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Oil Giant BP Locks Out Workers at Its Last Unionized Refinery in US · The Real News Podcast

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Speaker 1: Ah I.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Welcome every one to Working People, a podcast about
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Speaker 2: the lives, jobs, dreams and struggles of the working class today.
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Speaker 2: Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio
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Speaker 2: Podcast Network and has brought to you in partnership within
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Speaker 2: These Times magazine and the Real News Network. This show
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Speaker 2: is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the
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Speaker 2: support of listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez
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Speaker 2: and today we are going to Whiting, Indiana, where, for
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Speaker 2: the last five months, oil Giant British Petroleum or BP,
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Speaker 2: has locked eight hundred workers out of their jobs at
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Speaker 2: a crude oil refinery on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan.
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Speaker 2: This is the last unionized BP refinery in the United
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Speaker 2: States and this is a really important struggle and a
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Speaker 2: really important story. But with everything in the world and
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Speaker 2: the news being so crazy these days, is it has
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Speaker 2: not gotten the attention that it deserves from national media.
1:04
Speaker 2: But that is why we are so lucky to have
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Speaker 2: someone like Sarah Lazar, a brilliant journalist and the editor
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Speaker 2: of the excellent Workday magazine, going where others won't and
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Speaker 2: lifting up the stories that need to be told and heard.
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Speaker 2: In her recent report titled locked Out Refinery Workers say
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Speaker 2: BP is trying to starve us and crush the union,
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Speaker 2: which was jointly published by Workday Magazine and The American
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Speaker 2: Prospect Sarah writes, quote British Petroleum, one of the ten
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Speaker 2: largest oil and gas companies on Earth, kicked out its
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Speaker 2: workforce at the Whiting Crude oil refinery, which at its
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Speaker 2: peak produces four hundred and forty thousand barrels a day,
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Speaker 2: on March nineteenth. The previous contract expired in January, and
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Speaker 2: United steel Workers Local seven to one decline management proposals
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Speaker 2: that workers say would existentially threaten the local. The union
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Speaker 2: has been locked out for over one hundred and forty days,
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Speaker 2: and it says it is fighting for its survival against
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Speaker 2: an employer that wants to cut pay in jobs, undermine
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Speaker 2: worker's ability to strike, and tear the local away from
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Speaker 2: national bargaining. The lockout is illegal, the union says. By
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Speaker 2: late May, United steel Workers have filed fifteen unfair labor
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Speaker 2: practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that
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Speaker 2: the company is refusing to bargain in good faith and
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Speaker 2: using threats, coercive statements, and surveillance. The fight has become
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Speaker 2: a test of endurance. On one side are workers who
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Speaker 2: are not receiving the equivalent of strike pay, though members
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Speaker 2: can ask for help from an assistance fund financed by
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Speaker 2: the United steel Workers. On the other side is an
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Speaker 2: oil company that brought in one hundred and eighty nine
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Speaker 2: point two billion dollars in revenue in twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 2: In an email to Workday magazine and The Prospect, BP
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Speaker 2: spokesperson Cesa Rodriguez said that the company is pursuing quote,
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Speaker 2: modernized job structures, training and upskill bill, but workers say
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Speaker 2: that this is just code for greater disposability and degraded conditions,
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Speaker 2: and they declare a new pay progression would make it
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Speaker 2: easier for BP to fire people and harder for workers
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Speaker 2: to get to the highest rates of pay. They're also
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Speaker 2: concerned about the proposed loss of dozens of jobs from
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Speaker 2: the bargaining unit. On March second, management presented the local
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Speaker 2: with their last, best and final offer, and the union
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Speaker 2: membership voted it down. A revised settlement was offered the
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Speaker 2: next day, but it too was rejected. On March seventeenth,
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Speaker 2: the union gave a counter offer quote. Just four hours later,
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Speaker 2: the company rejected our counter proposal issued notice of the
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Speaker 2: cancelation of rolling extensions and a notice of intent to
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Speaker 2: lock us out of our jobs, effective at midnight on
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Speaker 2: March eighteenth, according to the United steel Workers end quote.
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Speaker 2: To talk about all of this, I am really grateful
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Speaker 2: to be joined on the show today by three guests.
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Speaker 2: Eric Schultz is the president of United steel Workers Local
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Speaker 2: seven to one, Lino Miller is an assistant griever for
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Speaker 2: USW Local seven to one, and Tim Powell is a
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Speaker 2: nineteen year member of USW Local seven to one and
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Speaker 2: a volunteer for the Lockout Assistance Committee. Eric, Lino, Tim,
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Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me today on the show,
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Speaker 2: especially with everything that you guys got going on.
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Speaker 3: I really really appreciate it, and I.
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Speaker 2: Do wish we were meeting under less horrifying and infuriating circumstances.
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Speaker 2: And you know, we're going to talk about the lockout
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Speaker 2: and everything that's going on right now, but before we do,
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Speaker 2: I'd love for listeners to get to know you first,
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Speaker 2: because you know, most people have never met or spoken
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Speaker 2: to folks in your line of work, So tell us
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Speaker 2: more about yourselves, how you got into this work and
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Speaker 2: the kind of jobs that you do on a day
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Speaker 2: to day basis before this lockout began.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, thank you for taking the time
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Speaker 4: to have us get My name is Eric Schultz. I'm
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Speaker 4: a machinist in the refinery. I hired in in October
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Speaker 4: of two thousand and nine, started off in our machinist
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Speaker 4: apprenticeship program. So that was a four year apprenticeship where
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Speaker 4: you learn the refinery inside. Now, from a mechanical standpoint,
5:09
Speaker 4: what machinists do out here, it's kind of an amalgamated trade.
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Speaker 4: It's more like a mill rite machinist. We will do
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Speaker 4: anything from repairing pumps in the field, turbines, compressors. We
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Speaker 4: have shop work or repair relief vowels the pumps and
5:26
Speaker 4: the turbans inside the shop. So it's kind of, you know,
5:29
Speaker 4: we do a lot of things from a to z
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Speaker 4: as far as a maintenance millwright mechanic would do. And
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Speaker 4: so that was twenty nine. About twenty fourteen, July twenty fourteen,
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Speaker 4: I came onto the union board as a divisional rep.
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Speaker 4: I represented our machinists and our instrument electrical groups. And
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Speaker 4: then about five years ago I became president of Local.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, man like you machinists need to rebrand as like
5:51
Speaker 2: the mcguiver Union, because you're out there fixing things that
5:54
Speaker 2: I didn't even know existed or that are like taped together,
5:58
Speaker 2: you know, and have like you got to have an
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Speaker 2: intimate knowledge of this machinery and the kind of machinists
6:04
Speaker 2: I've talked to from the railroad industry to the gas
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Speaker 2: and oil industry to Kellogg's. You know, like there are
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Speaker 2: just so many nuances that none of us understand, so
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Speaker 2: I can only imagine the kind of stuff that you
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Speaker 2: guys are doing out there in the field.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's especially in an oil refinery. It's a very
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Speaker 4: niche market. You run into equipment that you went and
6:25
Speaker 4: run into in many other fields. You know, we've got
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Speaker 4: equipment from the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, you know,
6:31
Speaker 4: all the way up to incredibly modern equipment.
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Speaker 5: So you kind of need to know the gamut.
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Speaker 4: And we've got some amazing machinists out here that they
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Speaker 4: are absolutely experts on their units. They're the ones that
6:43
Speaker 4: our operators will turn to to ask, you know, for
6:45
Speaker 4: help troubleshooting, or even our engineers, you know, walk into
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Speaker 4: the main shop where our pump mechanics are turbine mechanics
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Speaker 4: and ask them to help diagnose what went wrong and
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Speaker 4: what they could do to fix it. So we've got
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Speaker 4: some amazing mechanics out here, machinists.
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Speaker 5: My name is Leno Miller.
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Speaker 1: I'm a operations specialist for the refinery. I grew up
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Speaker 1: in the area. I've carried a card my entire adult life.
