The United Steelworkers would not take "shut" for an answer.
Steelworkers demonstrated, petitioned, held press conferences, conducted candlelight vigils, demanded studies, pestered lawmakers, organized meetings and ultimately helped save about 1,200 good-paying refinery jobs, create 1,000 construction jobs and produce 200 new permanent jobs.
Those jobs are at two of three Philadelphia refineries given death sentences last fall. The Steelworkers sought reprieves for all three. The score so far: two preserved, one more to save.
In a conference call last week to announce that a joint venture between Sunoco and The Carlyle Group would preserve and expand the largest of the three refineries, officials acknowledged the Steelworkers' efforts as crucial to the deal. It's hard for Fox-News-watching-Tea-Party-saluting-rabid-right-wingers to hear that a union is a job creator. Especially when those words come from the mouths of CEOs and private equity partners. But that's what they said. And that's what actually happened.
This saga started sadly last fall. ConocoPhillips and Sunoco announced they would close their three Eastern Pennsylvania refineries -- Marcus Hook, Philadelphia and Trainer. Processing expensive light, sweet crude oil, the three were losing money.
ConocoPhillips closed Trainer in September. Sunoco closed Marcus Hook in December. And Sunoco said it would shut the Philadelphia refinery if a buyer weren't found by July. That would be a total of 2,200 workers out of jobs at the three plants, 1,200 of them represented by the USW. The Steelworkers refused to accept that as inevitable.
The union launched what would become a massive campaign to save the three refineries. Steelworkers enlisted support from lawmakers who initially weren't paying attention. This included Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, whose mansion was the site of a USW candlelight vigil; congressional representatives, subjected to relentless USW phone calls, and the White House, whose top economic advisor heard Steelworker pleas.
The USW contention that loss of the refineries was too economically devastating to ignore got empirical support from the Pennsylvania Center for Workforce Information and Analysis. It calculated that if the three refineries closed, job losses could reach 36,000 and cities, school districts and the state could lose $560 million in tax revenues. The U.S. Department of Energy warned that the closures could cause gasoline and fuel oil shortfalls and price spikes.
Steelworkers posted yard signs, secured a Congressional hearing, organized massive rallies at Marcus Hook and in Washington, D.C., and searched for potential buyers.
The first breakthrough occurred in March. That's when Sunoco replaced Lynn Laverty Elsenhans, who had spent her time as CEO selling off Sunoco assets. The new CEO is Brian P. MacDonald the son of a coal miner whose hometown was devastated by deindustrialization. He proved much more amenable to working a deal to sustain the Philadelphia refinery.
The second big breakthrough came at the end of April when ConocoPhillips announced it would sell the Trainer refinery to a company controlled by Delta Airlines. By mid-June, Delta and ConocoPhillips successor company Phillips 66 finalized the sale that would give the airline a secure domestic jet fuel source. Steelworkers began returning to their jobs at Trainer shortly afterward.
In early July, the next big breakthrough was announced. Sunoco and The Carlyle Group agreed to a joint venture called Philadelphia Energy Solutions that would continue operating the Philadelphia refinery and expand it as well. Gov. Corbett provided $25 million in state aid to support the deal. And Steelworkers overwhelmingly approved a labor agreement with the new owners that gave them the flexibility that Carlyle said they needed.
In a conference call with reporters, David M. Marchick, managing director of The Carlyle Group, praised everyone, from Republican Corbett to officials in President Obama's office, for their help. He said the White House was relentless in making the deal work, including resolving environmental issues.
Marchick acknowledged the effort the Steelworkers put into redeeming the refinery, saying that without the USW:
This refinery would be closing and 850 people would be out of work.
called and wrote and pushed and prodded about the importance of this facility to the region.
Another important reason, he said, is that Carlyle is a serious investor in U.S. manufacturing:
Carlyle has a history of investing in businesses and growing them. They don't come in and load you up with a bunch of debt and leave with a pocket full of money and leave devastation in their wake, which some people do. If they had come to us with something like that, we would have had a different past couple of weeks or months. They came to us with a true vision to build and grow this refinery.
