WHITING, Ind. — “This is going to be a long one. But we are united and we’ll keep going as long as we need to,” Michelle O’Shaughnessy told the Militant on the picket line outside the BP oil refinery here May 22. She is one of some 800 members of United Steelworkers Local 7-1 who have been locked out by the bosses for over two months.
O’Shaughnessy is a board operator who brings crude oil into the tank field and then distributes it to various units for production. She also loads barges on the Chicago River and runs the Stiglitz tank field, which produces asphalt. She often staffs the union office, signing up members and supporters for picket duty.
But today she was on the picket line shouting out thanks to everyone who honked as they drove by.
There were brief talks between the company and union May 18 and 22, for the first time since the lockout began March 19. “But today we didn’t see negotiations, we got an ultimatum,” O’Shaughnessy said.
BP demanded the union accept the company’s “last, best and final” contract proposal, which the Steelworkers already rejected overwhelmingly. The union is willing to negotiate, but says that it should do so while back at work with the lockout ended.
The company insists the workers have to make concessions “critical to the long-term sustainability of the refinery.” These include the elimination of more than 100 jobs; an end to seniority in any layoff; that the union has to give 150 days’ notice before calling a strike; accepting a six-year contract, which would take the union out of the established industry-wide bargaining; and management’s insistence it has the right to settle all disagreements.
“Those last three demands will be the death of the union if they were implemented,” Brian Davis, who runs an Operation Specialist Board at the refinery, said. “This is a long fight. The company wants to destroy the union and they chose to lock us out.”
Davis was staffing the union hall on our visit, along with Estrella Rivera, 28, who has worked at the refinery for four years. She is an outside operator in the Cat cracker. She said she never worked a union job before.
“I wanted to work here all my life,” she told the Militant. “It’s the best job in town. They said you could support your whole family.” Rivera has two children.
“Luckily, my husband is still working,” she said, adding that when she was hired, BP said they were joining a happy family. “Is this how they treat their family? When we voted against the last, best, and final offer they gave us four hours and then walked us out like trash.”
While we were there, people kept stopping by with donations for the union’s food drive, which Davis and Rivera put in a growing pantry. There are drop-off points at area coffee houses, a barbershop, a brewery and other local businesses.
“Giving up seniority rights would be huge,” said crane operator Tom Orange. “Then the company could just move people wherever they want, advance who they’re buddies with, instead of who’s earned it. A lot of people think this is just over pay. But we’re standing up for what people fought for years ago, we don’t want to lose that.”
“There is a deep solidarity in Northwest Indiana,” USW International President Roxanne Brown told the Chicago Tribune. The refinery is 20 miles south of Chicago, part of a very industrialized — and unionized — area. There is a lot of solidarity between Steelworkers in nearby steel mills, autoworkers at Ford and the refinery workers.
“The refinery is not running in a way that is safe for the community, because our members are the ones with the knowledge and skills to run it,” Brown said. The lockout “is a blatant disregard for our members who work at the refinery” and “a blatant disregard for the community as well.”
The union hall and picket lines are staffed 24/7. Donations and volunteer pickets are welcome, just stop by the union hall at 2045 Schrage Avenue in Whiting. To learn more, visit www.supportoilworkers.com.