7:11
Speaker 1: First of which, out of high school, I carried a
7:13
Speaker 1: team stor's card. For a couple of years, I worked
7:16
Speaker 1: at the local UPS plant. After that I ended up
7:19
Speaker 1: in an automotive plant. I carried a UAW card before
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Speaker 1: I got into the refinery. I hired in just shy
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Speaker 1: of twenty years ago. So if BP refuses to come
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Speaker 1: back to the table and bark in a good faith
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Speaker 1: I can hit twenty years on the outside locked out.
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Speaker 1: Not a good feeling, but it is. You know, that's
7:38
Speaker 1: where we're at inside the refinery. I guessaid it's been
7:43
Speaker 1: almost twenty years. So I started out as an operator
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Speaker 1: which do rounds, take samples, monitor the equipment on a
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Speaker 1: day to day basis, who worked.
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Speaker 5: Twelve hour shifts swing shifts.
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Speaker 1: From there, I became a board operator, a council operator,
8:00
Speaker 1: which is a specialist by trade woods referred to in
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Speaker 1: the refinery. And then I ended up becoming a chief
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Speaker 1: operator as well a chief operator and a council operator,
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Speaker 1: which is a cross qualified position, which is one of
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Speaker 1: the positions that the company is proposing to do away with.
8:15
Speaker 1: So I would essentially get bumped down.
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Speaker 5: From a chief operator and a board operator to a technician.
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Speaker 1: I would lose my specialist qualification and my pay that
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Speaker 1: comes with it.
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Speaker 5: Tim Powell. I started almost twenty years ago.
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Speaker 6: It was nineteen years this January started at the Cats
8:33
Speaker 6: and it was spent just.
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Speaker 5: About ten years.
8:37
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it started over it basically a gasoline processing unit.
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Speaker 6: Spent ten years there, had an opportunity to transfer to
8:45
Speaker 6: another part of the refinery where we were making basically
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Speaker 6: make diesel using high pressure hydrogen and crude oil, and
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Speaker 6: I was an outside operator for most of that time.
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Speaker 6: About six years ago I got onto the console more
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Speaker 6: operator job. As well as those specialists. We take training
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Speaker 6: every year, we do training every quarter, going through computer training.
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Speaker 6: Now they're trying to say that we need to interview
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Speaker 6: for these jobs again and see if we're still qualified
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Speaker 6: to be there, if they're even going to keep the job.
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Speaker 6: I'm third generation USW. On both sides of my family.
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Speaker 6: There's been union people throughout my family, from coal miners
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Speaker 6: to steel workers and city bus drivers. I mean, it's
9:25
Speaker 6: my family has lived on a union paycheck for generations.
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Speaker 2: Well, let's let's talk about that, right because cause you know,
9:32
Speaker 2: I started this show eight years ago not knowing much
9:37
Speaker 2: about unions at all. Like, I did not grow up
9:39
Speaker 2: in a union family. In fact, you know, back in
9:42
Speaker 2: the day, we were more of an anti union family.
9:46
Speaker 2: You know, we didn't we didn't know anything, and to
9:48
Speaker 2: be honest, like the the few you know, union jobs
9:51
Speaker 2: that like my brother had had at like a Rite Aid, like.
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Speaker 3: You know, just weren't good.
9:56
Speaker 2: And so like I think now that we're at a
9:58
Speaker 2: point in this country where you know, less than ten
10:01
Speaker 2: percent of the workforce is actually in a union, it's
10:04
Speaker 2: important to sort of, you know, talk to folks out
10:07
Speaker 2: there about, you know, what being in a union means.
10:10
Speaker 2: And so I wanted to ask you guys, like why
10:13
Speaker 2: is it important for workers in this industry especially, and
10:17
Speaker 2: you know, workers in general to have a union, Like
10:21
Speaker 2: tell us more about why being in a union is
10:23
Speaker 2: important to you and your family. And then let's sort
10:27
Speaker 2: of unpack some of the nuances of labor relations in
10:31
Speaker 2: this industry that listeners need to know about, because again
10:35
Speaker 2: this we're talking about the last unionized BP refinery in
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Speaker 2: the United States.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Sure, I mean from my perspective, right, the first thing
10:45
Speaker 4: that most people come to they think about is pay, pay,
10:49
Speaker 4: a retirement when they think of a union. For me personally,
10:53
Speaker 4: I feel like in this industry it's it's more about
10:56
Speaker 4: collective the ability to collectively bargain, meaning we have eight
10:59
Speaker 4: hundred people that get to stand shoulder to shoulder elect representatives.
11:03
Speaker 4: The representatives then go sit down with the company and
11:05
Speaker 4: you and you're on as close to equal footing as
11:07
Speaker 4: you're as you're going to get. You know, without a union,
11:10
Speaker 4: it's each each, each man or woman for themselves. So
11:14
Speaker 4: to the by product of that collective bargaining, yeah, it's
11:17
Speaker 4: it's pay, and it's in it's retirement. But to me,
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Speaker 4: most importantly, it's having a voice on the working conditions
11:22
Speaker 4: inside the plant.
11:23
Speaker 5: Safety issues.
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Speaker 4: You know, we've got a contractual joint Health and Safety
11:27
Speaker 4: committee where members of the union sit down with members
11:30
Speaker 4: of management monthly to identify safety issues and then and
11:35
Speaker 4: then create programs to.
11:37
Speaker 5: To try to address those issues.
11:38
Speaker 4: So, at the end of the day, we do make
11:40
Speaker 4: good money because we work in an incredibly profitable industry
11:43
Speaker 4: and it's a highly complex job that all of us
11:46
Speaker 4: do out here.
11:47
Speaker 5: But but what good does that do if.
11:50
Speaker 4: At the end of the day you're going to go
11:51
Speaker 4: home and you're not going to be the same way
11:52
Speaker 4: that you're left right, You're going to go home injured
11:55
Speaker 4: or or even worse. I mean, this is an industry
11:58
Speaker 4: that when things go wrong, they can go wrong real fast.
12:02
Speaker 4: Incidences can turn into fatalities very fast.
12:05
Speaker 5: In this industry.
12:06
Speaker 4: An incident that spirals out of control inside of an
12:08
Speaker 4: oil refinery is highly.
12:11
Speaker 5: Likely to affect the community.
12:12
Speaker 4: And if you follow along in the news in the
12:15
Speaker 4: last year or two, it seems like once a month
12:17
Speaker 4: we're reading about a refinery fire in which the community
12:21
Speaker 4: is ordered to shelter in place because of toxic releases
12:25
Speaker 4: that are that are getting into the community. So so
12:27
Speaker 4: that's to me, I mean, the most important piece of
12:30
Speaker 4: a union is to make sure that we go home
12:33
Speaker 4: safe and that you when you when you retire, you
12:35
Speaker 4: actually can enjoy your retirement and not be struggling with
12:39
Speaker 4: debilitating injuries or diseases, which are very prevalent in this industry.
12:43
Speaker 4: You know, you look at the cancer rates for an
12:46
Speaker 4: oil worker versus any any other line, right, you look
12:50
Speaker 4: at mesothelioma.
12:52
Speaker 5: Different issues. I mean, we have asbestos is all over
12:55
Speaker 5: the refinery.
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Speaker 4: Everywhere you look there there's stickers on piping that say,
13:00
Speaker 4: you know, warning asbestos. So we live with these things
13:03
Speaker 4: every day. And that's to me, the biggest thing that
13:04
Speaker 4: a union could do is help protect.
13:05
Speaker 2: Its workforce well, and just to sort of like underline
13:09
Speaker 2: everything that you said in red Pen, you know listeners,
13:13
Speaker 2: listeners are gonna have the hairs on the back of
13:15
Speaker 2: their neck standing up the same way I am. Because
13:18
Speaker 2: you know, we've I've interviewed on this show a worker
13:22
Speaker 2: Leo Linder, who was on the deep water horizon when
13:25
Speaker 2: it blew, you know, like in the Gulf.
13:28
Speaker 3: Right.
