WHITING, Ind. — Members of United Steelworkers Local 7-1 hit the picket lines outside the sprawling BP refinery here March 19, after the company locked them out in the midst of a contract dispute. The union represents over 800 operators, maintenance workers and others at the refinery. They’re fighting to defend their jobs, pay, as well as their union and bargaining rights in the face of management’s demand for union-busting concessions.
These include eliminating 100 unionized maintenance positions. Already in the last decade the company has contracted out 300 jobs that used to be held by USW members. BP also wants to reclassify jobs and cut the base pay for most workers by up to $8 to $10 per hour.
“It seems all along their intent is to eliminate the union,” Eric Schultz, president of Local 7-1, told reporters at a picket line news conference the first day of the lockout. “The company is going after bargaining rights in several ways,” he said, including demanding a clause requiring the union to give 150 days’ notice before any strike, providing the company months to prepare. “The union’s biggest leverage is our ability to withhold work.”
This comes alongside more and more battles today where bosses are demanding sharp cutbacks and challenging the unions — like 3,800 United Food and Commercial Workers members at JBS in Greeley, Colorado, and United Farm Workers union members in California, where workers on H-2A visas have had their wages cut from $19.97 an hour to $16.90.
These fights deserve all-out labor solidarity.
The union members also oppose the company’s demand for a six-year contract, which would put the expiration date out of line with the national pattern agreement between the union and many other major refineries.
On March 12, Local 7-1 members voted down the company’s proposals by 98%. BP immediately responded with an “offer” that was essentially the same, except with an even smaller lump-sum “bonus,” and announced it is locking out the union members until they concede. They plan to operate the refinery with management staff and nonunion workers brought in from other states.
Many of the locked-out workers are veterans of the 101-day strike here in 2015, which was part of a nationwide oil workers strike over safety and working conditions. This year the USW and most of the major refineries agreed to a four-year contract without a strike after the national contracts expired Jan. 31. But management at BP in Whiting, the largest inland refinery in the U.S., declared they were “in no way obligated to follow the ‘pattern.’”
Schultz told the Militant that the current plant manager, Jordan Marks, previously oversaw the 2021-22 lockout of USW members at the ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont, Texas, and is now trying to copy that playbook here. In 2015 the bosses at Beaumont got their contract removed from the national pattern bargaining. Then, when it expired, they imposed a 10-month lockout to force through major concessions.
Workers on the picket line are preparing for a hard fight. Many say they learned a lot from the 2015 experience. They’ve already been reaching out for support, getting neighbors and local businesses to put up signs supporting the USW. Hundreds of people took part in a Feb. 14 union rally before the lockout.
Members of Local 7-1 have also been mobilizing support for USW members at Nipsco facilities, a natural gas and electrical utility, who have been holding protests as part of their own contract fight.
USW District 7 has called for other unions and workers to spread the word and show their support. They need donations of food and other items brought to the union hall at 2045 Schrage Ave., Whiting, IN 46394. Financial donations can be sent to United Steelworkers Local 7-1, Inc. Strike and Defense Fund at the same address.