It’s Time for Investors to Weigh In on Refinery Safety
Gary Beevers, United Steelworkers (USW) international vice president for Oil Bargaining, sends us this report. Beevers has extensive experience negotiating with major oil companies with the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union (OCAW).
A little after midnight on Good Friday last year, a heat exchanger on a naphtha hydrotreater unit at the Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Wash., 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.
Workers Memorial Day Honors Those Killed on Job, Including BP Rig Workers
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A year ago today–as workers were being pushed to finish drilling faster than some thought was safe, according to news reports–the BP Deepwater/Horizon drilling platform, 72 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. Eleven workers were killed, the rest were rescued.
The BP well then begin spewing 206 million gallons of oil—19 times more than the Exxon Valdez disaster—triggering the worst environmental and economic disaster ever in the Gulf Coast.
Two days later the rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf—likely carrying with it the bodies of the dead workers that have yet to be recovered.
On April 28, as they call for tougher job safety laws as part of the 22nd annual Workers Memorial Day, workers across the country will honor those killed on the BP Deepwater/Horizon rig and the thousands more killed on the job each year. (Click here to find a Workers Memorial Day event near you or to register an event).
Trumka: Young Activists Moving Nation to ‘Jobs, Clean Green Future’
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Because of the activism by young people like the 10,000 environmental Power Shift activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., to the tell Congress it’s time to force the corporate polluters to pay up and clean up, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We’re moving past the same-old tired debates and toward jobs and a clean, green future.
The activists were in the nation’s capital for a four–day clean energy conference and mobilization training, organized by the Energy Action Coalition. They capped off their conference this morning with rally in Lafayette Park with the White House on one side and the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the voice for some the nation’s biggest corporate polluters—on the other. Said Sherri Masterson from Miami (Ohio) University:
We want President Obama to do more to hold these big corporations, like BP, accountable for screwing up the environment and make them pay to clean up their pollution.
USW: Hold Off Drilling in Gulf Until It’s Safe
The explosion and fire on an offshore petroleum platform in the Gulf of Mexico today shows “we need to make sure all these rigs in the Gulf are safe to operate before we put personnel back to work on them,” United Steelworkers (USW) Vice President Gary Beevers said.
One person was injured in the explosion on a platform owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc.
Beevers, who heads the union’s National Oil Bargaining division, said in a statement:
I would hate to see a worker killed in our haste to reopen the Gulf to drilling. We need to give the government adequate time to do its inspections and ensure adequate health and safety provisions are in place.
Boehner and Republicans: ‘Stop Picking on BP’
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It’s no secret that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his colleagues are tight with their corporate chums. They even defend poor little old BP from the meanies working to hold the petroleum giant accountable for the Gulf oil spill.
One of Boehner’s trusted lieutenants, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), even went so far as to claim the Obama administration’s efforts to persuade BP to establish a $20 billion recovery fund for Gulf Coast residents was a “shakedown.” How dare they pick on BP like that?
To remind voters in Boehner’s home district of his loving relationship with BP and Big Oil, our friends at Blue America have erected a second billboard, with our help and that of People For the American Way, that notes the golf-loving Boehner’s affection for BP is “Par for the Course.” Click here for more on Boehner and his golf jones. Read the rest of this entry »
Five Years After Katrina: Frustration and Determination
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Unemployment in New Orleans is below the national average, but the poverty level is twice the national rate. The reasons behind that stark contrast tell the real story of what is going on five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Crescent City.
There’s lots of work that needs to be done in New Orleans. The problem is that nobody’s making a living off the work but the “chiefs and the thieves,” says Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.
Even though the federal government just announced a $1.8 billion school construction grant to the city, Hammond says workers will be hard pressed to get good-paying jobs out of the grant. The money is coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and doesn’t include Davis-Bacon requirements that workers be paid the prevailing local wage. What’s happening, says Hammond, is that construction workers are being deliberately misclassified as independent contractors so employers can pay them less than if they had a union contract. He adds:
It was hard enough to get a union job before Katrina. Now it’s even harder.
BP to Pay Record $50.6 Million OSHA Fine for Texas City Blast
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BP agreed today to pay a fine of $50.6 million to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for violations related to the 2005 explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery that killed 15 and injured 170. The company also must pay another $500 million to protect workers at the plant, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said this afternoon during a press conference call.
Last October, OSHA proposed fines of $87.4 million after it found that the company had failed to correct problems at the Texas City refinery under a previous settlement following the 2005 explosion and more than $30 million for some 439 new violations the agency found in 2009. BP had contested those penalties.
As part of today’s settlement, BP has agreed to what Jordan Barab, OSHA’s deputy assistant secretary, called “unprecedented oversight” from OSHA on its safety procedures, including monthly meetings between BP and local OSHA officials, detailed quarterly reports, third-party verification and high-level meetings between OSHA and BP officials of safety.
BP’s Hayward Follows Wall Street’s ‘Fail Big, Win Big’ Pattern
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| BP CEO got a golden parachute. These Gulf pelicans weren’t so lucky. | |
When most of us screw up big time, we pay for it, instead of getting paid for it. If it was the other way around, I’d be a rich man, sort of like ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward who is finally getting his life back. He is also the latest example of what seems to be the new corporate game of “fail big, win big.”
Hayward, who whined about the time and toll the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster was taking on his life, is walking away with a tidy severance check of $1.6 million, a pension of more than $16 million and a chance to cash in on BP stocks that, if the company’s share price recovers from its recent battering, could mean millions more, according to news reports.
The BP Disaster-China Connection
A bipartisan poll shows the majority of voters believe the nation’s economy is no longer the strongest economy in the world and we need an aggressive national manufacturing strategy to regain our pre-eminent position. Here’s one reason why. When the blow-out preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig needed to be modified, it was sent to China, according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
Pointing out the BP disaster-China connection, Scott Paul, director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), says:
Wow. If China can’t keep cadmium and lead out of children’s bracelets, it’s hard to understand why BP—flush with profits—would trust a Chinese firm to overhaul a key component in the Deepwater Horizon rig simply to save money. This is, after all, a life or death issue for oil rig workers. If the modification in China led to the failure of the blow-out preventer, what a monumental miscalculation it was, costing lives and causing our nation’s most severe environmental disaster.
Some Real Questions for Chamber’s ‘Jobs Summit’
When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicks off its “Jobs for America: Summit 2010” this afternoon in Washington, D.C., the question workers most want participants to answer is: Will the Chamber help create good jobs at home or will it just keep backing corporations who chase the bottom line by sending jobs overseas?
Rather than straight talk about how corporate greed created the jobs crisis, Chamber leaders are expected to raise the same tired blather that too much regulation is strangling business. (Let’s see. There was SO much regulation of the financial industry in recent years that Big Banks didn’t run wild and wreck the economy. Oh, wait….)