13:28
Speaker 2: So if folks are wondering how bad could it get,
13:31
Speaker 2: that's how fucking bad it can get.
13:33
Speaker 3: Pardon my French, right, but it can get, you know.
13:35
Speaker 2: Bad in so many other ways, like we've been covering
13:39
Speaker 2: on this show, right. You know, we talked to folks
13:43
Speaker 2: in roseland Louisiana near the Smitty supply plan right where
13:47
Speaker 2: you know, like that massive explosion and fire happened and
13:50
Speaker 2: people said it was raining black sludge all over the place, right,
13:54
Speaker 2: I mean, like we've talked to residents of East Palestine, Ohio,
13:57
Speaker 2: where that Norfolk Southern train derailed three years ago, and
14:01
Speaker 2: you've heard the hell that they are going through. You've
14:04
Speaker 2: heard the hell that railroad workers are going through and
14:08
Speaker 2: how they are being you know, like crushed into oblivion
14:11
Speaker 2: while all of our communities, our supply chain are being
14:14
Speaker 2: put at long term risk for the sake of short
14:17
Speaker 2: term massive profits for Wall Street shareholders and company executives.
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Speaker 3: Right.
14:22
Speaker 2: This is part of the same horrible, vicious cycle that
14:26
Speaker 2: we're hearing about from working people in different industries, in
14:30
Speaker 2: different parts of the country.
14:32
Speaker 3: All over the place.
14:33
Speaker 2: So please, I beg you pay attention to what these
14:36
Speaker 2: guys have to say. LINO, sorry to hop in there, please, yeah,
14:40
Speaker 2: hop back in.
14:41
Speaker 5: No, you're spot on, and.
14:42
Speaker 3: You know this.
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Speaker 1: The refinery operates not only in Whiting, it's basically in
14:48
Speaker 1: the center of three communities.
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Speaker 5: It operates in.
14:50
Speaker 1: Hammond, Indiana as well as and also each Chicago, So
14:54
Speaker 1: it's in the middle of a very populated area that
14:59
Speaker 1: has acces up to the risks of operating a large
15:03
Speaker 1: crude oil binary in the middle of it. But the
15:06
Speaker 1: promise that was made right was the community was going
15:09
Speaker 1: to get some of the benefit of that.
15:11
Speaker 5: We were going to get the jobs.
15:13
Speaker 1: And it's like you said that, that's where they're breaking
15:18
Speaker 1: the promise, right. So if you're bringing in workers from
15:20
Speaker 1: out of state to try to replace us, and you're
15:23
Speaker 1: trying to extract wealth out of the community, not even wealth,
15:26
Speaker 1: you're just trying to extract a basic income in a
15:29
Speaker 1: basic way of life from the area in order to
15:33
Speaker 1: send it to shareholders and wealthy executives, especially it's a
15:37
Speaker 1: foreign oil company. So I mean that's the goal, right,
15:42
Speaker 1: and that's what people need to understand. They're trying to
15:44
Speaker 1: take from our community and from people that actually live
15:48
Speaker 1: and work here in order to send it elsewhere.
15:52
Speaker 6: To build on something that Eric said too about the
15:54
Speaker 6: equal footing to have when we're talking or we're negotiating
15:57
Speaker 6: with this company, a union, honestly is the only way
16:01
Speaker 6: that everybody who has a particular job is going to
16:04
Speaker 6: get that same pain, doesn't matter how much the guy
16:07
Speaker 6: next to you is kissing ass to the company. It
16:10
Speaker 6: doesn't matter if you're a bad woman or what color
16:12
Speaker 6: you are, you're getting that pain. It's not that your
16:16
Speaker 6: buddy's going to your friend across the aisle is going
16:18
Speaker 6: to get an extra twenty bucks an hour because he's
16:19
Speaker 6: buddies with the boss.
16:21
Speaker 5: Everybody gets the pay for that work.
16:23
Speaker 6: And that's the only guarantee, honestly to me, in this
16:25
Speaker 6: country that you have that absolutely.
16:27
Speaker 5: You know.
16:28
Speaker 4: One of one of the company's large proposals that they
16:31
Speaker 4: have on the table is to eliminate seniority as a
16:35
Speaker 4: means for promotion, and they view it as a well,
16:38
Speaker 4: it's a flog system that you know, it's not always
16:41
Speaker 4: the best person that gets it with seniority. They want
16:43
Speaker 4: to go what they call merit baste. Well, yeah, you
16:46
Speaker 4: look at well, let's look at reality. Let's look at
16:48
Speaker 4: outside of a union facility. Do women and men in
16:52
Speaker 4: this country make the exact same amount of money for
16:55
Speaker 4: doing the exact same job?
16:57
Speaker 5: Why not?
16:58
Speaker 4: Because they're system the merit basis is so effective. Do
17:02
Speaker 4: do minorities make as much money as and as white
17:04
Speaker 4: men in this country for doing the exact same job?
17:07
Speaker 4: Absolutely not, you get I mean time and time again,
17:10
Speaker 4: no one would even argue that.
17:11
Speaker 5: Case is that a merit based system.
17:13
Speaker 4: It is so merrit they you know, they act like
17:15
Speaker 4: merit is some great system that that only the you know,
17:18
Speaker 4: the best, the brightest.
17:19
Speaker 5: Rise to the top. And that's and that's that's full
17:21
Speaker 5: They're full of ship.
17:22
Speaker 4: And everybody knows that, right, the guy who plays softball
17:25
Speaker 4: and goes to the bar with the supervisor afterwards is
17:27
Speaker 4: more likely to.
17:28
Speaker 5: Get a get the good jobs and get a get
17:30
Speaker 5: get better paid.
17:31
Speaker 4: Right the executive's nephew that gets uh you know, brought
17:34
Speaker 4: right into the plant, and gets to go to the
17:35
Speaker 4: front of the line. That that that guy is more
17:37
Speaker 4: likely to make more money than everybody else.
17:39
Speaker 5: That's that's what merit based systems are.
17:41
Speaker 4: So so absolutely that's that's that's one of the main
17:44
Speaker 4: issues with them. And you know, I'm back to the
17:47
Speaker 4: safety piece, another one of the their issues. And I
17:50
Speaker 4: don't want to get too much into the nuances of
17:52
Speaker 4: the proposals because like you would need we would need
17:55
Speaker 4: a three hour show probably, But what one of them
17:58
Speaker 4: is is to reclassificate of all of our jobs. So
18:02
Speaker 4: as Leno was saying, you know, right now, he's risen
18:05
Speaker 4: to the level of an operation specialist. We have operation
18:09
Speaker 4: specialist field Operation Specialist board and then operations specialists cross qualified.
18:13
Speaker 5: Which is you do them both. That is like the
18:15
Speaker 5: top of the top.
18:17
Speaker 4: So they want to eliminate those roles, but then still
18:20
Speaker 4: have us do the same work. But they want to
18:22
Speaker 4: call us tech threes in tech fours and then the
18:25
Speaker 4: company would get to pick the tech fours. But then
18:27
Speaker 4: they also for our operators, they want them to have
18:30
Speaker 4: to know five different jobs throughout the refinery. Places that
18:35
Speaker 4: are it might take you fifteen minutes to get from
18:37
Speaker 4: this unit to the next unit, and that's hoping there's
18:39
Speaker 4: not a train stop in the middle of refinery. So
18:41
Speaker 4: they're trying. They want to spread everybody out and meet them.
18:45
Speaker 4: They turned, you know, jack of all trades the ace
18:47
Speaker 4: of none. Well, if you just go back a few
18:49
Speaker 4: years ago, our sister refinery in Toledo, Ohio, which BPS
18:53
Speaker 4: sent sold. It's no longer a British petroleum facility. But
18:56
Speaker 4: there was a double fatality. Two brothers were killed in
18:59
Speaker 4: a five out there in the chemical safety board there.
19:03
Speaker 4: When they came back, when they finally concluded their study,
19:06
Speaker 4: one of their findings that they you know, they punished
19:09
Speaker 4: the company for was was rotating the operators too much
19:13
Speaker 4: so that they didn't just get good in one area.
