After months of an intense opposition campaign by the company, workers at the McDermott yard, which builds huge offshore structures for the petroleum industry, voted 404-319 on August 10 to join International Union of Operating Engineers Local 406. The yard employs around 1,500 workers, many of whom work for contractors hired by McDermott.

Recko, who has worked at McDermott for more than nine years, is one of the hundreds of contract workers in the yard. He and other workers talked with Militant reporters as they left work August 11 and recounted incident after incident where McDermott showed their disregard for workers' basic human dignity. They cited common incidents of discrimination and favoritism.  
 
Bosses worry example will spread
The vote at McDermott comes at a time when several union-organizing efforts in this oil-rich region among refinery workers, mariners, and others are gaining ground.

The union victory took employers in the area by surprise and made them nervous. Prior to the vote, company spokespeople had expressed confidence that the union would be defeated.

Timothy Matte, mayor of nearby Morgan City, was quoted in the August 11 Daily Review as saying, regarding the union vote at McDermott, "We are certainly concerned.... We're a little unsure of what the impact will be because this entire area, the oil field, has not been subjected to union throughout its history."

State Senator Butch Gautreaux, a Democrat from Morgan City, said, "I was disappointed.... One of the marketing tools we have at our disposal for economic development is that until today we have not had significant penetration by unions."

St. Mary Chamber of Commerce President Emile Babin said the Council of Bayou Chambers has taken a stand opposing unionization of any major manufacturer in the area.

On August 2, the Operating Engineers union released a list of the "Top 10" reasons why workers wanted to unionize:

"No voice for the working person. Complaints of racial discrimination. Favoritism between bosses and their friends to the detriment of workers. Large pay and benefit differences between office personnel and hourly workers. Seniority and qualifications have no meaning. When work lessens, the worker suffers through pay cuts, reduced workweeks, unemployment, and furloughs. Wage increases are not given equally across the board. Retirees need better insurance coverage and benefits. Better sanitation facilities are needed. Termination of injured workers after six months."

The company organized a campaign of persuasion, intimidation, media propaganda, and community pressure. Quoted in the July 12 issue of the Courier of the nearby town of Houma, Gerald Ellender, president of a pro-boss outfit called "Concerned Citizens for the Community," declared, "We're going to assist and make all of our resources available to McDermott." Robert Alario, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association, also joined the antiunion campaign.

The company pressed hard for a no vote among the workers. They held meetings with workers on the alleged dangers of unionism, gave out antiunion material, and painted signs throughout the yard opposing unions. One of the signs read, "Our position: We are 100 percent against the International Union of Operating Engineers or any other union getting into our operation. We are convinced that having this union or any other union in Morgan City would not be in the best interest of our employees, our customers, or our company."  
 
Company unable to divide workers
"We won because everybody stuck together," said Ronald Wilson, 45, a welder. He said the company was not successful in its attempts to divide workers of different nationalities and colors in the yard.

The workforce at McDermott is about 40 percent Black, and 10 to 15 percent Vietnamese, according to union officials quoted in the local press. Militant reporters speaking with workers coming out the yard August 11 met Asian, Black, Latino, and white workers who expressed their support for the union. A few expressed opposition and some others said they would "wait and see." Several workers who are Black or Asian, wearing union T-shirts, stopped to discuss with pride their efforts to organize the union.

After the August 10 vote, workers organized a jambalaya cookout and barbecue across the road from the company property to greet the day shift coming off work. Company security efforts to get them to leave failed, as more and more workers joined the celebration. While they had not yet heard the results of the vote, the support for the union was evident as workers honked in support of "Union Yes" signs, giving thumbs-up signs of support.

Many stopped to join the barbecue and talk about how they had brought the union in, reported Mills, who took part in the celebration.

Waiting there for the vote results, workers began a chant adapted from a popular rap song. "Who let the union in! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!" they chanted repeatedly.

The impact of the workers' victory at the McDermott yard is already being felt at the Litton Avondale Industries shipyard near New Orleans, the state's largest private industrial employer, where workers won recognition for their union last year after a long struggle and are still fighting for their first contract. Workers at that shipyard spoke to Militant reporters August 12 of their need for a union.

Several reported that as a result of the Avondale bosses' speedup, three workers were killed over the past three months when they fell from scaffolding that was improperly attached to the ship hull.

Ronald Dumas, a locked-out worker at Kaiser Aluminum's Gramercy, Louisiana, plant, greeted the news of the union victory at McDermott with enthusiasm. He had previously worked at both the Avondale and McDermott yards. "I worked there as a structural fitter," he said in an interview as he picketed at the Kaiser gate August 11. "But it was too unsafe. The company had us pulling everything ourselves, all over the yard. We worked way up on scaffoldings that weren't secured. A lot of people got hurt. The company didn't care."

There are other signs of union organizing in the area. The Gulf Coast Mariners Association, an AFL-CIO affiliate formed more than a year ago, has organized activities highlighting the problems facing workers in the offshore oil and gas industry, including an informational picket in New Orleans at the 1999 International Workboat Show. Last April they organized a forum in Larose, Louisiana, that included mariners' union representatives from several countries. The forum highlighted the unsafe working conditions facing Louisiana mariners.

The union organizing centered in the South Louisiana oil patch is part of broader organizing efforts. On August 4, oil workers at Citgo's refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, voted 236 to 14 in favor of joining the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers Union (PACE). Previously they only had a "Citgo employee federation."

Brandon Scott, an oil worker involved in a refinery organizing drive at a nearby refinery in Belle Chasse, saw the vote at McDermott as significant for his fight, "I tell my co-workers that now all eyes are on us, on our work to bring the union in."

Scott says he learned a lot about how workers can stand together and take on the companies from "seeing the example of the Kaiser picket line. Seeing, for almost two years, Black and white workers standing side by side against the company."

Scott now pickets in solidarity at the Kaiser plant. He is working on a public debate with the company on the question of union and has invited Kaiser union members to participate.

"From the Gulf in Texas, where they voted in the union at Citgo," said Scott, "across the Louisiana oil patch and up the Mississippi--from Monroe to Natchez--this is what is happening. We've got to push this on through."

Jacquie Henderson is a sewing machine operator in Houston.