BP Workers Join Historic Nationwide Oil Strike

The nation’s largest oil workers’ strike in over three decades grew larger Sunday when two mid-western BP plants stopped work to demand basic health and safety protections from some of the world’s most powerful fossil fuel corporations. Over 5000 oil workers are now on strike.

When unfair is deadly

‘Quite frankly, we’re tired of our coworkers being killed and being subjected to this risk,” said Steve Garey, USW Local 12-591 President where 14 members have perished in 16 years.

The strike began on Feb. 1, just as plummeting oil prices gave rise to heated debate over the future of an industry relying on extracting cheap and plentiful non-renewable resources from the earth. “This precipitous drop in crude oil prices by over 60 percent since June caused companies to lay off workers and delay plans for expansion; what they see as the most painless means of avoiding profit cuts. The strike is not expected to impact gas prices.” (Think Progress.)

“Hundreds of refineries dot US coasts, and many have been running full-tilt to keep up with the boom in Tar Sands bitumen from Canada and Bakken crude from North Dakota. With increased throughput and lower margins, oil companies like Tesoro, Shell, Chevron and Exxon have increased the risks of injuries, safety hazards and death for workers and communities alike,” reports 350.org.

“Confronted with longer hours, more shifts, the same number of staff, and no significant effort by oil companies to increase plant safety, workers are faced with much higher chances of getting sick or being injured or killed on the job.”

None know the untruths told by oil companies and corporate media that supports them better than oil workers and those nearby, often threatened by thugs to remain silent.

Friday, the local Toledo union posted on its Facebook page that the “strike is NOT about money, this is about addressing safety issues that have been ignored for way too long … 138 workers were killed on the job while extracting, producing, or supporting oil and gas in 2012 … the number was more than double that of 2009.”

The public will never know the number of Gulf Coasters who died as the result of BP’s oil and Corexit, that made the oil 50 times more lethal in rotifers, according to one study.

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Challenging the oil industry business as usual neglect of safety conditions impacting workers and nearby residents, the United Steelworkers announced Saturday that over 1,400 employees at BP refineries in Whiting, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio joined the 3,800 oil workers on strike at nine refineries in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington.
 

BP workers at the new sites officially wenet on strike at 12:01 Sunday morning, according to the union.

Entering its second week, the strike was organized to win protections in the industry where safety is a matter of “life-or-death” for workers and surrounding communities, Samantha Winslow highlighted in Labor Notes.

The Texas City, Texas plant on strike is the site of a BP’s 2005 refinery explosion that killed 15 workers (the refinery was later sold to Marathon).

“We have a lot of forced overtime,” Dave Martin, vice president of the union striking at the Marathon refinery in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, told Labor Notes. “That was one of the main issues in the Texas explosion: people working overtime and not making the right decisions.”

“Our local union has lost 14 members in 16 years. Quite frankly, we’re tired of our coworkers being killed and being subjected to this risk,” said Steve Garey, president of the USW local in Anacortes, Washington.
 

Shell Oil, that’s at the head of the negotiating table for the industry side, is refusing to budge on safety issues, say workers.

“After long days of discussions with the industry’s lead company, Shell Oil, little progress has been made on our members’ central issues concerning health and safety, fatigue, inadequate staffing levels that differ from what is shown on paper, contracting out of daily maintenance jobs, high out-of-pocket and health care costs,” said USW International Vice President Gary Beevers in a press statement.
 

In an industry known for health and safety violations and large-scale environmental crises such as like BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, workers have garnered broad support, including from green organizations.

“Refineries run at high pressure, high temperature, emit carcinogens and particulates, and spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” said environmental organization 350.org in support of the strikers. “These dangerous facilities have a track record of explosions, fatalities and high levels of chronic disease in the communities surrounding them, most often populated with low-income families.”

Perhaps no Americans know this better than Gulf Coasters. From areas along the coast to Louisiana’s Bayou Corn further inland, people suffer, some die. Most of these stories are never told. Thousands of workers and residents still suffering from the 2010 BP oil crisis are still silenced.  Another entire Louisiana community has become a sacrifice zone to the dirty, dangerous fossil fuel industry.

MORE: Louisiana Sinkhole Sacrifice Zone 13 Survivors Lonely, Rattled
 

“As we move towards a clean energy economy, there should be no throw-away communities and no throw-away workers,” the statement continued,” 350.0rg says.

Photo: Common Dreans