In Deadly Industry, US Oil Workers' Historic Strike for Safety Spreads to More Plants
The biggest U.S. oil workers’ strike in more than three decades just grew even larger, with two mid-western BP plants joining in the work stoppage to demand basic health and safety protections from some of the world’s most powerful fossil fuel corporations.
The United Steelworkers announced Saturday that over 1,400 employees at two BP refineries—in Whiting, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio—have joined the 3,800 oil workers on strike at nine refineries in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington.
The workers at the new sites officially began their work action at 12:01 Sunday morning, according to the union.
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The strike, now entering its second week, is aimed at winning protections in an industry where safety is a matter of “life-or-death” for workers and surrounding communities, as Samantha Winslow points out in Labor Notes.
The Texas City, Texas plant on strike is the site of a BP refinery explosion in 2005 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, which sits at the head of the negotiating table for the industry side, is refusing to budge on safety issues, say workers.
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