19:15
Speaker 4: So the company is taking credit for well, I've got
19:18
Speaker 4: this many operators that can handle this many jobs, but
19:20
Speaker 4: they can't do it like they necessarily can't do it well,
19:23
Speaker 4: you do it better when you specialize, right. So flash forward,
19:27
Speaker 4: So the Chemical Safety Board says that the company was
19:29
Speaker 4: wrong for the way that they were handling operations.
19:32
Speaker 5: So what is this management group decide to do?
19:34
Speaker 4: They decided to make it put a proposal on the
19:36
Speaker 4: table to do exactly hear what they were doing in Toledo,
19:39
Speaker 4: and spread our operators too thin, and people just saw
19:42
Speaker 4: the proposal that you know, the average person in the community,
19:45
Speaker 4: they wouldn't understand the implications of the of the company's
19:49
Speaker 4: proposals and it would make it incredibly unsafe out here.
19:52
Speaker 4: Not to mention, you know, to making these guys do
19:54
Speaker 4: a lot more work for less money. But more importantly,
19:57
Speaker 4: you're going to have a bunch of people who aren't
20:00
Speaker 4: going to be as familiar with the equipment. When stuff
20:02
Speaker 4: goes wrong, you need people that just know instantaneously, instinctively,
20:06
Speaker 4: how to get out there and what to do well.
20:08
Speaker 2: And you know I mentioned earlier, right, that this is
20:10
Speaker 2: the sickness that we're seeing spread to industries all across
20:15
Speaker 2: the board, and like, even though people may not understand
20:18
Speaker 2: the nuances of y'all's contract, they understand that sickness of
20:24
Speaker 2: the corporate like minded Wall Street minded obsession with you know,
20:30
Speaker 2: cutting costs year after year, piling more work onto fewer workers,
20:36
Speaker 2: removing important layers of security to save a buck, and
20:41
Speaker 2: all at the expense of the workers who are being
20:44
Speaker 2: you know, asked to do way too much for less
20:49
Speaker 2: than they were getting before. That leads to hazards all
20:52
Speaker 2: over the damn place. Right, That's the same stuff that
20:55
Speaker 2: we've heard from your fellow machinists at Boeing who described, like, hey,
20:59
Speaker 2: how do job conditions and planes get so bad at
21:03
Speaker 2: Boeing over the years?
21:04
Speaker 3: Well, this is part of it.
21:05
Speaker 2: That worker that I interviewed on the deep Water Horizon
21:08
Speaker 2: when it blew in the Gulf, he said the same thing,
21:11
Speaker 2: BP was pushing speed over safety and look at the results, right,
21:17
Speaker 2: I mean, the same thing was said to.
21:19
Speaker 3: Us by the railroad workers.
21:21
Speaker 2: They've been cutting jobs, they've been making the trains longer
21:24
Speaker 2: and heavier, they've been making workers be on call twenty
21:28
Speaker 2: four to seven, running them into the ground, and like
21:31
Speaker 2: it's only a matter of time until you know, like
21:35
Speaker 2: those short term profits run out and you end up
21:38
Speaker 2: with like a massive, massive, dangerous problem that's gonna take
21:43
Speaker 2: years to fix. And like that is again, I really
21:47
Speaker 2: really want to stress for folks, you know, like those
21:49
Speaker 2: are the stakes of what we're talking about here, not
21:52
Speaker 2: just for frontline workers in these industries, but for fence
21:57
Speaker 2: line communities living near these industries or live near a
22:00
Speaker 2: railroad track, living near a you know, the Gulf of
22:04
Speaker 2: Mexico or any coast where you know your ability to
22:08
Speaker 2: go outside is gonna you know, is basically in the
22:11
Speaker 2: hands of wealthy corporations that are making disastrous decisions that
22:16
Speaker 2: could impact you and your family. But I don't want
22:18
Speaker 2: to be labor the point because I know we have
22:20
Speaker 2: you know, limited time here, and I wanted to before
22:24
Speaker 2: we get like really into the lockout itself, Eric, I
22:28
Speaker 2: wanted to ask if you could unpack for our listeners,
22:30
Speaker 2: like the baseline of understanding that we need to have
22:33
Speaker 2: for like labor relations in this industry, like kind of
22:36
Speaker 2: how this is working with bargaining with BP right. I
22:40
Speaker 2: mean because we had to learn that four years ago
22:43
Speaker 2: when the railroad workers almost went on a national strike.
22:46
Speaker 2: I had to become like a PhD in the Railway
22:48
Speaker 2: Labor Act and explain quickly that there are thirteen craft
22:52
Speaker 2: unions there, they're like four major rail carriers. Everyone's bargaining
22:56
Speaker 2: like in sort of different fashion. So listeners of this
22:59
Speaker 2: show are a little familiar with kind of you know,
23:03
Speaker 2: hairy labor questions like that, But I guess, like just
23:07
Speaker 2: for your average lay listener, like, what are what are
23:10
Speaker 2: the things that folks need to understand about how bargaining
23:14
Speaker 2: works in this industry so that they understand like everything
23:18
Speaker 2: that we're going to talk about with the lockout.
23:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.
23:21
Speaker 4: Sure, So in the oil industry, we bargain at a
23:24
Speaker 4: national level. Not every facility, but every USW facility is
23:31
Speaker 4: in one way or another part of the national oil
23:33
Speaker 4: Bargaining Pattern agreement. And that's been since the nineteen sixties.
23:38
Speaker 4: Since the nineteen sixties, there's only been we haven't had
23:41
Speaker 4: a national strikes that we had one in twenty fifteen,
23:46
Speaker 4: prior to that nineteen eighty I believe, so there's really
23:49
Speaker 4: you know, yes, how is the labor relations in the
23:52
Speaker 4: industry national oil bargaining, it's been a stabilizing influence for
23:56
Speaker 4: both our members and the companies.
23:59
Speaker 5: You know.
23:59
Speaker 4: You usually when we've got our final settlement offer on
24:02
Speaker 4: the table, they get they gets you know, the top
24:04
Speaker 4: table will bargain it, and then it gets passed out
24:06
Speaker 4: to everybody else across the country and we put it
24:09
Speaker 4: across the table locally.
24:11
Speaker 5: Typically you always feel like, man, I wish we got more.
24:15
Speaker 4: You know, it's it wasn't great, but ninety something percent
24:19
Speaker 4: of the membership votes for it. It's you know, it's
24:20
Speaker 4: that kind of and and and that's probably how good
24:23
Speaker 4: bargaining works is neither party walks away feeling like they
24:26
Speaker 4: you know, they absolutely got the whole hog. Both parties
24:29
Speaker 4: feel like we got something, we gave up a little
24:31
Speaker 4: bit of something, and we move on. That's so that's
24:33
Speaker 4: how it's typically been. Now, this is a lockout, right
24:36
Speaker 4: and there's only been two lockouts in the oil industry
24:39
Speaker 4: in the last twenty five years that we're aware of.
24:42
Speaker 4: And there's one common nominator between the two lockouts is
24:46
Speaker 4: there's one guy that was at Exxon Mobile on the
24:50
Speaker 4: HR team, on the negotiating team that was part of
24:52
Speaker 4: the lockout in Beaumont, Texas. Again, it was an Exxon
24:56
Speaker 4: refinery in Beaumont, Texas. Uh, they were locked out ten
25:00
Speaker 4: and a half months. While they were locked out, British
25:03
Speaker 4: Petroleum liked what they saw. They hired one of the
25:07
Speaker 4: guys from that team is named Jordan Marx. They hired
25:10
Speaker 4: him and he came to Whiting and started working in
25:13
Speaker 4: the background. Wasn't immediately, he wasn't at the table with
25:16
Speaker 4: us in the first route of bargain, but he had
25:18
Speaker 4: been there kind of you know, looking at look at
25:20
Speaker 4: the contract and trying to you know, devise a way
25:22
Speaker 4: to do here what he did in Beulamont, Texas. And
25:26
Speaker 4: so that's where we're living right now.
