Bay Area

By Katt Ramos, et. al. - Maya Media, May 28, 2023

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

By Iris Kwok - Berkeleyside, May 4, 2023

Workers at Berkeley’s Ecology Center voted to unionize roughly two months after announcing the union drive. 

The workers, including farmers market administrators and staff at the center’s San Pablo Avenue store, voted 12-0 to join the Industrial Workers of the World’s San Francisco Bay Area branch, organizers announced Thursday. A 13th ballot was challenged over a dispute on whether the youth program assistant could be in the union, but it did not impact the election results.

Workers have said they are unionizing for inflation-based cost of living adjustments, worker protections and to address favoritism. Farmers market manager Aimee Hutton told Berkeleyside in February the workers began organizing as a group in the summer of 2021 to communicate their needs to management, especially as the center’s lowest-paid workers struggled to cover the cost of living in the Bay Area. A job posting for a store program associate in 2021 ranged from $16.50 to $18.93. Organizers have declined to share current wages.

“I know that it’s the only way for workers to have a real say over our work,” said organizer Lucy Boltz in a news release. “Having a union will give me, my coworkers, and workers after me a way to be protected, decide what we need, and directly negotiate for it.”

Union organizers had previously said the Ecology Center employs 20 non-managerial workers, yet only 13 workers could vote in the election. Martin Bourque, the Ecology Center’s executive director, did not immediately respond to an email and phone call requesting comment. 

The Ecology Center was founded in 1969 and as of 2020 had more than $5.2 million in assets, according to financial statements. In addition to running Berkeley’s farmers markets and the city’s curbside recycling program, the nonprofit runs a youth environmental academy. It convenes the Berkeley California Action Coalition (BCAC), which works closely with the city to meet its climate goals. The center’s recycling drivers unionized with the IWW in 1989.

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 Virginia Parks, PhD and Ian Baran - UC Labor Center, April 26, 2023

On October 30, 2020, the Marathon oil refinery in Contra Costa County, California, was permanently shut down and 345 unionized workers laid off. We surveyed (n=140) and interviewed (n=21) these refinery workers to document their post-layoff employment experiences. The findings in this report focus on these workers’ post-layoff job search, employment status, wages, and financial security. The Marathon refinery’s closure sheds light on the employment and economic impacts of climate change policies and a shrinking fossil fuel industry on fossil fuel workers in the region and more broadly.

In the aftermath of the refinery shutdown, workers were relatively successful in gaining post-layoff employment but at the cost of lower wages and worse working conditions. At the time of the survey, 74% of former Marathon workers (excluding retirees) had found new jobs. Nearly one in five (19%) were not employed but actively searching for work; 4% were not employed but not looking for a job; and the remaining 2% were temporarily laid off from their current job. Using standard labor statistics measures, the post-layoff unemployment rate among Marathon workers was 22.5% and the employment rate was 77.5%. If workers who have stopped actively searching for work were included, the post-layoff unemployment rate was higher at 26%.

Former Marathon workers find themselves in jobs that pay $12 per hour less than their Marathon jobs, a 24% cut in pay. The median hourly wage at Marathon was $50, compared to a post-layoff median of $38. A striking level of wage inequality defines the post-layoff wages of former refinery workers. At Marathon, hourly pay ranged between $30 to $68. The current range extends as low as $14 per hour to a high of $69. Workers reported benefits packages comparable to their pre-layoff Marathon benefits.

Workers found jobs in a range of sectors. The single most common sector of re-employment was oil and gas, where 28% of former Marathon workers found post-layoff jobs but at wages 26% lower than at Marathon. These lower rates of pay stem from loss of seniority and non-union employment. The utility sector (electrical power, natural gas, wastewater management) was the second most common sector of re-employment. Workers reported that utility jobs were a good fit for their skills, reputed as “good jobs,” and highly sought after. The median hourly utility wage was $41. The third most common re-employment sector was chemical treatment. Less than half (43%) of all post-layoff jobs were unionized.

Overall, workers reported worse working conditions at their post-layoff jobs, even in higher wage jobs. Workers described hazardous worksites, heavy workloads, work speed-up, increased job responsibilities, and few opportunities for advancement. Above all, workers cited poor safety practices and increased worksite hazards as the most significant and alarming characteristics of degraded working conditions.

Workers had difficulty finding jobs that matched their skills when searching for work. They emphasized two primary frustrations: 1) employers’ lack of knowledge about refinery work and refinery workers’ skills and 2) workers’ inability to prove their skill or experience through certifications or a verification process.

Nearly all workers (91%) would consider job training. Approximately half (49%) said they would enroll in a job training program, 42% responded “maybe,” and 9% said they would not. Workers aged 40 to 49 reported the greatest willingness to enroll in training followed by workers aged 30 to 39. Hesitation was highest among workers over the age of 50. Workers’ most prevalent concerns about training were cost, needing to earn while training, and training program length. Many workers were apprehensive about the efficacy of training. Workers were uniformly uninterested in going back to school to earn degrees.

Workers reported increasing financial insecurity after the layoff. A full third of all workers described that they were “falling behind financially” a year following the layoff compared to only 3% before the layoff. Nearly one-third of all workers took early withdrawals from their retirement accounts to make ends meet following layoff. Most re-employed workers did not move to find jobs, likely associated with the high rate of home ownership among Marathon workers (81%). Many expressed deep anxieties about their long-term ability to make mortgage payments.

