Blood and oil
By Barry Sheppard
One week after I returned from attending the Democratic Socialist Party's convention in Australia, an explosion and fire at the Tosco refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area killed one worker and injured 25.
Michael Andrew Glanzman was instantly burned to death when he went to check on a situation that didn't seem right, and a pipe carrying inflammable material ruptured and exploded, setting fire to the unit of the refinery Glanzman worked in.
There is no word yet from Tosco concerning how such an unsafe condition could have developed. The oil companies like to place the blame for any accidents on the workers, but this tragedy appears to be the result of poor maintenance planning by management.
Equipment should be monitored for potential physical failure on a regular basis. But there is always pressure on management to cut corners with safety.
I work at the Unocal refinery a few miles from the Tosco plant, in the equivalent unit to the one Glanzman was in. Concern among my fellow workers was also underscored by the fact that Tosco is in the process of buying the four refineries that Unocal operates in California, including the one I work for.
Last year there was a major fire at my plant, which fortunately didn't injure anyone. Unocal management blamed the workers involved, who opened the wrong valve and sent hot oil into a vessel that was open to the air. Two workers were fired.
While the workers did make a mistake, what management failed to note is the unsafe working conditions that refineries accept as normal. Oil refinery operators have schedules that guarantee that they always feel tired and are never fully alert.
At Unocal, for example, we work rotating eight-hour shifts, so that in any four-week period, we work all three shifts — days, afternoons and graveyards. Our bodies cannot adjust to such changes in such a short time.
Moreover, Unocal operates under "lean production", which means it has just enough operators to handle all three shifts, providing no-one is on holiday or is sick or absent for another reason. The result is that many shifts have to be covered by overtime, which is compulsory unless someone volunteers for it. Usually, what this means is working a 16-hour shift.
So is it surprising that workers turned the wrong valve at 5:30am, the time on the graveyard shift when we are probably at our groggiest?
Tosco is scheduled to take over the Unocal refineries in the next months. However, neither the Unocal workers nor our union contract goes along with the sale of the equipment.
Unocal has given us notice of our impending termination. Tosco says all of us must apply for jobs with Tosco, and it will pick and choose which of us it wants to hire. Tosco also says it will not give any consideration to our present seniority in making its hiring decisions.
Our union, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, is presently in negotiations with Tosco on a new contract and is pressing Tosco to hire all OCAW members at Unocal. In recent years, Tosco has bought up other refineries, and has used strong-arm tactics like lockouts to force the union to accept sharp reductions in the unionised work force. We don't know yet what they propose to do with us.
With this sale, Unocal will get out of the refinery business entirely, to concentrate on drilling and pipeline operations around the world. Unocal says these operations are very lucrative.
A case in point is Unocal's cooperation with the military dictatorship in Burma in a joint venture with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). Human rights groups have charged that Unocal is benefiting from child and slave labour in its construction projects with MOGE.
A recent article in the Nation magazine reported the findings of a four-year investigation by the Geopolitical Drugwatch in Paris that MOGE is the major channel for the laundering of revenues of heroin produced and exported by the Burmese army. The State Department claims that Burma is the largest producer of heroin in the world.
Robert Wages, president of OCAW, called the drug allegation "deeply disturbing, which, if substantiated and coming on the heels of widespread condemnation of Unocal's links to the use of child and slave labour in Burma, will expose the crucial connection between the company's dirty deeds in Burma and the destruction of communities in the US.
"It appears that Unocal, by abandoning its US operations to take advantage of low wages and slave labour in Asia, is leaving us with a bitter legacy."
Oil and water don't mix. But oil and blood do. 255D>