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The simple truth is that there are thousands of ways to die in the workplace. Saying that OSHA is focusing on the wrong priorities is like saying that we’re hitting the wrong targets in a giant deadly game of whack-a-mole.

We don’t yet know the details of how the West, Texas, explosion occurred. But one thing is certain – either the regulations weren’t good enough, or they weren’t enforced well enough. The answer is better regulations or better enforcement – probably both.

But here’s the problem: Congress has made it so hard to set new regulations that it takes OSHA many years and many millions of dollars to establish a single new rule for a single hazard. And it’s not just Congress. Silica dust kills far more workers every year than died in the West fertilizer plant. OSHA has a proposal – only a proposal – ready to go, but the White House has sat on it for more than two years. (more…)

Ricky Brooks and Mark Schubert from USW Local 13-2001 at the ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown, Texas know about standing up for what they believe in.  They stood up to help their independent local union affiliate with the USW; they stood up in our union’s fight to make refineries safer for workers and fence line communities, and, most recently, when ExxonMobil refused to give the all-female clerical unit at their refinery the same raises as other workers, they stood up for their union sisters to demand fair treatment.

They’ve stood up for their union sisters and brothers and for their community for years.  Now they need us to stand up for them.

In June of this year, Ricky was fired by ExxonMobil, and Mark was told by ExxonMobil that he would either be fired or he could retire. Mark “retired” under protest and we have treated his forced retirement as a “constructive discharge” by ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil still hasn’t shared many of the details of their investigation, but based on the information we have, we believe that the company is making outrageous accusations about statements that were allegedly made while the two were conducting a new-hire orientation.

I don’t think Ricky or Mark were fired because of anything they said or did – both have strong reputations for conducting themselves with dignity and engaging their union sisters and brothers, non-union co-workers and management with respect and honesty.

I think that ExxonMobil is afraid of having strong and independent union leaders at the Baytown Refinery.  I think Ricky and Mark were fired because ExxonMobil is trying to weaken the union as Local 13-2001 heads into an important round of contract negotiations.

Firing key union leaders isn’t a new tactic for bosses.  Decades ago, union activists were fired for standing up for the eight-hour day, the weekend, and living wages.  They could be blacklisted, beaten by company thugs, and even killed.

But we didn’t let the bosses and their tricks stop us back then and we’re not going to let them stop us now.

Of course we’re fighting the dismissals through the grievance and arbitration procedure in the labor agreement, and we’re confident that we’ll be able to get Ricky and Mark back to work.  But we also need to organize in our workplaces and our communities to let ExxonMobil know that this type of outrageous behavior is not acceptable.

Over the past several weeks, USW oil workers across the country have taken action in support of Ricky and Mark.  They’ve worn stickers that say “We Stand with Ricky and Mark.” They’ve distributed flyers in their facilities. And thousands of workers from across the country have e-mailed ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson demanding that he re-hire Ricky and Mark and stop the attack on workers in Baytown.  The case is also getting international attention. Tony Burke the Assistant General Secretary of Unite, the union that represents oil workers in the United Kingdom even wrote to ExxonMobil to demand that they stop their attack on Ricky and Mark. (more…)

This week I am in Germany with a delegation to ask Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz, to do the right thing and denounce Alabama’s racially-charged anti-immigration law, HB 56.

The group, including LaRaza, America’s Voices and the AFL-CIO, will seek censure of the law from Daimler because of the impact the car manufacturer can have as one of Alabama’s largest employers.

In November, I was humbled to be part of a delegation of civil rights and labor leaders that traveled to Alabama to see firsthand the devastating impact of  HB56. We came together to reflect on the hatred and racism of the past and to bear witness to the current discrimination caused by the law. What I saw and heard there was deeply disturbing.

In the year 2012, it’s shocking that people in Alabama still face discrimination because of the color of their skin, the way they look and whether they speak with an accent. Today, kids are being denied education because of these reasons. As I listened to Alabama residents’ testimonies on these conditions, I was transported back 40 years when we were having these same discussions under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I thought that we took a stand in Alabama 40 years ago and agreed that all men are created equal. But, here we are, decades later, fighting the same fight in the 21^st century.

