Posted on 02/18/2015 12:18:21 PM PST by thackney
In an open letter to employees, the manager of LyondellBasell’s Houston Refinery is asking its striking employees to come back to work.
The workers, who walked out of the refinery on Feb. 1 as part of a nationwide strike after national oil bargaining talks broke down, have left the refinery scrambling to operate with supervisors. The United Steelworkers union is on strike against 11 refineries and chemical plants nationwide, including five in the Houston area.
The letter outlined the negotiating efforts both sides made before the strike began and how the company had requested a rolling 24-hour extension to keep its employees in place.
Despite those efforts, however, the international union called a strike against LyondellBasell and the company is hoping its workers will come back.
“The jobs the USW international has advised you to leave are extraordinarily valuable,” according to the letter signed by site manager Gregory A. Nevermann. “We value you and your contributions as employees of HRO,” referring to the Houston refinery. “We are committed to the imminent resumption of normal operations at HRO, and we invite you to be a part of that resumption.”
The refinery is offering its employees “the opportunity to return to work under the same terms and conditions of employment that you enjoyed before the strike.” Interested employees are asked to call and leave their name and number.
“Instead of encouraging people to cross the picket line, LyondellBasell needs to encourage the industry to address health and safety issues such as extreme amounts of overtime, unsafe staffing levels and contracting out of daily maintenance jobs,” said Steelworkers spokeswoman Lynne Hancock.
The letter also noted that LyondellBasell will continue to use trained and qualified employees to operate the refinery during the strike.
The company would not say if it’s planning to continue to use supervisors or whether it will use staffing agencies that specialize in supplying workers during labor disputes.
“LyondellBasell’s Houston Refinery is focusing its attention and efforts in helping our employees who express an interest in returning to work,” company spokesman George Smalley said in a written statement. “At this stage, we are not prepared to publicly discuss the topic of replacement workers or whether or not we have made any decisions in this regard.”
Nor would he discuss whether the effort to encourage employees to go back to work reflects a concern the refinery may lose some of its skilled craft workers to other companies that are on a hiring spree.
Several LyondellBasell workers who were recently walking the picket line in front of the plant indicated that they’re getting other jobs offers because of the demand for skilled craft workers along the Texas Gulf Coast.
How BP’s Whiting refinery manages as 57 percent of workers strike
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-confidential-bp-whiting-strike-0215-biz-20150212-column.html
From the Chicago Skyway, the flares at BP’s Whiting oil refinery look like burning cigarettes balanced upright.
They continued to fire this week even as 1,065 workers entered the second week of a national strike affecting 11 production facilities, including nine refineries. Those refineries account for about 13 percent of domestic refining capacity, according to reports.
“The refinery is running normally,” BP spokesman Scott Dean said in an email. “We rarely disclose volume numbers, because they’re commercially sensitive, but the numbers I see look normal.”
The highly automated Whiting plant is capable of purifying more fuel than any other BP refinery in the world, much of it bound for Illinois, according to the company. Still, can it really run without 57 percent of its workforce? Apparently, yes.....
Saw a news report on that strike about a week ago.
It was shot right at the gate where the pizzas showed up
when we ordered them while on night shift.
Some of the best money I ever made was working for Zachry at that plant.
Striking at a time when good, high paying jobs are hard to find and the petroleum industry is laying off tons of highly qualified people may not be the smartest thing an employee can do.
Lots of people would love to be doing 20 hrs a week over time at $80 - 100/per hour overtime rate
They’ll stay out over 30 days in order to collect union benefits.
They’ll stay out over 30 days in order to collect union benefits.
Wait until the Union members find out all their money went to the Democrats ,LOL
Those benefits won’t come close to the pay they continue to lose. It would take more of their money to wait it out from this point than they would receive going back to work. And the mortgage will be due by then...
That's the policy here at our company. They will cut you some slack if you are injured, sick or physically unable to report to work, but not otherwise.
One guy who thought he was irreplaceable found out the hard way even though it took the company an additional two weeks to hire his replacement.
How about they replace them all and terminate them?
Texas is a Right to Work state, which also implies your employment can be terminated at any time.
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