25:28
Speaker 5: You know.
25:28
Speaker 4: Part of the reason that we believed that we filed
25:31
Speaker 4: so many labor board charges is that it was a
25:33
Speaker 4: parent that the company was at best surface bargaining. They
25:37
Speaker 4: had no intent to get to get an agreement this
25:39
Speaker 4: round of bargaining. Their intent was to push us into
25:42
Speaker 4: a strike and then eventually if we didn't strike, then
25:44
Speaker 4: they were just going to lock us up. You know.
25:47
Speaker 4: So this was this was preordained. The company had this
25:50
Speaker 4: in mind in the entire time. And that's that's that's
25:53
Speaker 4: that's absolutely apparent now national bargaining. Everybody else, every other
25:58
Speaker 4: corporation that's a part of it, agreed to the patent.
26:02
Speaker 4: There was only one other site. It's a site in California.
26:05
Speaker 4: That's that's having that's having issues too. But the rest
26:08
Speaker 4: of the country, the membership all voted yests and the
26:11
Speaker 4: companies all voted yests on National Oil barding. So so
26:14
Speaker 4: we are just in a so much we're in an
26:16
Speaker 4: absolute different spot than our peers. You know, when we
26:18
Speaker 4: get together with our sisters and our brothers from from
26:20
Speaker 4: other locals, people that work for Marathon, people that work
26:24
Speaker 4: for Exxon Chevron, they didn't they don't have these problems.
26:27
Speaker 4: Most most of their negotiations were not contentious obviously, if
26:32
Speaker 4: you know, they didn't get everything they wanted, but but
26:34
Speaker 4: they all got a deal on time. So that's that's
26:37
Speaker 4: kind of where we're at is. We're just in this
26:39
Speaker 4: spot where British Petroleum chose years ago to go down
26:44
Speaker 4: this road in an effort to break the union here,
26:47
Speaker 4: to eliminate the union.
26:49
Speaker 2: Well, let's let's talk a little more about that, right, Like,
26:52
Speaker 2: let's talk about how we got to this point and like,
26:56
Speaker 2: what are the key contract issues and working conditions that
27:01
Speaker 2: you're fighting with the company over right now, and how
27:05
Speaker 2: far back does this fight go.
27:08
Speaker 4: It's I mean, so it started. I mean they kind
27:10
Speaker 4: of tested the waters and our last thround of bargaining.
27:12
Speaker 4: So our last contract negotiation period was in twenty twenty two.
27:17
Speaker 4: It was another round where the rest of the country,
27:20
Speaker 4: the companies and the unions all agreed to national pattern
27:23
Speaker 4: and moved on down the road. We had to roll
27:27
Speaker 4: our contract for weeks after the expiration of the contract
27:30
Speaker 4: because British Petroleum had a one twenty day striking lockout
27:35
Speaker 4: notice on the table, which is something that they also
27:38
Speaker 4: did Jordan and his cronies in Beaumont, Texas. There was
27:42
Speaker 4: a little bit less, but they put a striking lockout
27:44
Speaker 4: notice on the table for them the previous contract. So again,
27:48
Speaker 4: you know, it's lazy, just bringing the exact same lazy playbook.
27:52
Speaker 4: So that was last round of bargaining and eventually we
27:55
Speaker 4: had enough people in management that had a spine and
27:58
Speaker 4: could push back against you know, against corporate and interests
28:03
Speaker 4: that were that were pushing for that one hundred twenty
28:05
Speaker 4: day strike and lockout notice and they pulled it off
28:07
Speaker 4: the table and we went down the road. So it
28:09
Speaker 4: really it started last last round of barting where you
28:11
Speaker 4: could see the rings on the walls, our smaller barning units.
28:15
Speaker 4: We also represent a plant right across the street called
28:18
Speaker 4: White and Clean Energy, which is a British petroleum plant.
28:21
Speaker 4: We represent our plant guards, our pipeline employees. So and
28:25
Speaker 4: we've seen the company coming just absolutely trying to cut
28:28
Speaker 4: their contracts.
28:28
Speaker 5: So and that's what we saw this round.
28:30
Speaker 3: It.
28:30
Speaker 4: I mean, it's hard to answer what are the issues
28:33
Speaker 4: because it's everything. They basically took the contract book and
28:36
Speaker 4: went from cover to cover and they're proposing to change
28:40
Speaker 4: pretty much anything that benefits a union worker. Again, with
28:44
Speaker 4: the job reclassifications, we have decades of memorandums, agreements, letters
28:49
Speaker 4: of understandings, side agreements that that govern how you know,
28:54
Speaker 4: our job classifications work, how how and how they're policed.
28:58
Speaker 4: They want to eliminate all those and start over again
29:01
Speaker 4: and input management's rights on everything. Once we ink the deal,
29:04
Speaker 4: you know their proposal is going forward, the company can
29:07
Speaker 4: make any changes they want that they see fit. So well,
29:11
Speaker 4: who who would sign a contract that the very next
29:14
Speaker 4: day it's rendered useless because the company could go and
29:17
Speaker 4: change it however they want. And that's where our job classifications,
29:20
Speaker 4: how we're trained, what kind of work we have to do,
29:23
Speaker 4: how the how they can eliminate some how they can
29:26
Speaker 4: terminate someone for you know, the companies, uh, you know,
29:29
Speaker 4: their interpretation of lack of ability, so that elimination of
29:34
Speaker 4: seniority for the bidding into into higher positions, elimination of
29:40
Speaker 4: plant seniority for the purpose of layoffs. So you know,
29:43
Speaker 4: right now, their proposal is they could basically once we
29:46
Speaker 4: signed the deal, if they wanted to eliminate one of
29:49
Speaker 4: one of our groups or our labs we represent our
29:52
Speaker 4: laboratory employees. As soon as we sign the deal, the
29:55
Speaker 4: company could then say give us a piece of paper saying, oh,
29:57
Speaker 4: by the way, we're gonna we're gonna lay off fifty
30:00
Speaker 4: fifty people in the lab, and then it would just
30:03
Speaker 4: go by that right Whereas right now we have planned seniority.
30:06
Speaker 4: If they wanted to lay off fifty people, it's the
30:08
Speaker 4: fifty junior people, which makes it painful on the company.
30:11
Speaker 4: But what it does is it forces them to come
30:14
Speaker 4: sit down and be reasonable and have a conversation about
30:17
Speaker 4: how can okay, you you want to you have to
30:19
Speaker 4: reduce headcount. We don't want to talk about it, but
30:21
Speaker 4: we will. We're not afraid to have hard conversations, and
30:24
Speaker 4: then will work out a way to try to help
30:26
Speaker 4: them meet their goals, but at the same time protect
30:29
Speaker 4: our members that they want they want to eliminate that. Uh,
30:33
Speaker 4: it just it just goes on and on and on
30:36
Speaker 4: management's rights for the use of AI. Their original proposal
30:40
Speaker 4: was that that the contract language would would survive the
30:44
Speaker 4: life cycle of the contract. They said it would go
30:47
Speaker 4: into perpetuity, meaning you're going to agree to something that forever,
30:52
Speaker 4: you've given up your rights, your your local, state and
30:55
Speaker 4: federal rights to bargain over the use of artificial intelligence forever.
31:00
Speaker 4: And that's just ridiculous, absolute ridiculous language. So but again,
31:05
Speaker 4: it just goes on and on and on, and any
31:06
Speaker 4: one of these issues during a regular year would have
31:09
Speaker 4: been a very a very contentious issue that could have
31:13
Speaker 4: led to a strike for Alaka, and instead they decided
31:16
Speaker 4: to throw the entire kitchen sink at it.
31:18
Speaker 2: And the way that they're trying to like sweeten this
31:20
Speaker 2: deal is offer like one time, you know, payments to
31:24
Speaker 2: you guys, right, like basically blood money to say like, hey,
31:27
Speaker 2: take this couple thousand dollars in like sign away your
31:31
Speaker 2: collective bargaining rights. I mean, like, that's that's nuts, And
31:34
Speaker 2: that's that's me speaking, that's you know, that's just me editorializing.
