The action closed all of Shell's southwestern facilities as workers stuck to their demands for health and safety committees and for pension improvements. In the past month, the Oil Workers union has struck major oil firms throughout the country over health and wage issues. Some 1,000 refinery workers and 850 chemical workers here walked off their jobs Jan. 26 in response to the strike call. Union President A.F. Grospiron described the strike as "95 percent solid."
The OCAW has agreed to accept and industry-wide compromise that raises hourly pay 6 percent now and another 27 cents Jan. 1, 1974. But the union refused to drop the demand for a new safety committee.
Eleven national environmental and ecology groups have come out in favor of the oil worker's strike.
February 16, 1948
Awakening from their thousand-year slumber, the people of
Iraq, by means of mass demonstrations in Baghdad and other
cities, have forced their Parliament to repudiate the newly
signed 20-year treaty of military alliance with England.
Premier Sayod Saloh Jabr had to flee the country twelve days
after he signed the treaty in Portsmouth, England. For two
weeks the country was convulsed by mass demonstrations and
riots in which many were killed and hundreds injured and
buildings burned and wrecked. This uprising culminated in the
fall of the government that was betraying the will of the
people. The pact was denounced by the demonstrators as "written
in ink and repudiated in `blood.'"
The discovery of vast oil resources in the Near East,
together with the beginnings of industrialization during the
Second World War, have augmented the wealth of these desert
lands and strengthened the nationalist sentiment among their
peoples. The weakening of the British Empire has further served
to encourage the independence movement.
Front page (for this issue) |
Home |
Text-version home