This law harkens back to some of Alabama’s ugliest days when overt racism ran rampant throughout the state. HB 56 brings that sordid history into the present where it threatens to disrupt the business climate and break apart Alabama’s communities.

Daimler can change this. As one of Alabama’s largest corporate forces, Daimler has a hand in shaping the state’s economic and social landscape in a big way.

And as a prominent global economic player and a member of the United Nations Global Compact, Daimler has a corporate social responsibility to uphold civil and human rights and to promote work environments where people are free from discrimination. Daimler has a unique opportunity not only to live up to the standards it espouses, but to be a real leader on this crucial issue and to speak out against HB56.

Daimler can say loudly to the lawmakers of Alabama that it will not stand for a repetition of history and it will not tolerate discrimination in the workplace. In doing so, the company will show that when it says it supports global, human and workers’ rights, it means it. (more…)

This holiday season, the USW Rapid Response department would like to acknowledge the countless Steelworkers engaging in critical legislative fights and those who are struggling to keep their jobs or survive unemployment.

In addition, the department would like to show appreciation to all those who are currently making great sacrifices to be the counterweight against greed and corporate excess, particularly USW members who are on strike and those who have been left jobless after being locked out by their employers.

The following members on strike or locked out in the U.S. are standing firm for good jobs this holiday season. They’re supporting us all and holding the line for the middle class:

*             1,050 members of Local 207L illegally locked out by Cooper Tire & Rubber

*             82 members of Local 354 illegally locked out by National Gypsum

*             4 members of Local 1693 on strike at Clayton & Lambert Manufacturing Co.

*             179 members of Local 748L on strike at Omnova Solutions Inc.

*             53 members of Local 6966 illegally locked out by Hofmann Industries and HI-Products

*             216 members of Local 285L illegally locked out by Armstrong World Industries Inc.

*             Members of both Local 5000 and 9443 are fighting for their rightful jobs after being permanently replaced during strikes that have recently ended.

***

As Secretary-Treasurer, Stan Johnson oversees the finances of the USW.  A former rubber worker, Mr. Johnson also chairs the Rubber and Plastics Industry Conference, participating in major bargaining.  He chairs the International Paper Conference and co-chairs the Georgia Pacific Council and the MeadWestvaco Council.  He is chairman of three union pension funds and participates as a trustee on a fourth.  In addition, Mr. Johnson  heads the Rapid Response program, the union’s award-winning grassroots legislative initiative, and also directs its grassroots political mobilization program.

Americans need jobs and America needs work.  But corporations are not investing their $2.5 trillion in profits in the US.  Consumers don’t have money or are too scared to spend it.  President Obama promised to do what corporations won’t and consumers can’t.  However, it won’t happen if Congress is not effectively pressured to pass the President’s bill.  This is a job for organized labor.

I am no longer surprised when an otherwise intelligent individual asserts that “Unions had a role to play in the past, but we don’t need them anymore.” Has human nature changed?  Did the captains of industry suddenly overcome their greedy natures?

Even capitalism’s champion Adam Smith was a realist on the nature of capitalists: “The workmen desire to get as much, the [employers] to give as little as possible…It is not however difficult to foresee which of the two must, upon all ordinary occasions, have advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.” (more…)

America is facing a catastrophic jobs crisis. Not since the Great Depression has official unemployment hovered above nine percent – where it is today – for more than 20 months. Millions of American have given up looking for a job altogether. Even worse, real unemployment is more than 18%. Yet Washington overall has obviously yet to embrace a large-scale job creation agenda. Even if we reach consensus around the deficit – the only economic issue even getting any attention these days – it will do little to help the 29 million Americans who are unemployed in real terms. If we do not seriously tackle jobs, our country may never regain its competitive global edge.

