The Teamsters had gone on a one-day strike in January over safety at the refinery and as a result were locked out by the employer ever since. Throughout the six months, energy on the picket lines remained strong, and rallies were held bringing out many unions and community members is support of the workers’ fight. Throughout the strike and lockout, the union highlighted grave dangers to much of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area in the case of the type of disaster which they were fighting for safety measures to prevent.

In recent weeks, the union members voted to overwhelmingly reject an offer from Marathon management that did not address enough of the key issues for the workers to be willing to vote yes to accept it.

Now their commitment to this fight has paid off and management moved off of that offer and came back with a new offer in which they moved on some of the sticking points, and the union members voted to accept the new offer and ratify the contract.

One major win in the new contract is language that significantly limits the company’s ability to subcontract work traditionally done by the permanent maintenance personnel. The union cites training and experience as a real reason that subcontracting would pose a danger to the lives of the workers and community.

Teamsters Local 120 Business Agent Scott Kroona said, “From the start of the work stoppage, Teamsters Local 120 members made it crystal clear that safety was their top priority. While this new contract addresses some of our concerns, it does not address them all, we will continue our advocacy for a safer refinery.”

#StPaulParkMN #PeoplesStruggles #Teamsters #TeamstersLocal120 #MarathonRefinery

St. Paul Park, MN – As of May 2, the Teamsters who work at the Marathon Refinery in Saint Paul Park, Minnesota will have been locked out for 100 days after a one-day strike unless a deal is reached before then to settle their contract negotiations. At this writing, April 28, by all accounts neither side appears ready to back down any time soon.

The Teamsters have cited safety as one of the major reasons they went on strike in January. In 2018 a large explosion rocked the city of Superior, Wisconsin at the Husky Refinery and caused mass evacuations of much of the city. Teamsters point out that the Marathon Refinery uses similar chemicals and that they are trying to protect the Twin Cities metro community from an accident like the one that happened in Superior.

Dave Marlatt is one of the locked-out members of Teamster Local 120. He and his wife Amber, along with their two young children, live 1.8 miles from the refinery, well with in the range of immediate danger in an accident.

Fight Back! spoke to him in length about what exactly is at stake in these contract negotiations and the following is some of what we learned from him.

Marlatt said that along with keeping the community in general safe, he is fighting to keep his family safe too. He said that a few years ago Marathon brought in an old SDA (solvent de-asphalting) unit that they bought from somewhere in Texas. When you buy an old unit like that you do not have to pull all of the permits you would need to install a new unit, so they did this to save money and cut steps. Dave said “It’s not a good unit. It requires constant operator care.”

At the same time as Marathon added this SDA unit that requires extra care to keep operational and safe, it is also trying to take away the designated SDA operator so there would no longer be someone assigned just to provide that constant care to the unit. They instead want someone to look after the SDA unit and another unit at the same time. To make things worse, Marathon now wants to also have that operator who oversees the two units take on the running of a boiler unit on top of the already hard to manage work load.

Marlatt said, “So when something goes wrong in two places, what do you want us to do? They say they have procedures, but those procedures aren’t there. We need a dedicated SDA operator.”

One thing that stood out in the conversation was just how large these units are. In some cases, he was talking about machines in terms of how many football fields across or tall they were, so the travel time just to get between units in an emergency is a serious factor.

In this work, you need to do everything correctly every single time. Even one mistake could spell disaster. Now as Marathon tries to save expenses by cutting corners it is increasingly hard to ensure that safety that the community depends on and should be able to take for granted. Marlatt stated, “We are fighting to keep stuff safe and running how it has been. But now the company wants us to do more work with less people.”

Since getting his job at Marathon, Marlatt has had to put out fires three times. He described two of them as “small” and one as “large.” For context, the small ones still involved units measured in football field lengths, but were contained more easily and did not spread to multiple units.

Marlatt said that when a fire starts, you have to be careful. You cannot just pour water on it, or even extinguish the fire in some cases, because of many dangerous factors beyond a conventional fire. Iron sulfide is created, which lights on fire when exposed to air. In one of the fires, they managed to contain the iron sulfide, but that was only possible because of the immediate response time, which is being put in jeopardy by management's plan to have workers look after multiple units.

