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Across America, people are dying for work. It’s not because they’re unemployed. It’s because they work for corporations that don’t care if they die.

Every day, 12 workers die on the job in America – often because a corporation has defied regulations or ignored standard safety procedures. Many more die prematurely from work exposure to toxic materials.

If corporations are people, as Mitt Romney and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court claim, then their privileges as humans come with the responsibility to act humanely. Corporate-people must fulfill their obligations to workers and communities. Profit can’t be their sole raison d’etre. That’s not how it is with flesh-and-blood people. If it were, then society would condone profit-motivated murder, like killing a parent for insurance money. Now that they’re people, corporations have an even greater duty to prevent deaths on the job. And if they don’t, they must be held accountable in criminal court the same way a money-grubbing son would be if he murdered his parents for the life insurance.

Workplace explosions get all the attention.  Three that occurred two years ago next month killed 47 workers. Within 18 days, seven died at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Wash.; 29 in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia and 11 on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Writing about industrial homicide in the American Criminal Law Review last year, Jane F. Barrett, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and director of its environmental law clinic, said of these explosions:

“In all of these cases, safety procedures were bypassed or standard operating procedures were ignored due to pressures on plant personnel to save time and/or money.”

There it is – the profit factor. Making money trumping worker survival. Occasionally, people accept risk when personal gain is held out as a possibility. But in the workplace, corporations take the gains while imposing the risks on workers. Barrett put it this way:

“And in all cases, the brunt of the consequences was borne by those who did not share in the economic rewards of the corporate non-compliance (with regulations).”

In 4,500 such instances each year, the worker’s death is quick and the cause obvious. In many more cases, however, the deaths are slower, and the reason — workplace exposure to toxic substances –less evident.  Workplace exposure causes more than 40,000 premature deaths annually from conditions like cancer and neurological disease. (more…)

Gary Beevers

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.

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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.

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Next Tuesday Americans will be deciding whether to hand over even more of our government to corporations that have been plundering America — such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wellpoint insurance, Massey Energy, and Halliburton, the giant oil services company.

Not every large corporation is irresponsible, of course, but plunderers that get away with it gain a competitive advantage over the more responsible, and thereby lead a race to the bottom.

Case in point: The staff of the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill has just revealed that Halliburton executives knew the cement it was using to seal BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well was likely to be unstable but didn’t tell BP or act on the information.

In a letter to the commission’s seven members, the staff found that the failure of the cement was a key factor in the blowout that caused millions of barrels of crude oil to escape into the Gulf of Mexico. (Not the sole factor, of course; most of the blame for the disaster, says the staff, still rests with BP and Transocean, the company BP hired to drill the well.)

Halliburton has not exactly sat out this election. Last May, as Congress began investigating its role in the disaster, its political action committee made 14 contributions — 13 to Republicans and one to a Democrat. Many were involved in the investigation; others had responsibility for overseeing oil drilling in the Gulf. It was the biggest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008. (more…)

Mike Hall

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Dean Corgey has spent nearly 40 years in the maritime industry, from 1973 when he shipped out of Houston after graduating from the Seafarers (SIU) training program, until today, when he serves as SIU vice president for the Gulf Coast region.

He has gained a deep and intimate knowledge of the Gulf Coast maritime industry, especially the offshore oil industry. In a recent column in the Houston Chronicle, Corgey looks at the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and almost two months later continues to spew oil, poison wildlife and wetlands, ruin beaches and wreak economic havoc all along the Gulf Coast.

SIU Gulf Coast VP Dean Corgey

He says if the offshore oil industry–a major economic force in the Gulf and energy asset for the nation–is to thrive, it’s time to

change how business is conducted in the Gulf to ensure that this tragedy is never repeated. This raises the question: What’s wrong in the Gulf of Mexico?

We think the answer is simple. The offshore exploration, production and service industry in the Gulf of Mexico, to the best of our knowledge, is 100 percent nonunion and increasingly foreign. Past attempts to organize these workers have been met with bitter opposition–not from employees but from employers.

Corgey says such a situation has created volatile, hyper-competitive environment that has resulted in unsafe working conditions and unstable employment.

Lack of union representation has denied oilfield workers a voice in the workplace, which in turn has created an out-of-control industry with little oversight or accountability.

Pointing to his service on special federal commissions to investigate the Exxon Valdez disaster and to design port safety plans following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Corgey says:

In my experience, the most effective health, safety and environmental programs are a three-legged stool consisting of a committed employer, effective government regulation and meaningful safety provisions contained in a binding union contract subject to a grievance and arbitration procedure with teeth. We practice this model in the deep-sea, U.S.-flag fleet with measurable success… This model must be replicated to save our domestic offshore industry.

Click here to read his entire column. Also click here for to read a post by United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard and Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts looking at how corporate greed took precedence over the safety of workers in the BP and Massey Energy Upper Big branch coal mine disasters.

Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) this week condemned actions by local and federal officials targeting immigrant workers hired to clean up BP’s oil spill on Gulf Coast beaches and in marshlands.

Danny Postel, communications coordinator for IWJ, says:

As we scramble to contain the biggest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, and send workers into harm’s way to do the dirty work (10 were recently hospitalized after reporting dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing), why do the very people whose labors are so urgently needed and whose safety hangs in the balance find themselves under investigation over their immigration status?

According to reports, agents from local offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visited two cleanup staging areas at the request at the request of St. Bernard (La.) Parrish officials. The workers were found to be properly documented.

During a visit to the Gulf Coast, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the Labor Department has been in touch with ICE and “they’re working on that issue now.”