We recently co-chaired a Task Force on Job Creation, seeking real solutions to the jobs crisis plaguing our country. This group of policy makers, economists, business and labor leaders developed a series of 15 immediate recommendations for reversing the crisis, outlined in a new report, “Vision for Economic Renewal: An American Jobs Agenda.” We found there are six vital policy areas that our government must address in order to create millions more jobs now: manufacturing, trade and globalization, U.S.-China trade, the infrastructure crisis, jobs in the green economy, and youth unemployment.

Washington is often a city of Chicken Littles, which makes ringing the alarm bell difficult. But once Washington wakes up from its deficit hangover, politicians will realize something that most Americans have known for months: The sky has already fallen.

Here’s what we can and need to do:

Manufacturing
America’s manufacturing sector must be a cornerstone of the nation’s economy and thus one of the essential drivers of the recovery we are still searching for. Yet manufacturing remains in a decades-long free fall, with, like most other sectors, stagnant wages for more than a decade. In just three years, our manufacturing sector has lost over 2.5 million jobs, and over the last decade, we’ve lost more than 6 million. The continuing decline of manufacturing will limit job growth and jeopardize our national standing. Industries that were once great contributors to our country – auto manufacturing, shipbuilding and machine tools fabrication – are barely shadows of what they once were. Meanwhile, jobs in other leading manufacturing sectors, like aerospace, are being offshored every day. (more…)

Yesterday, July 7th 2011, the Republican leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee outlined a six-year surface transportation bill that would destroy millions of jobs across the country. The brief sixteen page document fails to address America’s infrastructure needs and instead will leave workers at the side of the road holding “work wanted” signs.

At a time when the nation’s unemployment rate hovers at nine percent, significant investment in our country’s roads and bridges is critical. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. road infrastructure a “D” grade with good reason as 72,868 U.S. bridges are categorized as structurally deficient and 89,024 bridges are categorized as functionally obsolete. The plan outlined by Republican leadership will further weaken our crumbling infrastructure by cutting essential funding by a staggering one-third and putting an estimated 490,000 jobs in 2012 alone in jeopardy.

The United Steelworkers (USW) has long advocated for direct investment of our country’s infrastructure to get men and women to work and home more efficiently and safely. Strong Buy American provisions put not just construction workers back to work, but sustains jobs in steel, pipe, cable and paper mills, plus concrete, glass, rubber, aluminum and other manufacturing plants that need infrastructure investment to keep producing. Infrastructure investment is also dependent on energy resources that USW-represented workers produce and distribute. (more…)

By Gary Beevers
USW International Vice President for Oil Bargaining

A little after midnight on Good Friday last year a heat exchanger on a naphtha hydrotreater unit at the Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington catastrophically failed.  The unit exploded, setting off a blast that shook homes five miles away and igniting a fire that could be seen anywhere in Anacortes.  Three oil workers died in the blast; four others died at the hospital from injuries sustained in the accident.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) said the explosion was preventable. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) reported that Tesoro failed to adequately maintain the nearly 40-year-old heat exchanger and that microscopic cracks had built up, making a rupture possible.

Companies need to “make the investments necessary to ensure safe operations,” said CSB Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso to the press. “Companies that continue to invest in safety and recognize its importance will reap benefits far into the future.”

L&I Director Judy Shurke told reporters “The bottom line is that this incident, this explosion and these deaths were preventable,” as she cited the company for 44 safety violations and issued a record $2.39 million fine. (Tesoro is appealing the fine.)

The Anacortes explosion was certainly not the only accident in the oil sector last year.  In just the months of April and May there were 13 fires, 19 deaths and 25 injuries in the oil industry.  That includes, of course, the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and created one of the most devastating ecological disasters in history.

Our union has been working for years to pressure oil refiners to fix serious hazards and take real steps to improve refinery safety.   We’ve suggested standards for reporting incidents at refineries to improve transparency and we’ve proposed standards to address fatigue and eliminate excessive overtime caused by companies not replacing a worker assigned to another job duty.

Our members have raised safety issues on the refinery floor, we’ve worked closely with fence line communities that are concerned with refinery safety, and we’ve taken these safety issues to Congress.  Now it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety because it impacts the bottom line.

