Roy Houseman discusses infrastructure, job creation on the Leslie Marshall Show

USW Legislative Director Roy Houseman appeared on the Leslie Marshall Show this week to discuss President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and the opportunity to secure and create good, union jobs as the nation makes long-overdue investments in its infrastructure.  

“One of the neat things about the American Jobs Plan is that it’s a recognition that the U.S. has not been spending enough on its infrastructure over the long term,” Houseman said.

Houseman said the plan would set out funds to tackle long-deferred maintenance projects, which in turn would create jobs for workers like USW members who manufacture the quality materials needed for those projects.

“We’re really excited about his proposals, about creating these jobs, and focusing on union jobs.”

Marshall and Houseman discussed not just the physical infrastructure like roads, bridges and waterways that need attention, but also the need to bolster social infrastructure like schools, communications networks and public health systems.

Houseman said Democrats and Republicans need to work together to pass an infrastructure bill that is comprehensive enough to make substantial change in the lives of constituents, both physically and socially.

“The idea here is our infrastructure is too important to go small. And I think that’s one of the big reasons why we want to move forward.”

Click below to listen to the full interview with Roy Houseman and Leslie Marshall about investing in America’s infrastructure:

The Oilworker June 2021

Brothers and Sisters,

Thank you to all of you who have lent your support to our brothers and sisters in Beaumont, Texas in the weeks since ExxonMobil locked them out of their jobs. These hard-working members of Local 13-243 have been standing strong as they keep up the fight for a fair contract that protects their safety, security and seniority.

I especially want to commend those of you who joined Local 13-243 members when they took the fight to ExxonMobil’s front door.

The rally at the company’s headquarters during the May 26 shareholder meeting was a huge success. In addition to drawing much-needed attention to the situation in Beaumont, USW members called for and won greater accountability on corporate lobbying as ExxonMobil shareholders approved a resolution introduced by the USW and seven other organizations.

As we continue to support the locked out workers, I urge you all to pledge your solidarity with Local 13-243 members. You can also contact Hoot Landry rlandry@usw.org or Bryan Gross bgross@usw.org for other ways to help.

Fighting for a level playing field on RINs

Our union continues the fight for a more level playing field under the Renewable Fuel Standard and the “renewable identification number” (RIN) system, just as it did under the Trump and Obama administrations.

The Renewable Fuel Standard was established more than a decade ago to cut down on foreign crude by encouraging the use of domestic, environmentally-friendlier renewable biofuels in our gasoline and diesel fuel. Flaws in the original law have long been a problem, however, and now costs for some of our employers are so high USW jobs are at risk.

With the help of our D.C. staff, we’re continuing our work: lobbying members of Congress, meeting with the administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, working directly with our employers, submitting public comments of regulatory proposals and engaging our allies in the environmental movement.

More Shell sales

In the past month, Shell announced that it would sell two more of its U.S. refineries. On May 24, the company agreed to sell its controlling interest in its Deer Park, Texas refinery to Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).

On May 27, Shell then announced it would sell its Mobile, Ala., refinery to Houston-based Vertex Energy. We will keep you posted as we learn more about these developments.

Finally, I want to once again remind you that the 2021 National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP) conference will take place virtually Aug. 9-13. The policy committee has been reaching out to locals, and I am confident this year’s meeting will be a success.

We’re facing some tough fights right now, but together, we will meet them head-on. Thanks for all your hard work and solidarity, and please stay safe.

In solidarity,

Mike Smith
NOBP Chair
mjsmith@usw.org

OSHA’s new emergency standard a big step, fight for worker safety continues

Last Thursday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced the long-awaited Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for health care workers to protect them against the spread of COVID-19.

The union is glad that, after more than a year of advocacy and organizing, these workers will finally have enforceable protections. Far too many health care workers have died since the start of this pandemic, and though the scope of this rule is narrow and does not include all workers, it is a significant step forward.

