylenol; some talked about pressure so intense it left them depressed. “The Speed Kills You,” a 2009 report from the nonprofit organization Nebraska Appleseed, was based on a survey of 455 meatpacking workers; it cataloged a range of injuries, from cuts, falls and fractures to musculoskeletal and repetitive-strain injuries, attributed mainly to “uninterrupted line speed.” Three-quarters of respondents said line speed had increased in their plant over the past year.

Line speeds in meatpacking and poultry are federally regulated for food safety only, not worker safety. Last year, the USDA proposed to raise the cap on poultry line speeds from 140 to an almost unimaginable 175 birds a minute, even though hand and wrist injuries were already rampant in the industry. A government study of one poultry plant in March of this year found that 41 percent of the workers already exceed safe limits for hand activity, and 42 percent showed evidence of carpal tunnel syndrome.

By Jess Worth; lead image by Jenna Pope - New Internationalist, November 2014

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.

In September 2014, the $860 million Rockefeller Foundation made an historic announcement. Timed to coincide with massive marches for climate action all over the world, the fund revealed it was going to divest from fossil fuels. Following in the footsteps of the World Council of Churches, the British Medical Association and Stanford University, the latest major institution to make such an announcement is also the most symbolic. Because the Rockefeller fortune owes its very existence to oil.

The Rockefeller story is also the story of the rise and fall of the first ‘oil major’. Standard Oil, founded by John D Rockefeller in 1870, soon came to control the burgeoning US oil industry, from extraction to refining to transportation to retail.

It built an unprecedented monopoly that ultimately became so publicly despised that the US government stepped in and broke it up – birthing Exxon, Mobil and Chevron, among others. But by then, Standard had already set the Western world on a path to oil dependence that we are still shackled to, chain-gang-style, today.

The forced break-up created the Rockefeller millions. A century later, those millions are being used to make a dramatic point: we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the oil age.

By Joseph E. Aldy - Common Resources, August 22, 2014

On April 20, 2010, the Transocean Deepwater Horizon suffered a catastrophic blowout while drilling in a BP lease in the Gulf of Mexico’s Macondo Prospect. This accident resulted in the largest oil spill in US history and an unprecedented spill response effort. Due to the ongoing spill and concerns about the safety of offshore oil drilling, the US Department of the Interior suspended offshore deep water oil and gas drilling operations on May 27, 2010, in what became known as the offshore drilling moratorium. The media portrayed the impacts of these events on local employment, with images of closed fisheries, idle rigs, as well as boats skimming oil and workers cleaning oiled beaches.

In a new RFF discussion paper, “The Labor Market Impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Moratorium,” I estimate and examine the net impact of the oil spill, the drilling moratorium, and spill response on employment and wages in the Gulf Coast. The spill and moratorium represented unexpected events in the region, and the resulting economic impacts varied within and among the Gulf states. Coastal counties and parishes were expected to bear the vast majority of the burden of these two events, while inland areas were expected to be largely unaffected. The moratorium was expected to affect Louisiana—with significant support of the offshore drilling industry—but not, for example, Florida, which had no active drilling off of its coastline. Beyond the economic impacts, the timing and magnitude of the spill response varied across the states over the course of the spill as well.

Despite predictions of major job losses in Louisiana resulting from these events, I find that the most oil-intensive parishes in Louisiana experienced a net increase in employment and wages. In contrast, Gulf Coast Florida counties south of the Panhandle experienced a decline in employment. Analysis of the number of business establishments, worker migration, accommodations industry employment and wages, sales tax data, and commercial air arrivals likewise show positive economic activity impacts in the oil-intensive coastal parishes of Louisiana and reduced economic activity along the non-Panhandle Florida Gulf Coast. The billions of dollars of spill response and clean-up mobilized over the course of the spring and summer of 2010 positively impacted economic activity, similar to the effect of fiscal stimulus. The geographic variation in labor market impacts reflects the focus of spill response efforts in Louisiana and the absence of oil and thus spill response along the Gulf coast of Florida south of the Panhandle.

Read the report (PDF).

By Cherri Foytlin - The Life Support Project, October 6, 2014

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.

Undeterred by the blazing sun and high humidity of a mid-August afternoon in Biloxi, Mississippi, Tuat Nguyen and Bien Do moved nimbly around their shrimp boat, making last-minute preparations to leave for Lake Borgne, where the Louisiana shrimp season would open in a few days. Watching them work, moving with ease from one end of the boat to the other, climbing up and down, it was hard to believe both are in their seventies and each has been making a living on the water for more than six decades.

While Bien made final preparations to depart– they’d already had mechanical problems earlier that day – Tuat, who speaks only a little English, invited community leader and interpreter Thao Vu and myself to sit down for a few minutes at the small table in the boat’s tidy galley.

Tuat says her father taught her how to shrimp when she was only 8 or 9 years old. The invention of GPS and modern technology were still decades away, so at night the moon and the stars were their guide. She remembers following the sun during the day, following it as it moved from east to west. Everything was done by hand. Someone would blow a horn to guide them into the dock after dark.

She says her husband, Bien, can’t remember a time he didn’t work on a boat. He’s a hardworking oyster fisherman and a shrimper, livelihoods that go back generations.

After leaving Vietnam, they settled in Biloxi, drawn by the warm Gulf waters where they could make a living dredging for oysters and shrimping. The Gulf’s abundance and their own hard work allowed them to be productive, independent and part of a thriving community.

But that was before BP.