31:38
Speaker 3: But this is kind of making my head spin.
31:40
Speaker 2: And I know I could talk to you guys for hours,
31:43
Speaker 2: but we don't have that long and so like with
31:46
Speaker 2: the time that we have, I wanted to go back
31:48
Speaker 2: around the table and just ask if you guys could
31:50
Speaker 2: sort of like tell listeners how this whole lockout situation
31:56
Speaker 2: has unfolded as you've experienced it, Like like give us
31:59
Speaker 2: a worker I view breakdown of events on the ground
32:03
Speaker 2: since the lockout began to now, like, how are you
32:06
Speaker 2: guys holding up after five months of this?
32:09
Speaker 5: Well?
32:09
Speaker 6: With me being on the assistance committee, we're meeting at
32:14
Speaker 6: least three days a week, sometimes more, usually six to
32:18
Speaker 6: seven hours a day, and it's everybody brings in their
32:22
Speaker 6: necessity bills. They bring in your mortgage, your rent, your
32:26
Speaker 6: car note, your car lease, your medical bills if they're
32:30
Speaker 6: broken down in the monthly things insurance are medical insurance
32:34
Speaker 6: the things we need to live that we can no
32:36
Speaker 6: longer provide for ourselves because BP took away our paychecks.
32:40
Speaker 5: We on the Assistance Committee.
32:42
Speaker 6: Hear the sad stories every day of like, well, we
32:45
Speaker 6: had to cut this back. We weren't able to do
32:47
Speaker 6: this with the kids this summer, we weren't able to
32:49
Speaker 6: do this.
32:50
Speaker 5: I had to sell this.
32:51
Speaker 6: And it's you get jaded to it because you're hearing
32:56
Speaker 6: it all the time. But it's every day there's another
32:59
Speaker 6: heart breaking story that you're hearing because this person put
33:03
Speaker 6: in between. I've got guys who have put in two years.
33:06
Speaker 6: I've had families that have come in. The guys been
33:08
Speaker 6: here twenty five years and they can't provide how they've
33:13
Speaker 6: been providing for their family for the last twenty five years.
33:16
Speaker 1: It's it's it's crazy. Yeah, it hurts. And that's by design, right,
33:21
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what VP is. The company that we've
33:24
Speaker 1: all three of us have been here on average close
33:27
Speaker 1: to twenty years, right, and by design the company that
33:31
Speaker 1: we've I mean we've all missed holidays, birthdays, We've been
33:37
Speaker 1: dedicated workers for twenty years, and in order for short
33:41
Speaker 1: term gains to be able to take from us, this
33:44
Speaker 1: company just posted in three months, they made five point
33:48
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars and they're paying a bigger dividend. Right,
33:52
Speaker 1: We've been here sacrificing our personal lives for twenty years
33:56
Speaker 1: and they are intentionally hurting us and our face families.
34:00
Speaker 5: So it's shameful.
34:03
Speaker 6: Not just are the holidays we've missed, but you mentioned
34:06
Speaker 6: twelve hour shifts, sixteen, eighteen hour shifts, twelve to nineteen
34:13
Speaker 6: shifts in a row.
34:14
Speaker 5: I mean it's, yeah.
34:16
Speaker 6: It's great money when we're working, but it's you don't
34:18
Speaker 6: see your family from nineteen days. You go home and
34:20
Speaker 6: you say hey to the wife and you fall asleep.
34:25
Speaker 6: For them not to think that this is a sacrifice
34:27
Speaker 6: every day, that what we're doing for them to then
34:30
Speaker 6: make a sacrifice even further on this, it just drives
34:33
Speaker 6: you out of your mind.
34:34
Speaker 1: That goes back to you ask the benefits of a union,
34:38
Speaker 1: the worthy union, Right, the union is its workforce. The
34:41
Speaker 1: union is voted by us, It represents us, it is us.
34:45
Speaker 5: It's the workforce.
34:46
Speaker 1: Right, a fortune five hundred company, the workers are a
34:51
Speaker 1: line item, right, You're a number on a spreadsheet.
34:54
Speaker 5: You mean absolutely nothing to them, nothing at all.
34:58
Speaker 1: So Burnish Petroleum has no loyalty to us whatsoever.
35:02
Speaker 5: The only thing they care about is their shareholders. That's it.
35:04
Speaker 5: It's short term value. Like I said, they just they
35:08
Speaker 5: made five.
35:08
Speaker 1: Point seven billion dollars in three months and increase their
35:12
Speaker 1: dividend while we were locked out.
35:14
Speaker 2: So where do things stand now? Like what can be
35:18
Speaker 2: done and what can folks listening to this do to
35:22
Speaker 2: stand in solidarity with y'all and and the other eight
35:25
Speaker 2: hundred folks who have been locked out here.
35:27
Speaker 4: So unfortunately we're at a standstill right now. Is Leno
35:32
Speaker 4: just mentioned that that's by design, right. They didn't lock
35:35
Speaker 4: us out with the intent to hurry up and get
35:38
Speaker 4: a deal.
35:39
Speaker 5: They locked us.
35:40
Speaker 4: Out knowing that they have they have a number in
35:43
Speaker 4: their mind, they know how many months that they wanted
35:45
Speaker 4: this to go, right, They're they're able to put as
35:49
Speaker 4: much an economic stress and pain on families as possible
35:53
Speaker 4: with the intent that eventually will crack. Eventually enough of
35:58
Speaker 4: the membership will I will be when they when when
36:01
Speaker 4: they're visiting the Assistants Committee asking for help, those conversations
36:04
Speaker 4: will turn from uncomfortable right now painful, turn to hostile
36:11
Speaker 4: and and and panics.
36:13
Speaker 5: That's that's what the company wants. We're not there yet,
36:15
Speaker 5: we're not even.
36:16
Speaker 4: Close to there yet, but that's that's their design, right
36:19
Speaker 4: so there we don't foresee unfortunately this had this ending
36:23
Speaker 4: anytime soon. The things that we're trying to do where
36:25
Speaker 4: we were we're hoping to make some headway is is
36:28
Speaker 4: public pressure. Try to make sure that the community understands
36:31
Speaker 4: what's going on and get and try to ask the
36:33
Speaker 4: community to to be vocal, to stand up and support us,
36:37
Speaker 4: and tell and tell British Petroleum to end the lockout
36:40
Speaker 4: and get back to the table and for the first
36:42
Speaker 4: time actually comes seriously with the desire to to bargain.
36:46
Speaker 4: We're asking the same of our local uh local leaders,
36:49
Speaker 4: whether it's political leaders or community leaders. We're asking the
36:53
Speaker 4: same of state officials, federal officials. We feel like if
36:55
Speaker 4: we can get enough public pressure, enough, you know, enough
36:59
Speaker 4: political press, sure, enough economic pressure on you know, maybe
37:02
Speaker 4: somebody in London will finally say all right, enough's enough,
37:05
Speaker 4: this is this is just let's go get it, go
37:08
Speaker 4: get a deal. So so that's kind of where we're
37:11
Speaker 4: at right now, is just in this holding pattern and
37:13
Speaker 4: doing everything we can to keep our keep our membership
37:18
Speaker 4: and their families propped up just yesterday. Uh, one of
37:22
Speaker 4: our representatives, Carolina Ramsey, she's she's actually she's also the
37:27
Speaker 4: one that runs our she she oversees our entire assistance committee.
37:30
Speaker 4: She helped organize a school supply giveaway and backpack giveaway
37:35
Speaker 4: that was that was really well attended. We had a
37:37
Speaker 4: lot of local political leaders pitched in and put the
37:41
Speaker 4: word out to to you know, to get these supplies
37:44
Speaker 4: sent in book book bags and everything that would be
37:46
Speaker 4: needed to go inside them.
37:48
Speaker 5: So between things like that are the food pantry.