There is still much work to be done in the fight for worker safety. This pandemic isn’t over, and we must do everything we can as a movement and as a nation to protect all of those who have made great sacrifices and kept America running through one of our darkest times.

To learn all about the ETS, click here.

Why a California oil workers union is getting behind clean energy

By SAMMY ROTHSTAFF WRITER

JUNE 10, 2021 6 AM PT

This is the June 10, 2021, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

The dominant narrative about labor unions and climate change is that fossil fuel workers are a major roadblock to action. There’s good reason for that reputation. In California, building trades unions have fought against limiting oil and gas extractionand won industry-friendly changes to climate policies. Nationally, labor leaders have urged President Biden not to block oil pipelines such as Keystone XL (which was just canceled) and Minnesota’s Line 3 (where the Biden administration sand-blasted protesters this week).

That opposition is driven partly by uncertainty about what comes next if traditional energy jobs go away. It makes perfect sense. 

So it’s worth slowing down to examine a groundbreaking new report — endorsed by 19 unions, including two representing thousands of California oil workers — that offers a preview of what the path forward might look like.

The report estimates the Golden State could create 418,000 clean energy jobs per year through a program to cut climate pollution in half over the next decade. It could create even more jobs — 626,000 per year — through investments in related areas such as water infrastructure, leaky gas pipelines, public parks and roadways, some but not all of which would also reduce emissions.

This is the first time California has had those kinds of detailed estimates, according to Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the report’s lead author. He and his collaborators calculated the price tag of creating more than 1 million jobs at $138 billion annually, which sounds like a lot until you realize it’s not even 4% of the state’s expected GDP.

An even more encouraging number? The cost of providing an equitable transition to fossil fuel workers who would lose their jobs. After accounting for retirements that would have happened anyway, Pollin found, the price tag comes to $470 million per year, or 0.02% of expected GDP. That money would fund “wage insurance” guaranteeing new jobs with three years’ worth of total pay at the same level as workers’ old fossil fuel employment. It would also cover pension obligations, retraining and relocation.

“If it can be done in California as the opportunity is sitting there for us, it can be done anywhere,” Pollin told me.

The report is an important read, even if the numbers are only best guesses. But what really caught my attention was the role of organized labor in seeking out and paying for the research — particularly Local 675of the United Steelworkers.

Local 675 represents 4,500 workers, about two-thirds of whom have jobs in oil refining and extraction in Los Angeles County. The union’s members staff the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, not far from the L.A. Times office building, as well as refineries owned by Marathon Petroleum, PBF Energy and Phillips 66. They also work the Wilmington oil field for California Resources Corp.

In other words, this isn’t a group you’d expect to get behind climate action. But that’s exactly what they’ve done.

I asked Dave Campbell, secretary-treasurer of Local 675, what was going on. His answer was relatively straightforward: An energy transition is coming whether we like it or not, and it’s crucial that we build a secure future for workers and their families.

“As an oil worker, you’re standing on the track, and you can see the train coming. We can argue about why the training is coming. We can argue about exactly when it’s going to get here. But it’s coming,” he said. “The choice for us is, do we stand on the track and face whatever happens? Or do we get up on the platform and try to catch that train going out of the station?”

Campbell has been on union leave for 25 years, before which he spent two decades at the El Segundo refinery. He acknowledged that giving up good-paying jobs for an unknown future isn’t an easy idea for him and his fellow oil workers to accept. Some union members, he said, “don’t even want to wrap their heads around it. It’s too horrifying for them to think about.”

At the same time, his board kicked in money to help fund the Pollin report and voted unanimously to endorse its conclusions. Campbell cited the recent shutdown of the Marathon refinery in the Bay Area city of Martinez as an eye-opening event.

“Everyone should have a chance to advance in the new economy,” he said. “We shouldn’t have the divisions that we’ve had in the past, with some people having an opportunity and other people having no real opportunity.”

