March 19, 2015
By LaborPress
Negotiators from the United Steelworkers and Shell Oil reached agreement March 12 on a new national contract, opening the way to ending a six-week strike at 15 oil refineries. The tentative deal includes a 12% raise over four years, and Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said it won “won vast improvements in safety and staffing.”
The unfair-labor-practice strike, the largest in the industry since 1980, began Feb. 1 at nine refineries and spread to more than 6,500 of the 30,000 oil workers represented by the Steelworkers. The biggest issues for the strikers were outsourcing and overwork; refinery workers are often forced to work 12-hour shifts for several weeks straight. Shell insisted that staffing issues were its business, but the union won a role in reviewing them at each plant. Local issues remain an obstacle to ending the strike at several refineries. Read more
