Unocal Workers Sticking by Company in Takeover Fight

While corporate oil titans T. Boone Pickens and Fred L. Hartley slug it out in the executive suite over the fate of Unocal, the company’s 20,000 employees watch from the trenches with a combination of apprehension, resignation and a little ennui.

“What’s a Pickens?” asked one woman, a temporary Unocal employee who had not heard of the $54-per-share offer that Texas oilman Pickens made Monday to buy a controlling interest in the Los Angeles-based parent company of Union Oil Co. of California.

Unocal’s board hasn’t formally responded to the offer, but most observers expect a lively battle.

Hartley, on the advice of his lawyers, has declined to discuss the takeover.

An informal lunchtime survey of Unocal employees conducted Wednesday outside the company’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters found that many were aware of the takeover attempt and were, not surprisingly, rooting for an independent Unocal. Most did not want their name used.

“We don’t want to be called Boone-ocal,” said a secretary in Unocal’s oil and gas division. “We don’t want to move to Texas.” (Pickens’ Mesa Petroleum is based in Amarillo.)

Employees are grappling with the decision of whether to sell their holdings in Unocal “and get a good price versus being loyal to the company,” she said. “Some girls are thinking about buying homes” and could use the profit, “but on the whole, most of them are waiting.”

Unocal’s employee profit-sharing program owns 9.2 million shares, or 5.3%, of Unocal’s 173.9 million shares outstanding. Unocal’s employee stock ownership plan owns 2.24 million shares, or 1.3%.

Pickens has said no Unocal divisions are slated for sale and he has no plans to lay off employees if the investor group he heads is successful in its attempt. But Pickens has acknowledged that he is not familiar with all of Unocal’s assets and therefore can’t say exactly what he would do.

Pickens said he would move the headquarters of his company, Mesa Petroleum, to Los Angeles from Amarillo.

“I think it’s too bad,” said Otto Mauthey, advertising manager for Unocal’s chemicals division. “I think Unocal’s a well-managed company.

“It would be too bad if what happened to Phillips happens to us,” he said.

(Phillips Petroleum, a previous target of the Pickens group, escaped a takeover with an internal restructuring but took on a heavy debt load and will end up selling $2 billion in assets during the next year.)

“People get laid off and the company gets destroyed,” Mauthey said. “I’ve put 20 years into this company, and I would hate to see it go down the drain.”

Not everyone thinks Pickens would be a bad influence on Unocal’s future.

“Everybody talks about it, and some people want it to happen,” one employee said. “I’m one of those that would like to see some changes.”

“I wish we could vote,” a secretary said. “I wish we could hear them both and vote.”

“I think it’s just a waste of time,” said Jim Sabino, an employee in the crude-oil supply division.

“In past takeovers, (Pickens) has been in it for the short term,” he said.

“I don’t think he really wants to take over the company and operate it. He just wants the dough. I want to be Unocal, not Mesa.”

“I don’t know how it affects me,” said Joe Gonzales, who works in Unocal’s computer services division. “It’s all pretty high level.

“I hope it all works out well for the employees.”

“To me it’s no problem,” said Victor De La Rosa, a maintenance employee who was sweeping the sidewalk outside Unocal’s 12-story headquarters.

“People talk about it, but I say it’s no problem as long as you work.”

“Now, I think it’s a tug-of-war between Hartley and Boone Pickens,” one woman said.

“They’re both pretty stubborn.”