I also spoke with members of two other labor groups endorsing the report. Neither hails from the fossil fuel sector — the only other oil, gas or coal-affiliated union on the list of supporters is United Steelworkers Local 5, which represents Bay Area refinery workers — but their perspectives help to show how the “climate action versus jobs” narrative misses a big piece of the story.

Maribel Castillon is a nurse at the L.A. County Department of Public Health and chair of the environmental justice action team for SEIU Local 721, a branch of the Service Employees International Union. Kelly Mayhew is an English and gender studies professor at San Diego City College and chair of the California Federation of Teachers’ labor and climate justice education committee.

Both of them told me they see their union advocacy as broader than protecting their current jobs.

Castillon’s path to environmental justice activism began with the revelation of rampant lead contamination in Latino communities in southeast L.A. County, stemming from the shuttered Exide battery recycling plant. The more she learned about the pollution, the more she wanted to help in her role as a public health worker. She also heard stories from co-workers dealing with the health consequences of the Porter Ranch methane leak, which involved Southern California Gas Co.'s Aliso Canyon storage facility.

Castillon pointed to scientific research suggesting that air pollution can make people more vulnerable to COVID-19.

“Creating green jobs that are going to be better for all of us — that’s the kind of world I want to live in,” she said.

Mayhew’s job isn’t directly related to energy or pollution. But she teaches a unit on climate change, asking students to research and write about potential solutions — an exercise that might help inform their career choices. As a community college instructor, she’s part of the educational infrastructure that will ultimately need to train people for the clean energy, sustainable agriculture and land restoration jobs of the future. That workforce might include her teenage son, who wants to be an urban planner.

Schools themselves will also need to be retrofitted with clean energy technologies such as solar panels, Mayhew said. That could help clean the air breathed by students, their families and teachers, and save money that could be reinvested in education.

“My interests are inextricably bound to the interests of the students and the interests of the communities I teach in,” she said. “That’s why this report is so exciting to me, because it answers a lot of the questions that my students have.”

The full list of 19 unions endorsing the report is here. They’ve been discussing energy transition issues in California for more than a year and reached out to Pollin after seeing similar research he had done in other states. In addition to Local 675, funding came from the California Federation of Teachers and Local 3299 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Two labor organizations, Jobs With Justice San Francisco and the Labor Network for Sustainability, helped to coordinate.

Here’s the part where I caution that none of this will be easy. When industries such as steel production shrank or went away in the past, the result was typically huge job losses. Just because a less-painful transition is possible doesn’t mean it will happen.

There’s never been such a robust effort to involve labor in planning a fair transition. But public policy is hard, and that’s before politics get in the way. Many fossil fuel workers will never go along with this willingly, and that’s understandable.

There’s also no guarantee that newly created positions in clean energy and other sectors will be the “good-paying, union jobs” that President Biden keeps talking about as he pitches his $2.25-trillion infrastructure plan — or that those jobs will be available to everyone. Pollin listed a bunch of things government can do to help, such as pairing training programs with job placement services, and requiring companies receiving public funds to pay appropriate wages and hire from underrepresented groups.

An expanding labor movement that takes climate seriously is also key, Pollin said. That’s starting to happen. Campbell’s oil-dominated union, Steelworkers Local 675, two years ago organized workers at Proterra’s electric bus factory in L.A. County.

Campbell said it doesn’t necessarily matter to his members if they keep working in energy. A training staffer at a petroleum refinery might have the skill set to become a schoolteacher, for instance, with a few more years of college. Other workers might want to become land surveyors, or civil engineers, or mechanics. Some of Campbell’s members would like to work in forestry.

Getting the transition right is especially important in Contra Costa, Kern and Los Angeles counties — drilling and refining hubs that together account for half of the state’s fossil fuel jobs, according to Pollin’s research. His report includes an entire section on Kern, which has an economy that’s especially dependent on oil and gas — as well as burgeoning solar and wind energy industries.

It’s impossible to make change not scary. But Campbell is optimistic.

“I think the future could be brighter for all of us,” he said.