Laid-off workers are highly motivated to put their skills and experience to use in new jobs, in new sectors. They require coordinated assistance to transition successfully into new jobs and for the region to retain them. Our research findings identify four critical types of assistance that workers need most. First, third-party skill certification would facilitate more efficient and accurate skill matching between jobs and workers in the labor market. Certification would help workers communicate, and verify, their skills to new employers. Certification would aid employers who are unfamiliar with the refinery sector make better decisions about assessing their workforce needs in relation to the skills of former refinery workers.

Second, workers require targeted job search assistance that focuses on a broad scope of strategies, including effective job search techniques, resume and online profile preparation, and career counseling. Both workers and job counselors require an up-to-date and nuanced assessment of jobs and industries to which refinery skills transfer.

Third, a fair and equitable transition for workers out of the fossil fuel sector depends upon a robust economic development strategy that generates new jobs comparable in quality to the jobs these workers are leaving behind. Successful transition requires both transition assistance and high-road job growth. One without the other will leave workers, and the region, behind.

Lastly, regional economic development strategies aimed at reducing fossil fuel dependency must account for the adverse financial impact these strategies will have on workers and their families. Loss of income will invariably result. A just transition for working Californians needs to include financial support, in the form of cash assistance or wage replacement, to cover losses in wage income.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Annie Lowrey - The Atlantic, April 26, 2023

In 2006, James Feldermann got hired as a trainee at a refinery in Martinez, California, in the Bay Area. It was hard work, with 12-hour-minimum shifts, but Feldermann came to excel at it. He learned how to isolate pipes and vessels, load railcars with molten sulfur and ammonia, and helm an industrial control panel. In time, he rose to the position of head operator at the Marathon Petroleum site. The job paid well, and he enjoyed it. He expected to stay until retirement.

On a Friday afternoon in July 2020, Feldermann was abruptly summoned to an all-hands Zoom meeting. While some of his colleagues struggled to get the audio to work, Feldermann received a phone call from his union representative. “I didn’t actually hear management tell us that they were laying us off,” he told me. The plant was being shut down, as the rise of work-from-home and the spread of electric vehicles depressed Californians’ demand for gasoline. Feldermann and his co-workers would be out of a job in 90 days.

The United States is embarking on an epochal transition from fossil fuels to green energy. That shift is necessary to avert the worst outcomes of climate change. It also stands to put hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people like Feldermann out of work. The result could be not only economic pain for individual families, but also the devastation of communities that rely on fossil-fuel extraction and a powerful political backlash against green-energy policies.

A pathbreaking new study shows just how real the damage could be, absent policies to soften the economic blow. Virginia Parks, a professor at UC Irvine, and Ian Baran, a doctoral student, tracked the consequences of the Marathon shutdown in near-real time, getting more than 40 percent of the workers to return surveys and a smaller group to sit for interviews. They found that, more than a year after the shutdown, one in five Marathon workers was unemployed. Their earnings had declined sharply, with the median hourly wage of employed workers plunging from $50 to $38. Some workers were earning as little as $14 an hour. And those new gigs came with more dangerous working conditions.

To prevent other workers from experiencing the same, the Biden White House has promised to pursue a “just transition,” employing policies to ensure “new, good-paying jobs for American workers and health and economic benefits for communities.” But the green-energy transition is already underway. And it is not clear that it will be just.

By Brooke Anderson - Yes! Magazine, April 25, 2023

Immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers in California reclaim the power of their labor.

Sandra de Leon adds branches to a burn pile in Santa Rosa, CA on December 18, 2022. Photo by Brooke Anderson

On most days, Sandra de Leon prunes grapevines in Northern California’s wealthiest vineyards. But today she is dressed head to toe in a yellow fire-resistant suit, helmet, safety goggles, and gloves, carrying a machete and drip torch. She calls out over her crackling mobile radio, “Jefe de quema: aquí Bravo, informandoles que …” (“Burn chief: Bravo unit here, informing you that …”) and then rattles off data in Spanish on the number, size, duration, and temperature of a dozen or so burn piles she is monitoring on the sun-speckled forest floor. 

De Leon is one of 25 immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers gathered on a cold December morning in Sonoma County, California, for the first-in-the-country Spanish-language intentional-burn certification program. Like de Leon, each of these firefighters-(and firelighters!)-in-training has been haunted by fire. During a massive inferno in 2017, de Leon was one of many “essential workers” escorted by vineyard managers through mandatory evacuation zones to harvest grapes while breathing in toxic fumes from nearby blazes. 

“When we arrived at work, there were patrol cars because it was an evacuation zone, but they waved us through to harvest. The skies were red and heavy smoke was in the air. They didn’t give us any protective equipment. No masks,” de Leon says. “There was so much ash on the grapes that when you’d cut the grape, it would get on your face. Our faces were black.”

While she didn’t get sick, she says her co-workers struggled with asthma. De Leon recalls harvesting like this for eight hours and getting paid just $20 per hour. 

“They should have paid us more,” de Leon says. “We risked our lives for their profits.”

Today, however, de Leon and her fellow farmworkers are here to learn about “good fire”—a controlled burn land stewards use to reduce underbrush in overgrown forests to prevent the spread of more destructive wildfires. Thanks to North Bay Jobs With Justice, de Leon and her fellow farmworkers are (re-)learning skills many of their ancestors knew well. And they are putting that know-how to work healing a fire-ravaged landscape and people.