Refinery workers strike spreads to biggest US location
http://www.journalnow.com/business/national_international_ap/refinery-workers-strike-spreads-to-biggest-us-location/article_2631dc0c-4885-5387-b1a7-6bcf185ad301.htmlRefinery workers strike spreads to biggest US location
Posted: Saturday, February 21, 2015 1:04 pm
Associated Press
The first nationwide, oil refinery strike in more than 30 years is growing to encompass four new plants, including the largest U.S. refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.
The United Steelworkers union says workers at the Motiva Enterprises refinery in Port Arthur started their strike at midnight Friday. Employees at two other refineries and a chemical plant in Louisiana will strike at the end of Saturday.
The expansion adds another 1,350 union-represented workers to the strike, which began Feb. 1 at refineries mostly in Texas and California. It later grew to include Ohio and Indiana refineries.
The union started negotiating last month with Shell Oil Co., which is serving as the lead company in national bargaining talks.
mountain grammy
(26,626 posts)daleanime
(17,796 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)Exxon Mobil blows up a plant in the middle of this strike to prove our point. We have gone 30 years without a strike and now it's over health and safety. Clear evidence that this over arching need for more and more profits is deadly to the workers they don't care about.
BP in their Texas City, Texas explosion March 23rd 2005, even budgeted for how much they would pay for each worker death and factored in to determine what dangerous conditions they would fix and which they would leave alone. Out of four budget proposals, they picked the budget that made the most profits, even though they thought they would kill only 1 or 2 workers. They killed 15 instead and injured 6,000. The media to this day still reports BP's number of 100 or so injuries, but they settled with the 6,000 suits for injuries.
Corporations run our government. They have cut the budgets of all regulatory agencies until they cannot even do the job they are supposed to do. They are all headed by industry insiders that they had their politicians appoint. If we don't change how we elect our politicians to publicly funded elections, no campaign contributions and Super PACs, and ending this revolving door, we will surely perish from this earth!