37:51
Speaker 4: We've had our local food bank, the Northwest Indiana Food Bank,
37:56
Speaker 4: teamed up with the United Way and we had four
37:59
Speaker 4: mobile distributions where they came out to the Union Hall
38:03
Speaker 4: and dropped off food. Like Tim was talking with our
38:07
Speaker 4: Assistants Committee, we've had our Assistants Committee up and running
38:10
Speaker 4: since about maybe a month into into this and we've
38:14
Speaker 4: probably we've we've we've given out quite a bit of money,
38:19
Speaker 4: but it will continue to do so. And everything we're
38:21
Speaker 4: doing is it is with the intent to try to
38:23
Speaker 4: make sure that people stay calm, that people that people
38:27
Speaker 4: have at least their basic needs met and just kind
38:30
Speaker 4: of supplement them well. At the same time asking them
38:33
Speaker 4: to go out and find work, because that's how we're
38:36
Speaker 4: going to win this is by being to being able
38:38
Speaker 4: to withhold and we've had we've had numerous people go
38:41
Speaker 4: out of state to find jobs. It's kind of something.
38:45
Speaker 4: It's an interesting spot to be in. Some people have
38:49
Speaker 4: had no problem right away going to find a job.
38:51
Speaker 4: It depends what kind of what field you came from.
38:53
Speaker 4: If you were if you were in the local pipe
38:55
Speaker 4: fitters union before you came and worked here and you
38:58
Speaker 4: still paid your dues in background and still kept your cards,
39:01
Speaker 4: you probably went right back to work right same thing
39:03
Speaker 4: if you're an electrician union, carpenters union. But some of
39:07
Speaker 4: our operators are in a much different spot because this
39:10
Speaker 4: is such a niche niche you know field, where do
39:14
Speaker 4: you Where do you go to the next refinery to
39:15
Speaker 4: go find a job. And that's where people are having
39:17
Speaker 4: to go out of state to go find work, and
39:20
Speaker 4: a lot of people can't because we're almost it's like
39:22
Speaker 4: we're toxic to them because they know, oh, well, why
39:25
Speaker 4: would I waste money to hire this guy or gal
39:28
Speaker 4: if they're going to leave and go right back to
39:30
Speaker 4: British petroleum Once the lockout's over. So we've had a
39:33
Speaker 4: lot of people say they told me they loved me,
39:36
Speaker 4: they loved everything about the interview and my resume.
39:38
Speaker 5: They'd hire me, but they have to.
39:41
Speaker 4: They asked that I commit to I'm not going to
39:43
Speaker 4: go back to the refinery when the lockout ends, and
39:46
Speaker 4: when people would honestly tell them I can't promise that,
39:48
Speaker 4: and they say, well, thanks if you if you, if
39:50
Speaker 4: you change your mind, let us know.
39:52
Speaker 2: Well, and like what you're what you're talking about goes
39:54
Speaker 2: the other way as well, right, I mean, like for
39:57
Speaker 2: folks out there listening, you know, like the question of
40:00
Speaker 2: like why should why should anyone like stand in solidarity
40:04
Speaker 2: with eight hundred union workers who've been locked out by
40:07
Speaker 2: their employers, Like cause you stand with your fellow worker, right,
40:10
Speaker 2: I mean, like that's you do it because it's what's
40:12
Speaker 2: right to do. That's our policy on this show. It's
40:16
Speaker 2: been our policies from the beginning. But on top of that,
40:19
Speaker 2: I think anyone living near this facility in Indiana or
40:25
Speaker 2: Illinois would want to know that that you know, dangerous
40:30
Speaker 2: complex facility is being operated by undertrained scab workers right now,
40:37
Speaker 2: you know, And we don't ever want to like punch
40:40
Speaker 2: down and say, like your fellow worker is your enemy.
40:43
Speaker 2: I mean, those people who have taken those jobs have
40:45
Speaker 2: their own bargain with God that they're going to have
40:48
Speaker 2: to kind of deal with. But like the point of
40:51
Speaker 2: fact is is that, like the train specialists that you're
40:55
Speaker 2: talking about are not operating the specialized machine in that
41:01
Speaker 2: oil refinery right now.
41:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, to expand on that too, right one of their proposals.
41:06
Speaker 1: That's a sticking point for us, as Eric mentioned that
41:08
Speaker 1: they brought to the table last time as well as
41:11
Speaker 1: the strike and lockout. Right now, we can serve twenty
41:13
Speaker 1: four hour strike notice they want currently they want one hundred.
41:17
Speaker 5: And fifty days.
41:20
Speaker 1: Their VP stance publicly that they keep repeating over and
41:24
Speaker 1: over is that they need that they need at least
41:28
Speaker 1: that one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty
41:30
Speaker 1: days strike notice to be able to continue to operate
41:34
Speaker 1: the refinery safely in the event of a workstoppage. How
41:39
Speaker 1: much notice did they give us when they locked us
41:42
Speaker 1: out twenty four hours?
41:44
Speaker 5: So both things can't be true.
41:46
Speaker 1: Either you don't need it, or you're lying right, or
41:50
Speaker 1: you're operating unsafely currently in the community. If it's unsafe
41:55
Speaker 1: to operate without that much of a notice in preparation,
42:00
Speaker 1: and that's how you're currently operating unseasly.
42:02
Speaker 4: And to point out the twenty four hour notice that
42:04
Speaker 4: we have, that's not wildcat twenty four hour notice, that's
42:08
Speaker 4: not mid contract, that's only after the contract expires. And
42:12
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people in the community don't
42:13
Speaker 4: see that, don't understand that, so they think like just
42:16
Speaker 4: on any random Tuesday, I could just wake up in
42:20
Speaker 4: a bad mood and serve the company twenty four hour
42:22
Speaker 4: strike notice.
42:23
Speaker 5: No.
42:23
Speaker 4: No, this is after you've spent months negotiating a contract.
42:27
Speaker 4: You knew that February first was the contract expiration, and
42:31
Speaker 4: our goal is to be as early as possible to
42:33
Speaker 4: hash out any issues so that by February first, you.
42:36
Speaker 5: Got a deal.
42:37
Speaker 4: You know, you get that national agreement, comes down from
42:39
Speaker 4: the top table, you take it to the membership, you
42:42
Speaker 4: vote on it, and you move on. What they want
42:44
Speaker 4: to do is make that February first, where now that
42:48
Speaker 4: not once February first comes, now we can serve notice.
42:52
Speaker 4: And it's something that we don't take lightly. We could
42:54
Speaker 4: have done at this round of bargaining, and we were
42:56
Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of our members were upset
42:58
Speaker 4: that we weren't serving strike notice in the contract inspired
43:01
Speaker 4: because of all the ridiculous proposals that the company had
43:04
Speaker 4: on the table. So it's something that we were not
43:06
Speaker 4: going to just flippantly serve strike notes. We understand that people.
43:11
Speaker 4: It's painful for us right to be on strike. It's
43:14
Speaker 4: we're willing to do it, just we don't take it lightly. Well,
43:19
Speaker 4: you know, so February first comes. Now, what they want
43:21
Speaker 4: to do with this one hundred and fifty day strike
43:22
Speaker 4: and lockout notice is they won't even so they won't
43:26
Speaker 4: even start really bargaining, seriously bargaining until about one hundred
43:29
Speaker 4: and forty eight days into that one hundred and fifty
43:31
Speaker 4: days strike and lockout notice, because that's how they're working
43:33
Speaker 4: it now. Our contract expires February first. They're not serious
43:37
Speaker 4: about the proposals until the end of January. They just
43:39
Speaker 4: keep wanting to play mess around and they want to
43:42
Speaker 4: do this art of the deal stuff where they just
43:43
Speaker 4: put crazy things on the table knowing that hey, we're
43:46
Speaker 4: going to pull them off and we'll meet in the
43:48
Speaker 4: middle type of thing. So that's all they're gonna do.
