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    Vol.62/No.6           February 16, 1998 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
February 16, 1973
HOUSTON - With pickets already up at all three Shell refineries on the West Coast, members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union Local 4367 voted Jan. 26 to strike Shell oil here.

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.  
 
 
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