If a fire is not immediately contained it can spread to multiple units which could result in a much more serious disaster. In a worst-case scenario Marlatt says that it could put life in jeopardy for a distance of 30 to 50 miles around. The refinery sits in a suburb of Saint Paul so millions of Minnesotans could be put in grave danger in a disaster scenario. Some of the possible dangers include not just the blast or fire itself, but also formation of an extremely hazardous cloud, which could waft over the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area. That cloud would contain chemicals like hydrofluoric acid, which is capable of boiling your skin off of your body on contact. Additionally, the cloud would have the potential to fatally attack the calcium in a person’s body.

“To be honest, this just barely scratches the surface of it,” said Marlatt.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the lockout in Saint Paul Park, ExxonMobil says they intend to lock out refinery workers in Beaumont, Texas as of May 1 if they have still not reached a contract settlement in their own negotiations with members of United Steel Workers (USW) Local 13-243. The union contract at the Beaumont refinery has been expired since January 11. The existing contract requires a 75-day notice before any lockout or strike. Both the union and the company did issue 75-day notices on February 15 and now the company has taken it a step further, saying they plan to go ahead with the lockout on May 1, rejecting the union’s request to extend the contract for one year while they keep bargaining. Like the Teamsters at Marathon, the USW members at the Beaumont refinery say they are fighting for the safety of the community.

When and how these disputes between safety and larger profits will be settled remains to be seen, but it was clear that the workers do not intend to back down and allow the community to be put in danger.

#StPaulParkMN #PeoplesStruggles #Teamsters #Strikes #MarathonRefineryPark

St. Paul Park, MN – On February 4, with wind chill readings below zero, members of a wide collection of unions gathered for an evening rally at the Marathon Refinery picket line, where Teamsters who work at the refinery have been locked out for two weeks after a 24-hour strike.

Union leaders took to the stage and spoke in solidarity with the locked out workers, including several leaders from Teamsters 120, which represents the refinery workers, along with speakers from the Minnesota Nurses Association, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, Laborers Local 563, The Awood Center, AFSCME Local 3800, UFCW 1189 and others. Members of Minnesota Workers United were among the rally participants.

Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME 3800, which represents clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, said, “The pandemic has laid bare the corporate greed for all to see. Workers are risking their lives while the big companies are raking in profits, showing no concern for worker safety, especially if they can turn a faster buck. But when workers stand together, they have power to turn things around. We’ve seen that with healthcare and education workers especially demanding safe workplaces. And Teamsters 120 members are setting an example for the labor movement as a whole that, when we stand together and fight back, we will win and we will make sure workers are safe on the job.”

The cold temperatures and blustery winds did not stop hundreds of union members and supporters from showing up to the rally and has not stopped the Teamsters 120 members from keeping their picket lines strong. The Teamsters 120 members say they are fighting to keep the community safe and avoid accidents like the explosion at the Husky Refinery in 2018 that caused an evacuation in the city of Superior, Wisconsin.

#StPaulParkMN #PeoplesStruggles #Teamsters #MinnesotaWorkersUnited #TeamstersLocal120 #MarathonRefineryPark

St. Paul Park, MN – On January 21, nearly 200 members of Teamsters Local 120 who work at Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Saint Paul Park walked off the job, beginning an unfair labor practice strike.

In the lead-up to this strike, bargaining broke down when Marathon management refused to continue bargaining in good faith.

Management is trying to outsource some parts of the work that these union workers do. Additionally, they want to further increase the workloads of the union members who are overworked already. This will mean they will need to cut corners and put themselves and their coworkers in danger just so that Marathon can increase its profits.

The Marathon workers are demanding a safe workplace, which is only possible with manageable workloads so the work can be done safely and be done right.

Teamsters Local 120 President Tom Erickson states Marathon workers “won't stand for it.” Teamsters Local 120 Business Agent Scott Kroona says, “Marathon wants to use lowest bidder subcontractors for jobs that are safety sensitive.” He went on to add that “especially after the refinery explosion in Superior, Wisconsin a few years ago, we aren’t willing to take those risks.”

This is a developing story. As this strike goes forward you can look for more updates by following Teamsters 120 on Facebook or look to Fight Back! for further coverage.

#StPaulParkMN #MN #PeoplesStruggles #Teamsters #Strikes #TeamstersLocal120