Industry can survive in the USA. Unions can thrive in the USA. Government can work. And private equity can do good things.
Marchick put it this way:
What we saw in this transaction is what made this country great - cooperation among business, government and labor, Democrats and Republicans.
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
A fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
That's the only way to build America.
Aren't we supposed to be ELIMINATING Fossil Fuels ??!
This is NUTS !
WHAT are the Unions DOING TO MY PLANET !!!?
Steelworkers build wind turbines as well as refine oil.
What? Carlyle? Private Equity savings jobs ........ ....... NO............... It cannot be. They are job destroyers!!!!
Kai
If you had bothered, you'd have caught this from the union leader: "Industry can survive in the USA. Unions can thrive in the USA. Government can work. And private equity can do good things."
But you also would have read this from the local USW president:
"Carlyle has a history of investing in businesses and growing them. They don't come in and load you up with a bunch of debt and leave with a pocket full of money and leave devastation in their wake, which some people do. If they had come to us with something like that, we would have had a different past couple of weeks or months. They came to us with a true vision to build and grow this refinery."
Obama just signed into law three new free trade deals. Everyone admits these deals will lower wages and cost more US jobs. But Obama signed them because he thinks we can all become PhDs and work in research or some such bizarre thing. And he granted illegals amnesty. And he hasn't done a thing about the well documentated case of H-1B work visa fraud. So you have no party representing working families in the US. Keep that in mind before you celebrate.
That was ok because, as agriculture became more mechanized, industry grew. The people who couldn't find jobs in the field found jobs in the factories that made the machines that worked the fields. And that was good for awhile, but then the same efficiencies that reduced employment in agriculture started being applied to manufacturing. Industry became mechanized too.
Which would be ok if there were some new paradigm of earning a living, but there isn't. For a short time, there was the hope that the white collar world would be it. But automation has affected white collar work too. Computers, calculators, automatic phone systems, ATMs, self-checkout, have all reduced white collar employment, AND THERE'S NOWHERE TO GO.
Work is simply disappearing. There is just less and less to do all the time. All the goods and services that can be sold are being produced by fewer and fewer people. Making more stuff is not the solution because we're already consuming all we can buy (remember that goods and services are not free). I don't know what the solution is, but the notion that we can make manufacturing work is wrong.
'Scuse me?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=156110477
Yep.
Union workers in GM and Chrysler did similar things to get the auto companies turned around.
It's a lot better to bargain with a collection of workers, than it is to just hack and slash jobs and companies.
Bill, Al, have changed opinion on the ethanol mandate, I wonder if California will make this the time for CHANGE?
I support a waiver of the ethanol mandate, voluntary use of ethanol in my gas.
Federal ethanol policy increases Government motors oil use and Big oil profit.
It is reported that today California is using Brazil sugar cane ethanol at $0.16 per gal increase over using GMO corn fuel ethanol. In this game the cars and trucks get to pay and Big oil profits are the result that may be ready for change.
We do NOT support AB 523 or SB 1396 unless the ethanol mandate is changed to voluntary ethanol in our gas.
Folks that pay more at the pump for less from Cars, trucks, food, water & air need better, it is time.
The car tax of AB 118 Nunez is just a simple Big oil welfare program, AAA questioned the policy and some folks still agree.
AB 523 & SB 1326 are just a short put (waiver) from better results.
GOOGLE: Prop 87 (510) 537-1796
Opposing the intregity of U.S. Presidential Elections via Voter I.D. Law
While ~ requiring their membership to provide proof of union membership to vote in their Union's elections
Secondly, requiring proof of union membership in a union election disenfranchises nobody.
Oh, and, finally, explain to me again what this article as to do with voter ID??
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-republican-governors-rapidly-bringing-down-unemployment-their-states