This year, in collaboration with the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund, our union is presenting shareholder proposals at four major refining companies—Marathon, Valero, Tesoro, and ConocoPhillips.  Our proposal calls on each company to:

“Prepare a report, within ninety days of the 2011 annual meeting of stockholders, at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary and personal information, on the steps the Company has taken to reduce the risk of accidents.  The report should describe the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment.”

An identical report was filed at Sunoco, but it was withdrawn when the company agreed to fully comply with the request.

Marathon, Valero, Tesoro and ConocoPhillips opposed our resolution.  After seven workers were killed, Tesoro said it was committed to safety so a report on their performance wasn’t necessary.  Valero said it was already disclosing numbers on its total reportable incident rate (TRIR) so information on process safety, staffing, and inspection and maintenance was unnecessary.  Valero also said that publishing a report would be too expensive.

Refining companies usually don’t mind providing the public with data on reportable injuries.  The problem is that information provides a deceptive picture of refinery safety.  BP’s Texas City Refinery posted an incredibly low reportable injury rate just before the 2005 explosion that killed 17 people and led to the biggest fines in OSHA history.  Simply put, reporting slips, trips and falls doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not an explosion is likely to happen.

It’s exactly this type of failed logic that led Transocean to give its executives ”safety bonuses” for turning in the company’s ”best year” in safety in 2010.  In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission management actually said “…we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate.  As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”

John Stewart from The Daily Show did a great job capturing the absurdity.  He said:

“Okay that’s just crazy.  You gave yourselves a safety bonus because statistically the Deepwater Horizon explosion, killing 11 people and pumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast counts the same as Bob cut his hand on a bolt—it’s just one incident.”

It’s worth pointing out that, out of embarrassment, the executives donated their safety bonuses to charities working to clean up the Gulf Coast.

The real information that we need to know — whether or not a refinery is running safely — is the information we asked for in our shareholder resolution: the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, and inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment.  To know whether or not there’s a risk of a deadly explosion, we need to know whether or not people at the top level of the company are directly involved in process safety; we need to know how much overtime people are working and what the risk of fatigue is; and we need to know whether or not the company is inspecting and maintaining its refineries.

I honestly don’t know if the bankers and billionaire stockowners care about whether or not oil workers die.  But I do know that they care about making money.  And blowing up refineries is bad for business.  Not only do these accidents lead to months of downtime and cause insurance rates to go through the roof, they’re also bad for the public perception of our industry and drive down investor confidence.

So whether they’re doing it to save lives or just to protect their investments it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety.   Their profits, and our lives, depend on it.

***

Gary Beevers brought to the table extensive experience negotiating with major oil companies when the USW International Executive Board chose him to take charge of the union’s National Oil Bargaining program. After Beevers held numerous positions with his local union, the president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) appointed him in 1987 to serve an international representative covering workers in the oil, chemical and paper industries as well the public sector. After OCAW and the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) merged for form the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy (PACE) workers union, Beevers was elected in 2003 as vice president and regional director of PACE Region Six. Following the PACE-USW merger, he became director of USW District 13.

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Not the wars. Not greenhouse gasses. Not even the deficit. The issue most important to Americans is jobs.

Despite that, jobs failed to make an appearance in the State of the Union address.

The talk was all about business. Business was doing better. Business needed taxpayers to help pay for research and innovation. Business will get government help to eliminate pesky regulations. Business must have lower taxes.

The most telling statement was this:

“We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business.”

Especially because it wasn’t matched by a companion:

“We have to make America the best place on Earth to work.”

The speech expressed a policy in which business is the focus of government, taking precedence over workers.  The American colonists created a government for their own benefit; they did not constitute an agent to serve business. A policy giving corporations primacy is risky for American workers.

The state of the union noted that happy days are here again for corporations and banks:

“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”

Never mentioned, however, were the 14.5 million unemployed Americans, the sustained record rate of foreclosure, and the increasing poverty and food bank reliance among citizens of the richest nation in the world.

