“They’re Trying to Starve Us”: BP Opposes Unemployment Benefits for Locked-Out Workers
Six and a half months into a lockout, the oil giant is appealing workers’ unemployment, a move that could force union members to pay back the benefits they’ve received.
Sarah Lazare
WHITING, IND.—Six and a half months after being locked out of his job as a British Petroleum (BP) operator, Jon is still showing up to picket shifts. I met him on the side of a road, the refinery spewing smoke behind him. For a while, unemployment benefits of around $335 a week helped ease the financial burden, he tells me, but those went away at the end of September when he hit the six-month mark. And now, BP is appealing the locked-out workers’ unemployment with the state of Indiana. It’s a move that could result in workers like Jon having to pay back the assistance they’ve already received. The appeal comes on top of a bruising lockout that has left some families dependent on donated pantry items for food, diapers and toilet paper.
“British Petroleum made a deliberate choice to challenge our members’ unemployment benefits after the Indiana Department of Workforce Development determined they were eligible, says Eric Schultz, president of USW Local 7-1, which represents the locked-out workers. “It is another attempt to increase financial pressure on our members and their families and achieve through economic coercion what the company has been unable to achieve at the bargaining table.”
For Jon, who asked to use only his first name to protect his privacy, the impact can be measured in time: “My wife asked me, ‘What do you think this is going to cost us?’” he says, standing next to an industrial drum with a small fire burning inside. A sign reading “illegal lockout” leans against a nearby folding chair. “I said it’s going to cost us two years. And she said, ‘Well, you think you’re going to be out two years?’ I said, ‘No, but no matter how long we’re out, we’re not putting money in any 401(k)s. We’re not doing this. We’re not doing that. I wanted to retire at 60 years old — now, I know I probably at least got to work ’till 62, or maybe longer.’”
BP’s unemployment appeal is one more piece of evidence that the company is trying to starve out its workforce, rather than engage in good-faith bargaining, workers told me during an October 6 visit to the union hall and picket lines. USW 7-1 members say they are in an existential battle for their union, against a company that wants to constrict their ability to strike, expand management’s power to unilaterally set conditions and tear the local away from pattern bargaining, USW’s joint bargaining with the oil and gas industry.
Since around 800 workers were kicked out on March 19, the union says, replacement workers have been laboring inside the facility, while locked-out workers maintain a 24/7 picket outside. The union is determined to continue fighting back, even as the company, whose quarterly profit doubled to over $5 billion the previous quarter, intensifies its economic pressure.
“They want to have it both ways,” Jon says of his job. He’s missed birthdays, weddings, holidays and even slept in the parking lot after an 18-hour shift to avoid missing the next one, he tells me. The job can be treacherous; it’s a workplace where there’s a risk of fires and even explosions, he says. “How can you ask everything out of us and then show us such little respect in return?”
When I first met locked-out BP operator Michelle O’Shaughnessy in July, she had been at the union hall since 4 a.m., signing people in for picket duty and helping run the pantry. When I walked in on October 6, I found her sitting in the same spot. This time she had been picketing all night, then at the union hall all morning. Her next shift will run from midnight to 3 p.m.”
None of the locked-out workers get paid for their time picketing or supporting the fightback. But in addition to the pantry, there is a hardship fund locked-out workers can apply to for help paying for specific bills, with funds supplied by the USW International and local unions. Still, families are hurting.
O’Shaughnessy coordinates food, transportation, and the hall’s schedule, so she has a strong sense of workers’ needs. Supplies in the pantry have been going fast, she says. “We did get in some toilet paper, and it’s gone within a couple shifts of people coming in and out because it’s a basic need. Cleaning products, personal care products, besides the food products, are all things that you still need as a family.”
“We’ve had a lot of babies since we’ve been out, and a lot of them actually have under-two-year-olds on top of it, so you got two children in diapers at the same time.”
In Indiana, unemployment benefits last for up to 26 weeks, and workers are now bumping up against this limit. “The people that started filing right away, they’re running out of their allocated number of weeks,” says Schultz, as we sit in his office at the union hall. “There’s others that didn’t file right away, so it’ll be a slow drop-off.”