My purpose is to assist the workers with respect to safety and protection. We’re protecting all workers regardless of migration status because that’s the federal law. If there are complaints of people not being paid adequate wages or loss of overtime or wage theft or if they feel that they’re in a harmful situation where they may be exposed to contaminants or something that might cause them fear or a health risk, they should call our OSHA office.

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Re-Posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog

Leo W. Gerard

Leo W. Gerard
USW International President 

BP, Massey Energy and Tesoro all have hauled out plaques celebrating safety achievements to deflect allegations of corporate recklessness in the aftermath of explosions in April that killed 47 of their workers. 

Though each of these corporations accepted awards for safety statistics, not one has taken responsibility for workplace deaths. 

The disconnect between safety awards and dead workers has enabled these corporations to characterize the explosions as accidents, random events for which no one really is to blame, certainly not corporate officials who control conditions in workplaces. That’s why these pseudo-safety awards are so destructive. 

The prizes congratulate corporations for reducing incidents such as slips and falls that injure workers to the point that they must miss work. Decreasing worker injuries is good, no doubt about it. But preserving workers’ lives is imperative. The corporate awards programs fail to recognize employers who successfully institute more complicated, costly and rigorous procedures called “process safety management” to eliminate workplace catastrophes that kill.    

Awards for slip and fall reduction promote complacency. The plaques hanging in hallways say the oil rig or coal mine or refinery is super safe – so secure it’s worthy of commemoration.  They create the illusion of protection in workplaces where process safety management hasn’t been properly implemented. The safety plaques are paper shields, easily immolated in explosions, along with the workers they beguiled. 

Some BP executives actually experienced a little of that burn on April 20. A group of BP bigwigs was aboard Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico when it exploded. They’d traveled out to the oil rig to celebrate a safety milestone. Workers on the rig had gone seven years without a lost-time accident – well, seven years without reporting one, anyway. Corporations routinely subtly and overtly discourage workers from reporting injuries. For example, companies grant cash awards for designated time periods during which no injury reports are filed and force mishap victims to wear distinctive clothing like orange vests so they get the blame – and not the corporation – for injury reports that cost entire crews their cash awards. 

The BP executives escaped Deepwater Horizon with their lives. Eleven roustabouts and roughnecks on that day of safety celebration did not. 

Just last year, the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) gave BP and Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, Safety Awards for Excellence –SAFE awards. MMS bestows these on offshore oil and gas corporations for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance.” Again this year, BP was a finalist for a SAFE award. After the Deepwater Horizon explosion, MMS postponed announcement of this year’s winners. Last year, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)  presented BP Alaska with a three-year re-certification of its Star award, which recognizes safety performance. 

All of that would lead workers to believe BP is a safe employer – not like the BP with a refinery in Texas City, Texas that blew up in 2005 killing 15 workers and injuring 170, the BP that OSHA slapped with its second largest total penalty ever — $21 million – for safety violations at Texas City that led to the massive explosion, the BP that OSHA hit with its largest ever fine — $87.4 million – last fall for failure over four years to comply with the terms of its settlement agreement to correct the potential hazards at Texas City. 

No, the safety-award-winning BP must be different, a corporation that recognizes its responsibility to establish and conduct safe workplaces. 

A study after the BP-Texas City explosion showed that one of the best ways to prevent such catastrophes is meeting the standards of process safety management. These use engineering and management techniques to continuously ensure that machinery and piping are in good condition, meticulously manage and record changes, and properly train workers.  The concepts are not exclusive to refineries. They can be used to improve safety in other industrial processes as well. 

The refinery industry accepted the process safety standards but hasn’t rigorously implemented them. The United Steelworkers union, which represents oil workers, met with oil corporations and the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade group for drillers and refiners, in an attempt to write two new standards addressing leading indicators in the refining industry and worker fatigue. But the union abandoned the effort last fall because the industry was more concerned about image than safety. 

Then, on April 2, an explosion at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Wash. killed seven workers. Like BP, Tesoro is a safety award winner – but not for comprehensive process safety management. The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (NPRA) has granted the Anacortes refinery numerous prizes over the years – “merit” and “achievement” and “gold” — including two last year. Tesoro notes on its web site that this recognition is for reducing “recordable injury rates”– the lost-time injuries that must be reported to OSHA. 

NPRA doesn’t sponsor an award for corporations that improve process safety management. It’s trying to collect statistics on process safety from drillers and refiners, but participation is anything but compulsory. NPRA stresses that the information it receives on process safety will be collected on an aggregate level so it’s not specific to individual refineries, will be kept secret and will be used for benchmarking only.  Clearly, it is striving to entice reticent refiners to participate. 

Three days after the Tesoro tragedy, 29 workers died in an explosion in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. Massey CEO Don Blankenship immediately began blaming God and the workers themselves for the catastrophe and citing Massey’s safety awards. In 2009, The National Mining Association and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) gave Massey three “Sentinels of Safety” awards, the most any mining company had ever received in one year. These recognize, as the NPRA and MMS awards do, low levels of lost-time injuries.  “At Massey Energy, we embrace our commitment to safety at all levels – from executive to miner. The Sentinels of Safety awards reflect the company’s dedication to safety at all of our facilities,” Blankenship said six months before the worst mining disaster in 40 years killed 29 Massey workers. 

After two Massey miners suffocated in 2006, the corporation pleaded guilty and paid $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties – the largest settlement in coal industry history — for willful violation of mandatory safety standards. By a count the United Mine Workers of America conducted, 52 people have been killed on Massey Energy properties in the past decade. UMWA President Cecil Roberts called Massey mines the most dangerous in America. 

And yet, Blankenship touts Massey’s safety awards. Like BP and Tesoro. 

 The standards for these prizes must change to stop deluding workers and deceiving the public. No agency or association should ever again laud workplaces that are lax on meeting process safety management standards.