How local oil workers see their national strike working in these times

by David Bacon

Jim Payne is financial secretary of United Steel Workers Local 5, the union for oil workers in northern California, including the struck Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery.  Tracy Scott is a rank and file worker at the refinery, currently on leave to work for the local as a staff representative. They were recently interviewed in Martinez by David Bacon.

David:  How did the strike come about and what are the issues the union is striking over?
Jim:  The companies had been making economic proposals, but they weren’t addressing any of our proposals on fatigue risk management, contractor facility maintenance, or health and safety.  They were also unwilling to accept our “no retrogression” clause, which has been in our contracts for years.  That’ clause protects our language about successorship, safety, plant closures, layoffs and rate retention.  We’re just not willing to go backwards on those things.  In the last hour before the contract expired the company walked away from the table and was unwilling to continue talking.  It left our national leaders no choice but to start the strike at nine locations nationwide, and this past Saturday at a couple of other locations as well.
We’re striking three Tesoro refineries on the west coast, the Shell Deer Park refinery and chemical plant are out, three Marathon plants are out, and one LyondellBasell. Now two BP plants have been added.  They’re definitely the ones with all the resources. It’s been 35 years since we’ve been on strike, so we don’t take strikes lightly.  But sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
It feels a lot like David and Goliath.  They continue to operate their plants, although not as safely and efficiently as when our members are operating them.  They’re still making money, even though our folks aren’t in there.

D:  You’re a worker at the refinery here, Terry.  What does it mean to be on strike?
Tracy:  I’ve been an employee since 2000.  I was an operator in a hydro processing unit.  We basically process feed stock and take the nitrogen, sulfur and metals out of it.  Then it goes to a cat cracker, which turns it into gasoline and other components.
So striking means facing all the hardships any family would expect to see without a job.  As a union we tell our members to save and be prepared.  We have a really young workforce though, and they’re not as much into saving as they are into living, so that concerns us.  But we have a strike and defense fund that will help those who need it to get through this.  We’re doing pretty well right now.
D:  Is the Golden Eagle refinery operating right now?
J:  Any time we serve strike notice we offer the company a safe and orderly shutdown. Tesoro here accepted the offer, so we negotiated a process and then took the plant down sequentially.  The company is still operating portions of the plant as a terminal, taking product in and sending product out.  But they’re not manufacturing any product.
Golden Eagle is the only one shut down this way.  Tesoro Anacortes and Tesoro Carson are still operating.  We made sure we were striking over unfair labor practices.
Because of that the company can’t replace our folks permanently.  But they can replace us on a temporary basis, and at all the other ten locations management is continuing to operate the plants.
D:  What does “no retrogression” mean, and how does it affect rank and file workers?
J:  The most important agreement that’s covered in our “no retrogression” language is successorship. That means that if a facility is sold, it’s sold with a contract and the new owner has to honor it.  Without that language the new owner wouldn’t have to hire the employees at that location.  We’ve had a number of locations sold over the past years.  I can imagine how bad it would have been if that language hadn’t been there.  The Tesoro refinery itself was sold several times.  The last two times it was sold with the successor language in place, so the contract went with it.
T:  Having gone through three separate owners, it’s extremely important that we’re protected in those events.  The fact that the companies haven’t wanted to put “no retrogression” on the table is pretty telling about where they’re coming from.  Based on my own union involvement, without the protections of the successorship language chances are I wouldn’t be there.
D:  In the Bay Area in the last 35 years since the last strike, we’ve seen a number of industrial accidents, some of them pretty horrifying.  What does the health and safety language in the contract mean in terms of the actual safety of people on the job in the refineries and in the communities around them?

Elders’ abuse is on the increase in California and the entire nation

by Araceli Martínez Ortega
La Opinión/New America Media

LOS ANGELES–When Esther González, 74, was having the plastic bag changed that collects her feces, she felt a strong shove.
“Please do not push me,” she told the caregiving aide, who was cleaning her at the nursing home where she lives. In response, the caregiver used a hook from the plastic bag to strike González on her leg.
An Abusive Aide
Esther González, a Guatemalan immigrant, begged her caregiver not to mistreat her. “Sorry, sorry, it was an accident. The woman [aide] told me six times,” she recalled.
That was the first time that her caregiver hit González at her Culver City nursing home.
At other times the caregiver mistreated her psychologically and verbally. “She used to tell me words she made me feel bad. She scolded me. She was very bad tempered. She turned me over roughly and asked me to move very fast when she was cleaning me,” González said.
As soon as she could, after the caretaker hit her with the hook, González called her son Luis.
“I was crying when I explained to him what happened. I felt sad, angry. I was deeply hurt–I was never treated this way before. Everybody else at the nursing home had been really nice,” she said.
With the support of her son, González, who had always worked as a nanny and housekeeper, protested the abuse.
“She no longer works here,” González said with a sigh of relief.
Thousands of Victims
Information released during the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington last November, indicated that one in 10 Americans over age 60 is victimized each year by some type of abuse, often by those who care for them. In particular, said experts, abuses have increased in nursing homes and other elder care facilities.
Despite that so many seniors suffer from elder abuse, this problem remains largely hidden. For every case that comes to light, experts estimate, 23 do not.
Elder abuse takes many forms, such as physical, as in the case of Esther González. But it can also be psychological, sexual or financial, and it can involve deliberate neglect and abandonment.
New research from the Weill Cornell Medical University, in New York City, and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., found that hostile, inappropriate and disruptive behavior among nursing home residents, such as with Esther González, is a growing problem, including widespread.
“These findings suggest that these altercations are widespread and common in every day nursing home life,” said Karl Pillemer, PhD, professor of gerontology in medicine at Weill Cornell, and the Hazel E. Reed Professor at Cornell University.
LA’s 500 Cases
The City and County of Los Angeles saw an increase of 500 cases of elder abuse in the last year at the nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and board-and-care homes.
“Abuse in nursing homes and care facilities for the elderly is a problem that occurs throughout the country and the state,” said Molly Davies, vice president of Elder Abuse Prevention and Ombudsman Services at WISE & Healthy Aging. The organization contracts as the long-term care ombudsman service or the City and County of Los Angeles.
“Most cases of abuse are perpetrated by other residents, often young adults with disabilities, followed by abuse by staff,” she said.
Many of the nursing homes or other facilities where elders live are not exclusive to older people, but include those ranging from ages 18-100.
Davies said the lack of supervision and activities in nursing homes and board-and-care homes propel abuse.
“Sometimes it happens because residents are bored, have nothing better to do. Or it’s because at the nursing homes, people who are incompatible, are mixed within the same room or area,” she said. Younger people with mental health or substance-abuse problems may abuse elders in these situations.
The worst, she added, is that the abuse of seniors is poorly reported in nursing and care homes for fear of retaliations.
Abuse of Latino elders
Davies said she thought that among Latino seniors, abuse happens to a lesser extent.
However, in 2012, a study [http://tinyurl.com/nxuj4o2] by the University of Southern California showed chilling figures among low-income Latino seniors in Los Angeles: 10.7 percent had been physically abused; and 16.7 percent had been exploited financially.
Across all races, the study noted that each year, there are more than 5 million cases of elder abuse in U.S. facilities, homes and community settings.
Araceli Martínez Ortega wrote this article or La Opinión with the support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program of the Gerolontological Society of America and News America Media, sponsored by AARP.