Burnt Orange Report

Preventing Future Refinery Disasters

By Byron LaMasters

We're just learning the first details of the possible causes of the BP Oil Refinery disaster in Texas City this past Wednesday. State and federal investigators will surely spend a great deal of time in the upcoming weeks and months figuring out what exactly happened, but one point is worth noting now. The workers in the plant were contractors as opposed to union members. The New York Times pointed to the possible problems that this may lead to in an article on Friday:

Allan Jamail, an official with Pipefitters Union Local 211 in Houston, was quick to point to nonunion labor as the problem. Mr. Jamail said that refineries across Texas had become more dangerous as companies increasingly turned to nonunion contractors to do difficult construction and maintenance work. He said nonunion workers "aren't as well-trained" and did not have the job security to raise safety concerns with managers.

BP officials said that all 15 workers killed were believed to have been contractors, not BP employees. The morning before the blast, 2,200 of the 3,300 workers at the plant were contractors, they said.

We all certainly have great sympathy for the victims of the BP tragedy and their families, and we should all work together to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future. One of the easiest steps towards that goal is to ensure that the workers in dangerous refinery environments are well-trained professionals with the job security necessary to prevent overwork and hazardous conditions that often cause accidents and tragedies. Unions provide these critical safety measures, and incidents such as this ought to give governments and corporations pause before endorsing union-busting tactics that too often put the corporation's bottom line ahead of worker safety.