USW Strike Expands, Enters Fourth Week

Via AFL-CIO

The United Steelworkers union has expanded a strike against the oil industry that has now entered its fourth week with no talks currently planned, the Houston Chronicle reports. The article quotes Brother Lee Medley of USW:

Seeking to ratchet up the pressure on energy companies, the United Steelworkers union expanded its strike to the nation’s biggest refinery, Motiva Enterprise’s plant in Port Arthur, where 800 workers walked off the job early Saturday.

Union workers struck the Port Arthur site, a joint venture between Shell and a unit of Saudi Aramco that has the capacity to turn 600,000 barrels of oil a day into gasoline and other refined products. The Steelworkers also issued notices of strikes to start early Sunday morning to two Motiva refineries in Louisiana, along with a Shell chemical plant there.

The strike began Feb. 1 at nine refineries and plants after union and energy company negotiators could not resolve disputes including those over safety, scheduling and contracting out jobs.

Including Sunday’s action, it now covers 15 facilities. That includes 12 refineries that represent about 20 percent of the nation’s refining capacity, according to a local refining consulting firm.

Five of the sites being struck are in the Houston area, including three refineries. Others are in Kentucky, Indiana, California, Ohio and Washington state. Companies targeted so far also include BP, Marathon Petroleum, LyondellBasell, Tesoro, Shell and Motiva…

The latest decision to expand the work action came to a head swiftly Friday after contract negotiations appeared to break down about 7 p.m., said Lee Medley, president of the Shell/Motiva National Workers Council. He wasn’t in the room, but said there is growing frustration among union officials that key health, safety and employment security concerns aren’t getting attention.

“They haven’t addressed anything,” he said.