Oil strike shows growing combativeness of US workers
The week-long strike by US oil refinery workers has revealed widespread social anger over the continued erosion of living standards and working conditions over nearly six years of a supposed economic recovery. On Sunday morning, 1,400 workers at refineries in Illinois and Ohio joined the walkout of 3,800 workers on strike since February 1 in California, Texas, Kentucky, and Washington state.
The past six years have marked the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression, even as corporate profits and share prices have soared to record heights. With the oil strike, American workers are beginning to push back in a drive for higher wages, confirming the fears of US think tanks and media outlets that have been warning of a “wages push” this year.
“Over the last 19 years, every time our pay goes up so does our cost of living,” a worker on a picket line at Marathon’s Galveston Bay refinery near Houston, Texas told the World Socialist Web Site. “Last time, we got a 2.4 percent wage increase, but our health care costs went up by four percent ! No matter what happens, the company always seems to come out on top.”
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP—four of the largest corporations in the world—are digging in their heels and refusing to budge on workers’ demands for better wages, lower health care costs, improved safety, and reduced hiring of temporary contract workers. Instead, the oil giants are using the recent collapse of crude oil prices to press for even more cost cutting. BP has already imposed a pay freeze on its worldwide salaried work force, and contractors at drilling operations are facing 15 percent wage cuts.
While the oil price fall has affected profits, the corporations have reaped higher-than-expected fourth quarter earnings from their refinery operations, which benefit from the low cost of crude. Tesoro earned $698 million in the first nine months of 2014, a 67 percent increase over the same period the year before.
Even as they wipe out jobs and demand more concessions from workers, the oil giants continue to spend ten of billions on stock buybacks and dividend payments for wealthy investors. “We’ll protect the dividend first,” ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance told investors on a January 29 conference call.
“In reporting their first financial results for a full quarter since crude prices began to collapse last summer, oil executives have cut nearly everything else,” the Houston Chronicle noted. “Jobs, drilling plans, raises, benefits and even crew sizes have been slashed, but not a single large oil producer has discussed a potential dividend cut.”
Negotiations between the United Steelworkers union (USW) and Shell—the lead bargainer for the industry—broke down last week after the USW rejected a sixth concessionary offer from the Dutch-based conglomerate. The union accused the company of “bad-faith bargaining, including the refusal to bargain over mandatory subjects, undue delays in providing information, impeded bargaining, and threats issued to workers if they joined the strike.”
But the USW leadership continues to limit the strike to just 11 of the 65 USW-organized refineries in the US, roughly 13 percent of the 65 percent of total refining capacity the union could shut down. Less than a fifth of the 30,000 oil workers in the USW have been called out.
Oil strike shows growing combativeness of US workers
The week-long strike by US oil refinery workers has revealed widespread social anger over the continued erosion of living standards and working conditions over nearly six years of a supposed economic recovery. On Sunday morning, 1,400 workers at refineries in Illinois and Ohio joined the walkout of 3,800 workers on strike since February 1 in California, Texas, Kentucky, and Washington state.
The past six years have marked the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression, even as corporate profits and share prices have soared to record heights. With the oil strike, American workers are beginning to push back in a drive for higher wages, confirming the fears of US think tanks and media outlets that have been warning of a “wages push” this year.
“Over the last 19 years, every time our pay goes up so does our cost of living,” a worker on a picket line at Marathon’s Galveston Bay refinery near Houston, Texas told the World Socialist Web Site. “Last time, we got a 2.4 percent wage increase, but our health care costs went up by four percent ! No matter what happens, the company always seems to come out on top.”
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP—four of the largest corporations in the world—are digging in their heels and refusing to budge on workers’ demands for better wages, lower health care costs, improved safety, and reduced hiring of temporary contract workers. Instead, the oil giants are using the recent collapse of crude oil prices to press for even more cost cutting. BP has already imposed a pay freeze on its worldwide salaried work force, and contractors at drilling operations are facing 15 percent wage cuts.
While the oil price fall has affected profits, the corporations have reaped higher-than-expected fourth quarter earnings from their refinery operations, which benefit from the low cost of crude. Tesoro earned $698 million in the first nine months of 2014, a 67 percent increase over the same period the year before.
Even as they wipe out jobs and demand more concessions from workers, the oil giants continue to spend ten of billions on stock buybacks and dividend payments for wealthy investors. “We’ll protect the dividend first,” ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance told investors on a January 29 conference call.
“In reporting their first financial results for a full quarter since crude prices began to collapse last summer, oil executives have cut nearly everything else,” the Houston Chronicle noted. “Jobs, drilling plans, raises, benefits and even crew sizes have been slashed, but not a single large oil producer has discussed a potential dividend cut.”
Negotiations between the United Steelworkers union (USW) and Shell—the lead bargainer for the industry—broke down last week after the USW rejected a sixth concessionary offer from the Dutch-based conglomerate. The union accused the company of “bad-faith bargaining, including the refusal to bargain over mandatory subjects, undue delays in providing information, impeded bargaining, and threats issued to workers if they joined the strike.”
But the USW leadership continues to limit the strike to just 11 of the 65 USW-organized refineries in the US, roughly 13 percent of the 65 percent of total refining capacity the union could shut down. Less than a fifth of the 30,000 oil workers in the USW have been called out.