According to Schultz, “the Indiana Department of Workforce Development had to make an initial decision on whether or not our members qualified for unemployment insurance due to the lockout, which in Indiana is a very gray area.” The union “had a team of lawyers from Pittsburgh and Indianapolis working initially to try to ensure that we did qualify for the unemployment, and we were granted it,” he explains. “The Department of Workforce Development made their initial ruling saying that yeah, you’re entitled to it.”
But now, the company is appealing. On October 2, the union released a statement saying, “If the company’s appeal is granted, United Steelworkers Local 7-1 members will lose the roughly $310 a week in unemployment benefits they are now taking home. Worse, they could be required to pay back unemployment benefits they’ve already received.”
The union is calling on Gov. Mike Braun, “who oversees the agency that decides unemployment appeals, to reject the company’s effort,” the union’s statement says. State Sen. Rodney Pol Jr. (D-Ind.) and Rep. Chuck Moseley (D-Ind.), meanwhile, are proposing legislation to protect the unemployment benefits of locked-out workers like those at BP.
“Unemployment is $390 a week, and that’s before taxes,” Schultz says. “So depending on how much you have coming out on taxes, it’s around $310 to $335 per week, which is not a lot. But it means a lot for those that are receiving it. From a company standpoint, it’s drops in the bucket. It’s unconscionable that they would even appeal it. Why not just let it go and continue with your lockout if you insist, which we don’t agree with, obviously? They didn’t need to do this.”
“It’s salt in the wounds,” he says.
When asked to comment on the appeal, a BP spokesperson said the company “does not comment on ongoing legal matters,” though they did say “it’s not unusual to challenge unemployment benefit awards, as BP did here. Any decision ultimately sits with the state.”
The spokesperson added that “BP has continued to provide certain benefits to our employees throughout the current lockout, including medical, dental and vision coverage.”
But Jon said of the company, “Appealing unemployment benefits after they’re pretty much done? There’s nothing that leads me to believe that anything they’ve done is out of benevolence or care or concern for the workforce.”
In the meantime, families’ stress is increasing as the holidays approach. “You have first Christmases, you have second Christmases, and things like that,” O’Shaughnessy says. Some members of the community are talking about setting up angel trees to make sure workers struggling to afford holiday gifts for their families get donations, she says.
After a handful of bargaining sessions in September and early October, there have been “some new faces at the table,” but nothing has fundamentally changed, says Schultz. “They’re not offering proposals. They’re offering a ransom letter to say this is what it’s going to take to get your jobs back.”
Throughout negotiations, the union has been concerned about management’s support for an industrial “peace” clause that would require 150 days’ notice for a strike. This measure would dramatically undermine the union’s ability to use this tool to protect conditions. And proposals to protect “management rights” to unilaterally determine workers’ conditions “are huge,” Schultz says. “They’re just trying to completely isolate us and strip away what it means to be a union: bargaining rights, seniority protections, layoff protections, job bidding language. They want to be able to select who gets the highest-paying jobs instead of going by a bidding process that includes seniority.”
The company posted a video update on October 6 in which Chris DellaFranco, the Whiting refinery manager, said BP made proposals that “would allow us to better partner with companies that specialize in tools that can unlock improvements that we never thought were possible before. I’m talking about using technology to advance safety, efficiency, production and reliability — important goals for our refinery.”
But Schultz said, “I don’t even know what that means. It just seems like it’s just more corporate spin, and just them throwing out euphemisms to try to justify eliminating jobs and eliminate our bargaining rights.”
According to an October 1 email update to members from the USW Local 7-1 Board of Directors, “the company has made no meaningful movement on the core proposals,” which caused 98.3% of the membership to reject management’s “last, best and final” offer on March 2. (Members rejected a revised settlement, too, and when the union gave a counteroffer on March 17, the company responded with a lockout, according to USW.) “More than six months later, we are still spending bargaining sessions discussing the same proposals,” the update read.
