Vol. 77/No. 20      May 27, 2013

Creekmore, a boilermaker, was a contract worker at the facility, employed by Signature Industrial Services. Eleven other contract workers were injured in the fire. As of May 1, two remained in critical condition and the condition of a third had been upgraded to serious, according to the Beaumont Enterprise.

On the morning of April 17, Norris Johnson, who lives a few blocks from the main gate, saw ambulances and other emergency vehicles racing to the plant.

“But it wasn’t until the news came on that night that we learned about the fire,” he told the Militant. “ExxonMobil sent no representative to the community to tells us what had happened.”

“The companies don’t care about anyone else’s life, as long as they make that dollar,” added Johnson, a former foundry worker and oil rigger. Talking about the garment bosses’ culpability for the April 24 building collapse in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of workers, he said, “They just wanted to get their production out.”

Dorothy West, who works at a nearby barbecue spot, said she used to visit her grandmother’s house near the plant. “I didn’t like to go there. If I stayed overnight, I woke up with a headache. A plant like that shouldn’t be in a neighborhood so close to people.”

United Steelworkers Local 13-243 represents many workers at the Beaumont complex.

The USW issued a statement April 29 reporting that from February 2009 to January 2012, “ExxonMobil had 185 process safety events at its facilities, 57 of them occurred at the Baytown, Texas, complex. Twenty-one leaks or spills also occurred during that time at Baytown. There were numerous emissions events.”

USW Local 13-2001, which represents 850 workers at the Baytown facility near Houston, had threatened April 29 to strike after ExxonMobil rejected improved safety measures in the new contract under negotiation.

In a phone interview May 8, USW spokeswoman Lynne Hancock said that union and company negotiators subsequently reached agreement on safety language and that Baytown Steelworkers will vote on a contract May 14 and 15.

Neither ExxonMobil nor Signature Industrial Services returned calls from the Militant.  

 
 
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