43:51
Speaker 4: They're gonna shift us one hundred and forty eight days
43:53
Speaker 4: down the road. Now they maybe they'll start to bargain. Meanwhile,
43:58
Speaker 4: the rest of the country, the national pattern folks all went.
44:01
Speaker 2: Back to work well, and Tim, I wanted to toss
44:03
Speaker 2: it to you to have the final word here, you know,
44:06
Speaker 2: like you know, being a volunteer for the Lockout Assistance Committee,
44:10
Speaker 2: any final notes that you wanted to give for folks
44:13
Speaker 2: out there listening, folks in the area or folks listening
44:16
Speaker 2: from around the country, anything that they can do to
44:19
Speaker 2: help you.
44:20
Speaker 6: Touched on a point about not punching down on your
44:23
Speaker 6: fellow workers, whether it's in your union or out in
44:27
Speaker 6: the community. This is eight hundred families who don't have
44:31
Speaker 6: the money right now to go out to eat. Where
44:34
Speaker 6: they're cutting down on all of their summer projects, theirs
44:37
Speaker 6: summer vacations. Things aren't getting you know that the jobs
44:41
Speaker 6: that you normally do around the house during the summer,
44:43
Speaker 6: like you know, doing your deck, your fence and that
44:45
Speaker 6: kind of stuff, we're not able to spend that. We're
44:47
Speaker 6: not able to employ a contractor, we're not able to
44:50
Speaker 6: tip the waitress at the restaurant because we're not even
44:52
Speaker 6: going to the restaurants everybody is seeing a reduction in
44:55
Speaker 6: the wages because we are cut out.
44:57
Speaker 5: We have a couple of websites.
44:59
Speaker 6: I'm sure that we can share those, but I can't
45:01
Speaker 6: remember all of them right off the top of my
45:03
Speaker 6: head right now, but Eric can get to that. But
45:05
Speaker 6: we gladly appreciate any donation that we can get.
45:09
Speaker 5: It's any help is helping.
45:11
Speaker 6: I was here yesterday handed out backpacks and notebooks and
45:16
Speaker 6: all the school supplies yesterday. It's it's not just taking
45:20
Speaker 6: that money off of the people's hands. It was also
45:22
Speaker 6: like your wife isn't having to freak out at the
45:25
Speaker 6: store trying to figure out how she's going to buy
45:26
Speaker 6: the stuff.
45:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, We'll say to your point the website that you
45:31
Speaker 4: know you ask how how people can help. The easiest way,
45:34
Speaker 4: we propped up a website specifically for what we're dealing with.
45:39
Speaker 5: It's called supportoil Workers dot com.
45:42
Speaker 4: On that website, it answers all those questions like if
45:45
Speaker 4: you wanted to send you wanted to send a check
45:48
Speaker 4: to help our assistants committee help pay bills, or or
45:51
Speaker 4: you know that money's also goes to help just run
45:54
Speaker 4: the hall on a day to day basis, making sure
45:56
Speaker 4: that we have food for picketers, making sure that we've
45:58
Speaker 4: got you know, the the toilet trees and things like
46:01
Speaker 4: that at the hall. So there's there's an address and
46:04
Speaker 4: a way to send a check there. There's there was
46:06
Speaker 4: a link to an Amazon store for us, and that's
46:09
Speaker 4: been fantastic. Every day we we we get shipment's in
46:11
Speaker 4: here of diapers, formula, nonperishable food items, toilet trees, things
46:19
Speaker 4: like that.
46:20
Speaker 5: They go. We stock them on the shelves and the
46:22
Speaker 5: members are free to.
46:23
Speaker 4: Come uh and take anything that they need so support
46:26
Speaker 4: World workers dot com. And then today, hopefully today it's
46:29
Speaker 4: gonna start. We've been working with a company that we've
46:33
Speaker 4: we've used for for years for all of our x
46:36
Speaker 4: swag our t shirts. It hats its image point. And
46:40
Speaker 4: today hopefully we'll have this store up and running. We're
46:42
Speaker 4: gonna have a pop up store. There's two there's two
46:45
Speaker 4: shirts that people can pick from and it's gonna be nationwide.
46:48
Speaker 4: Will be blasting us out every which way we can.
46:50
Speaker 4: It's only going to be up for two weeks and
46:53
Speaker 4: you could pick either of these shirt designs and a
46:55
Speaker 4: multitude of colors and styles, anything from a hood it's
47:00
Speaker 4: a shirt to a tank top to a to a
47:01
Speaker 4: regular T shirt and then the proceeds for that will
47:04
Speaker 4: go help our Strike Strike in Defense Fund. So again today,
47:08
Speaker 4: I will send you that link. Once we get up
47:10
Speaker 4: and running, we're just getting the bugs iron out of it.
47:12
Speaker 4: There'll be a couple of shirts. There'll be a run
47:14
Speaker 4: for UH for two weeks, then it'll shut down. They'll print,
47:19
Speaker 4: they'll go into production, and they'll start mailing out all
47:21
Speaker 4: the all the shirts to whoever purchased for one. And
47:23
Speaker 4: then a couple of weeks later we're gonna pop up
47:25
Speaker 4: a second store with two different shirts. So all in
47:28
Speaker 4: there's gonna be four different shirt designs for people to
47:31
Speaker 4: pick from, and we're kind of hoping that some people
47:33
Speaker 4: that you know, if you have the means and you
47:35
Speaker 4: really want to show some support, we hope that some
47:38
Speaker 4: people will choose to try to collect all four of
47:40
Speaker 4: those shirts.
47:46
Speaker 2: Oh right, gang, that's gonna wrap things up for us today.
47:50
Speaker 2: I want to thank our guests, Eric Schultz, president of
47:53
Speaker 2: United steel Workers Local seven one, Lino Miller, assistant griever
47:58
Speaker 2: for USW Local seven one, and Tim Powell, a nineteen
48:02
Speaker 2: year member of USW Local seven to one and a
48:05
Speaker 2: volunteer for the Lockout Assistance Committee, and of course I
48:08
Speaker 2: want to thank you all for listening, and I want
48:11
Speaker 2: to thank you for caring. We'll see y'all back here
48:13
Speaker 2: next time for another episode of Working People, and in
48:17
Speaker 2: the meantime, go explore all the great work that we're
48:20
Speaker 2: doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots
48:23
Speaker 2: reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the
48:26
Speaker 2: front lines of struggle. Check us out across our YouTube channel,
48:29
Speaker 2: our podcast feeds, our website, and our different social media pages,
48:34
Speaker 2: and help us do more work like this by going
48:37
Speaker 2: to therealnews dot com, forward slash, donate and becoming a
48:41
Speaker 2: supporter today. I promise you guys, it really does make
48:44
Speaker 2: a difference. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take
48:49
Speaker 2: care of each other. Solidarity forever.
48:56
Speaker 5: In my phase.
48:57
Speaker 7: You know what all the steed I live on you, Yes,
49:00
Speaker 7: I live on. Wherever we go, We're going to roll
49:05
Speaker 7: the union, own it some.
49:07
Speaker 5: I live on.
49:08
Speaker 7: Yes, I live on whereever I'm hungry, hungry, I'll be Yes,
49:13
Speaker 7: a homeless homework can be it's I live on.
49:18
Speaker 5: Yes, I live on.
49:20
Speaker 7: Well, mean things are happening in this land. Just read
49:23
Speaker 7: a song.
49:24
Speaker 5: I live on. Yes, I live on.
49:27
Speaker 7: Wherever the book means things, what happens in this land
49:30
Speaker 7: is read.
49:31
Speaker 5: I live on. Yes, I live on.
49:34
Speaker 7: Uh, whatever the video kay or media showing, I live on.
49:39
Speaker 5: Yes, I live on. If I have help to make
49:43
Speaker 5: this up at the wood to live here, I'll live on.
49:47
Speaker 7: Yes. I'll live on when my body is silent and
49:51
Speaker 7: then something on some bread, I'll live on. Yes, I
49:55
Speaker 7: live on when my songs and poems a red olive on.
50:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, I live on.
50:11
Speaker 3: MHM