Oil Workers force Chevron to back off

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—At 12:01 a.m. on March 19, 1988, workers in local taverns near Chevron's oil refinery here were jubilant. A few minutes earlier, word had been received that their union-Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (O.C.A.W.) Local 1-547—had reached tentative agreement on a new two-year contract.

As International Representative Kevin Geddes and other negotiating committee members joined the celebrants at one packed tavern they were given cheers.

Earlier that week, the union had issued handbills that urged workers to empty their lockers and to turn in their tool boxes on their last shift before contract expiration and to start gathering at plant gates eight hours before the contract lapsed.

The workers were also informed that unless word was received from the union by 12:01 a.m. on March 19, they should start striking.

At the gates, workers were met by line coordinators. The line coordinators had clipboards with which to record the names of any possible scabs and also had loads of prominently displayed picket signs in their cars parked across the street.

Contact between line coordinators and the negotiating committee was maintained by a 30-person communications committee. One worker, Dennis Den Ouden, David Campbell, a member of Socialist Action, served as Organizing Committee Chair during the El Segundo oil workers' organizing campaign. He currently serves as O.C.A.W. Local 1-547's Chevron Unit Chair, chair of the Grievance and Negotiating Committee, local union delegate, and is on the local union executive board.

On March 31, the Teamsters International (IBT) and major freight carriers announced a tentative agreement on a new National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA) covering some 200,000 workers. (Other companies are holding out for a still better deal.)

Neither the carriers nor IBT leaders anticipated the angry reaction their proposal is receiving from working Teamsters and many local officers.

During Jackie Presser's discredited stewardship of the union, members in other major Teamster jurisdictions revolted against concession contracts. And a NMFA rider was voted down in 1983. But nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of the master freight agreement.

Strong opposition is coming from the New York and New Jersey area, where nine locals are mobilizing members to reject the contract. A joint statement was issued that, "Teamsters all over the country should reject this agreement....Don't be fooled like you were three years ago.... VOTE NO."

On April 18, Local 707 members at four carriers in the New York area walked out, citing failure of the companies to bargain in good faith and in order to "light a fire under the International's ass."

A majority of the larger contract meetings voted to oppose the contract. Some 1200 at Detroit Local 299 and 900 at New York Local 707 voted it down unanimously. However, the response in other locals was uneven, making passage still possible-especially with the top officials able to invoke the "two-thirds rule" to declare the pact ratified if less than two-thirds vote "no."

The International alienated many local officials by not backing them in their negotiations over the 11 area supplements to the NMFA. The employers took key local issues to the national level, where the International granted them new concessions. Under IBT rules, the mem4 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1988 said he and his co-workers preparations and that "it operation." He added that this the rank and file in their leadership.

The company committee had come to the table with only two proposals—both takeaways. They wanted a sixmonth probation period for all new hires. Currently there is no probation period. The company also wanted "flexibility" (cross-crafting) between O.C.A.W. maintenance workers and those of the small International Brotherhood of Boilermakers union.

The Boilermakers' contract expires a couple of months after the O.C.A. W.'s, and in the past their international leaders have told the Boilermakers to cross the O.C.A.W. picket lines. They then have accepted a "me too" contract based on what the O.C.A.W. achieved.

The O.C.A.W. mobilized the rank and file, distributing ribbons which read "FLEX MEANS STRIKE!" Almost all of the union workers wore them, including the rank-and-file Boilermakers, who didn't savor the idea of being ordered by the bosses to do the O.C.A. W's maintenance work during a strike.

At 9:45 p.m., March 18, the union negotiating committee gave strike notice to the bosses and retired to their caucus room.

Messages from the communications committee indicated that a number of crucial operating plants within the refinery were in dire shape due to faulty maintenance and were about to shut down. The bosses, in a rush to revitalize the plants ahead of the O.C.A.W.'s dead-line, had made extensive use of low-paid, non-union, out-ofbership does not get to vote separately on its area supplement, something that could be done while preserving national bargaining power through the master contract.

The 12,000-member national rank-and-file group, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), is well represented at the major freight carriers. It has played a big role in preparing the ranks-particularly through its ongoing campaign against the big , concessions made in the 1985 contract-and by articulating the workers' concerns in widely distributed, regular contract bulletins.

There are some improvements in this proposed agreement over the existing contract: The two-tier wage of 70-80-90 percent over three years has been compressed to 85-90-95 percent over 18 months, in the face of workers' demands that it be abolished. The disastrous drug-testing procedure has been improved, but not ended. And there are improvements in safety procedures.

However, there have been no improvements on key issues such as job protection through an end to subcontracting, double-breasting and heavy railing of freight, full equality for casual (temporary) employees, and preferential hiring for displaced workers (since deregulations some 114,000 jobs were lost as companies went bankrupt).

If inflation is 5 percent to 6 percent per year over the life of the contract, real wages would fall about 10 percent, since a meaningful COLA (cost-of-living allowance) has not been restored. Moreover, employers may cut wages by 15 percent, if 75 percent of its employees agree, and then all will be forced into it.

Workers are particularly angry about provisions to force Teamsters on workers compensation to have to do "modified work" at $5 an hour, to pay for damage or theft if they are found "negligent," and to pay excess insurance charges if they are considered to be an assigned risk!

These unresolved issues and new concessions have working Teamsters fightwere impressed with the looked like a military inspired confidence among own ability and in the Chevron demands takeaways they had paid for.

Additionally, the line coordinators' "scab count" was 10 for the bosses versus 710 strikers for the union. This contrasts with the '86 contract expiration, when a weak union had to accept serious concessions as carloads of scabs created a traffic jam around the refinery.

"People who are united!"

At 11:10 p.m., the bosses withdrew both of their proposals and agreed to the general wage and benefit terms of the national pattern, which was set at most locations on Jan. 31. These included a $900 bonus, a 30cent-per-hour wage increase in the first year, and a 3 percent wage increase in the second year.

The Chevron Unit, in addition to fighting off the takeaways imposed on most other oil-bargaining units, achieved the highest training wage rates within the Chevron Refining System. These rates, which apply to all new employees in their first three years, had been substantially reduced in '86.

At the March 21 ratification meeting, Negotiating Committee Member Dan Snuffer said, "What we've proved is that a multi-billion-dollar corporation cannot defeat 650 people who are united."

In a two-year period, union members had recruited 324 new members, doubling the union's size from 45 percent to 90 percent of the work force in this open shop. The leadership, with the support of the international union, put forth a militant program which rejects the sell-out principles of "business unionism" and counterposes mass-struggle strategies in the daily fight between workers and bosses.

Little by little, as sell-out leaders were swept aside, as workers saw the increased visibility of a militant union in the plant, and as they experienced small victories in shop floor-tactics, they gained confidence in themselves and flocked into membership and increased activism.

As the union has stated in a leaflet titled "Empower the Union," the rank and file's will to struggle and to strike if need be is what puts the squeeze on "the money man." The El Segundo workers did just that, and in this age of concessions they turned the tide.

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