The state of the union outlined a plan under which the government will coddle corporations, essentially proving companies government welfare using American workers’ tax dollars. If businesses create jobs for workers as a result, fine. If they don’t, there’s no plan to exact a penalty.

For example, under the policy described in the speech, American workers will fork over tax dollars to pay for research and development for businesses that are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves — hoarding it rather than creating jobs.

The president said:

“Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology — an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Maybe it will create new jobs. Hopefully. But no guarantees were offered. Mentioned as a business success story in the speech was a Michigan company, Luma Resources, which began manufacturing solar shingles with the help of a $500,000 government grant. It created 20 jobs, $25,000 a job.  American taxpayers might think that’s a little pricey, but what’s worse is the potential for Luma Resources to go the way of Evergreen Solar, squandering the corporate welfare.

Evergreen, the third largest maker of solar panels in the U.S. and recipient of at least $43 million in corporate welfare, announced earlier this month it would close its main American factory in Massachusetts and move manufacturing to China. Eight hundred Americans will lose their Evergreen jobs by April.

Evergreen officials said China will give the company even higher amounts of corporate welfare, which, of course, makes sense since China is not a capitalist country. Its economy is government controlled. And that government routinely violates international trade regulations – by providing banned subsidies to industries and by deliberately devaluing its currency.

No matter how better educated American workers get. No matter how much more innovative. No matter how much more productive. No matter how many tax dollars the government spends on research and development, if the corporations that benefit move manufacturing overseas, the American workers who paid for it will suffer.

In fact, it’s more than suffering; it’s betrayal by their government that provided tax benefits to companies for off-shoring jobs. It is betrayal by their government that fails to stop violations of trade laws by countries like China that lure away firms like Evergreen.

At the end of the State of the Union speech, the president said:

“From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream.”

An ordinary American dreams of a family-supporting job, owning a home, saving enough to pay for a child’s college education, helping to build a safe community. Corporations aren’t Americans, no matter how often the U.S. Supreme Court grants them rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees to human beings. Businesses aren’t citizens. Their allegiance isn’t to America. It’s to profits. They dream only of dollars. They concede no responsibility to family, community or country.

They were not included when the president said:

“Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political preference.  We are part of the American family.”

The top priority of the American government must be making America the best place on Earth for Americans.  If that’s good for corporations, great. The government must never place American citizens second.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Earlier this month, a former member of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) wrote to the USW blog to complain that now, six years after UPIU, and its successor, PACE, joined the United Steelworkers union, he would have to begin paying the same rate of dues as other steelworkers have been paying all along. USW District 2 Director Michael Bolton responded to this member from Michigan, and his letter is published below.

Dear Brother;

In response to your email regarding the final phase of the merger agreement, which includes dues going to the full USW rate as all other Steelworkers are paying:

Not only would I like to thank you for taking the time to write, but I also want to provide a response to your comments.  It is disturbing to read that after having identified yourself as a lifelong union member, you would encourage new hires to work as scabs, or without a union – the very opposite of what your union has stood for.  Being union is not about how much you pay in dues, it is more about a personal philosophy, about who you are; and, moreover, where you stand with your coworkers and the middle class.  I am surprised that you are willing to abandon who you have been for 43 years because of a disagreement over what the right amount of union dues are.

Our dues formula is not at all out of line with that of other activist unions. In terms of how frugally we spend the members’ money, our union does more and leads the movement by example – and for that, we will not apologize because our members have decided that they wanted a fighting union.  That is why PACE decided to merge with the Steelworkers in 2005.  The PACE Union was given a six-year transition period to prepare for the USW dues structure while having access to all the benefits of the USW.

Our union doesn’t merely show up to fight for a better collective bargaining agreement that comes around once every three or four years.  We fight every day in every venue to protect our members.  For example, there is no union that has entered and won more fights to put a halt to the off-shoring of American Workers’ jobs than the USW.  There has not been a month that has gone by since the 1990’s when we haven’t been in the middle of a trade case protecting USW members’ jobs, or preparing the next attack to protect American workers’ jobs. (more…)