Oil Workers Weighing Selective Strikes; Talks on Contracts Progress

The union representing 40,000 oil workers nationwide said Wednesday that it is considering selective strikes against major oil companies--including several West Coast refiners--as negotiations continue on more than 300 new labor contracts.

The old pacts were scheduled to expire early today, but the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union said it had ruled out a national strike and would extend existing contracts 24 hours at a time as talks progress on wages, health benefits and environmental and safety issues in the wake of a recent rash of refinery accidents.

On Tuesday, the union rejected the latest of three offers from Amoco Corp., whose contract traditionally sets the pattern for the nation’s other oil companies. The union said the company had failed to respond to seven of its 10 main demands.

Among other things, the union is also seeking industry support for a nationalized health-care system and the creation of an independent environmental monitor’s job to be filled by a union worker at each refinery.

But “we are somewhat encouraged by some of the progress that (has) occurred . . . and at least we are beginning to have some substantive discussion on some of the issues that remain outstanding,” Robert E. Wages, union vice president and lead negotiator, said at a news conference here Wednesday.

He added: “We may be giving strike notice to certain companies where we are having particular problems.” No notices had been issued as of late Wednesday.

Wages specifically mentioned Amoco, Chevron, Atlantic Richfield, Unocal, Mobil, Shell Oil and Texaco as possible strike targets, adding that any strikes would affect all of a company’s operations. U.S. refineries are concentrated on the Gulf Coast, West Coast and in the Northeast.

The union represents between 8,000 and 9,000 workers on the West Coast.

Oil companies, meanwhile, said they had been training management employees to take over plant operations in the event of any walkouts and said refineries and other operations would remain running during any strikes.

“While we are disappointed that OCAW has rejected the company’s most recent offer, we will continue to discuss the issues with OCAW,” Chicago-based Amoco said in a statement

The statement added, “We believe that progress can be made on certain issues, and continue to be optimistic that an agreement can be reached without a strike.” The union represents about 4,200 Amoco workers nationwide.

Unocal Corp., which has about 840 OCAW-represented workers at three California refineries, said it has been training management personnel to run refineries for the last three months. “We’ll have sufficient staff to maintain refineries at normal operating capacities,” Unocal spokesman Jeff Callender said in a telephone interview from company headquarters in Los Angeles.

The Denver-based union, which represents workers in refineries, chemical plants and other petroleum installations--last called a national strike in 1980. In recent years, most contracts have been settled without incident shortly after their expiration, though about 2,000 workers staged localized walkouts against Mobil Oil Corp. refineries in 1988.

Amoco’s latest offer included a 4% wage hike in each of the proposed contract’s two years (or 62 to 64 cents an hour on average each year). The average wage is $15.18 an hour.

Amoco also offered to increase the amount it pays for health insurance premiums by a total of $85 a month for family medical coverage by the end of the contract period. That would cover 70% to 80% of the premium for family medical coverage, Wages said.

The union said the offers fell short of its demands for $1.25-an-hour wage increases for all workers in both years of the contract, amounting to a total raise of 15.8%, as well as an agreement by the oil companies to pay 90% of workers’ health premiums.

The union said Amoco had not yet responded to a demand to create an independent environmental monitor’s job at each plant, in which a worker would be empowered to look for toxic hazards, water and air contamination and report to the union.

Wages said this proposal is one of several ways the union is responding to a rash of refinery accidents in recent months, including the explosion last October at the Phillips Chemical Co.’s plant in Pasadena, Tex., that killed 23 people and the Christmas Eve explosion at Exxon’s Baton Rouge refinery.

The union also seeks job security for its members, who it argues are being replaced by poorly trained non-union workers employed by subcontractors. The union has blamed such employees in part for creating safety hazards that may have resulted in the recent accidents. Oil companies have denied that such employees pose a hazard.

And the union is seeking a $1-million benefit for the survivors of any worker killed on the job.

It’s questionable how far the union--whose membership has declined from 55,000 in 1980--can follow through on any strike threat. Wages declined to say precisely how much money the union had in its strike fund, saying only that it amounted to “a couple million dollars.”

“The union in some ways has limited leverage, because it is possible to run refineries while workers strike and because there have been so many refinery closings,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor of work and technology at the University of California, San Diego.

But, he added, “The real issue is whether it would evolve into a long strike, and at this point, that’s probably an open question.”