A BP spokesperson told me the company “is committed to ongoing negotiations to reach a ratified agreement that will bring our USW 7-1 represented employees back to work and support Whiting’s long-term future. The way for that to happen is for USW 7-1’s elected representatives to meet us at the bargaining table and give members the opportunity to vote on a proposal.”
But Schultz says, “Meeting at the bargaining table just to agree to the company’s concessionary demands isn’t bargaining.” He adds, “The company’s subsequent proposals have only been worse. The company needs to listen to their employees, the public and community leaders and get serious about bargaining — in good faith. Not demanding surrender with a proverbial gun to our heads.”
Brian Davis, a BP operations specialist, was feeling sick but still showed up to his shift as a driver of a bus that transports locked-out workers to picket lines scattered around the refinery. Just that day, he found out he lost his unemployment while filling out his voucher. “I thought I still had one more week, but apparently not,” he tells me. He rides a motorcycle to “de-stress.” Losing unemployment, he says, means “not being able to be here to help out all my brothers and sisters. It kind of sucks.” Being at the hall makes him “informed about what’s going on,” he explains. “Are they meeting? Not meeting? If they are, what’s going on with the talks? They give out email updates every so often, but being here every day, you hear some of the rumors and stuff like that. Some good, some not so good.”
“They’re trying to starve us out to make us desperate and succumb to their demands.”
The union says the lockout is illegal and has filed 15 unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of acts that include surveillance, coercive statements and refusal to bargain in good faith. But in the meantime, they are still prevented from working. “Everyone’s dealing with stress and anxiety and fear and questions of the unknown and the issues that it creates at home, the issues that it creates internally with people, mental health, things like that. We’re certainly feeling the effects of it, but it hasn’t made its waiver at all,” Schultz says.
It’s been easier for maintenance employees to find jobs, says Schultz, “because a lot of them had still maintained their journeyman’s cards through a building trade.” But operations, he says, “is a little bit trickier because it’s just such a niche job.” Some workers have moved on, while a core of workers keeps the pickets going.
A bulletin board in the union hall is covered with letters of solidarity from around the country, including one impassioned handwritten note from a Cornell graduate student who is a member of United Electrical Workers Local 300. Schultz says one local in Delaware writes his union a monthly $20,000 check. Davis tells me it’s a “bad day” of picketing, but the hall fills with people during the mid-day shift change. Some watch a movie projected on a screen, while others joke and chat. The hall has an air of familiarity and ease; these are people who have spent a lot of time with each other and have an established routine.
In mid-August, this community was one of several across Northwest Indiana hit by severe storms that shut off power in the area for around 12 days, workers told me. “We had no power at the hall, people didn’t have power at home, so we just shifted to just trying to help the community, and we shut down our picketing for two weeks,” Schultz told me. (Studies show that storms like these will grow more frequent and severe amid worsening climate change, which is itself driven by fossil fuel companies like BP.) Other than that, the union is out on the lines, save major holidays. Maintaining pickets is a way that workers can signal to the company that it will not fold to economic pressure: that it is a powerful force that must be bargained with, and united in demands for good-faith negotiations.
But sticking with the fight is not easy. When I ask Jon what it’s been like to lose unemployment, he says, “Pick a bill. … Everything’s getting more expensive.” Even still, he says he plans to keep coming out to picket, and he also sometimes drives the picket van. It helps that his wife, a nurse, is bringing in money for the family. The stakes are high. Workers worry that BP is testing the power of companies to completely crush their workforce’s union.
Akshay Patel, an inspector, stands next to Jon on the line. “In my 15 years, I always thought that this is the job where I can retire. This is my dream job. This is the place where my family and my kids and everybody looked to. This lockout was a wake-up call, as well as a shock wave across my whole entire family. I never expected this company to do that to me and my family.”
Patel’s wife works a minimum wage job, and due to hardship from the lockout, he has taken out loans to cover his daughter’s tuition for college. “They want to bring us to our knees in one way or another, because as an individual you don’t have billions of dollars backing like this big corporation.”
“We will not give up,” he says. “We will keep fighting until we get our bargaining rights.”
This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.
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Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.
