Chevron 'Fully Prepared To Continue Normal Operations' Despite Strike At Richmond Refinery
RICHMOND (CBS SF/AP) -- A strike by more than 500 workers at Chevron's massive Richmond refinery will not impact the flow of gasoline to San Francisco Bay Area gas pumps, according to company officials.
On Monday, picket lines went up as the union representing machinists, pipefitters, lab technicians and warehouse workers walked off the job at the refinery with a workforce of 1,300 workers. The workers will strike until the company comes back to the table to bargain earnestly and provides a fair contract, said a spokesman for United Steelworkers International Union Local 5, which represents the striking workers.
Amid soaring prices at the pump reaching historic levels of $6 or more in Northern California, the company was quick to calm fears that the strike would cause an even more dramatic surge.
"Chevron Richmond is fully prepared to continue normal operations to safely and reliably provide the products that consumers need," Chevron said in a statement. "We anticipate no issues in maintaining a reliable supply of products to the market."
According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of unleaded gas in San Francisco early Tuesday was holding at $5.91 -- up nearly $2 from what motorists were paying at this time last year.
The strike comes after workers voted down Chevron's most recent contract offer and the company refused to return to the bargaining table, the United Steelworkers union said.
Chevron said in a statement Sunday night that it has negotiated with the union for months and believes a contract offered by the company was fair and addressed union concerns.
The union said it had negotiated a national agreement for oil workers on wages and working conditions, but about 200 individual bargaining units still had to negotiate local issues.
USW Local 5 representative B.K. White, a refinery operator who has worked for the company for 29 years, said Chevron failed to address worker fatigue and a lack of staffing.
"If we had more people and could get a better pay rate, maybe our members wouldn't feel obligated to come in and work as many as 70 hours a week to make ends meet. We don't believe that is safe," White said.
Chevron said that in Richmond, the union's demands "exceeded what the company believes to be reasonable and moved beyond what was agreed to as part of the national pattern bargaining agreement."
The company offered a 2.5% pay increase, but the union had asked for 5% to keep up with inflation and cost of living in the Bay Area, White said.
"It's rough for the blue-collar worker in the Bay Area, and we asked for a 5% bump to help us out a little bit with our medical at Kaiser, which went up 23% last year," White said.
White said Chevron's proposed increase will not even cover inflation. Consumer prices were up 5.2% last month compared with a year earlier in Contra Costa County and four other Bay Area counties, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Oilworkers also face the high costs of gas and housing in the Bay Area.
Workers must be on standby when they are not at work, and if they call in sick, they could face disciplinary action, White said.
As far as fatigue, managers do a good job documenting it, White said, documenting over 20,000 cases in a three-year period.
But Chevron won't do anything to alleviate the fatigue workers are dealing with, according to White.
He suggested a bump in pay might help so that members don't work overtime to earn more. Some members work more than 60 to 70 hours a week. The standard is 84 hours in two weeks.
White said fatigue played a major role in the 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, that killed 15 and injured 180. He also said the approximately 100 replacement workers Chevron has brought in as replacements are not trained to run the plants.
"This is at the detriment of the city of Richmond and the environment," he said.
The company said it brought in qualified replacements starting with Sunday's night shift.
"The employees who are operating the refinery during the strike have satisfied the necessary requirements to perform their designated jobs (including receiving on-the-job training from experienced employees/operators) so that the refinery will be operated safely and in compliance with all applicable laws," Chevron spokesperson Tyler Kruzich said in an email.
© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News Service contributed to this report.