oil
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the energy sector around the world.
Greece running out of fuel as customs officers extend strike
Serious fuel shortages are spreading across Greece as customs officers decide to extend their strike against austerity measures until Tuesday.
Long lines of cars are to be seen in petrol stations across greece as fuel is running out after an extension of customs officers industrial action against the neoliberal austerity measures imposed by the government on the pretext of the national credit crisis.
Total Refinery in Dunkerque occupied
Striking workers occupied Total's refinery in Dunkerque after management refused to meet an ultimatum over negotiations.
At least 150 workers stormed the buildings this morning, forcing their way past security guards and at one point using ladders to gain entry to the offices on the higher levels of the buildings. Workers took the action after union demands for a mediator in negotiations and for the removal of security guards from the site were ignored.
2009: The Strike at Lindsey Refinery: a Struggle Entangled in Nationalism
Mouvement Communiste's detailed account and analysis of the oil industry construction workers' wildcat strikes of 2009.
Introduction
A brief exchange with a Brazilian oil rig worker, 2007
This is a short documentation of an informal letter exchange. A friend from Brazil tidies up his electronic inbox having some spare time on the oil-rig. He comes across a one and a half year old mail from Berlin, posted on a PGA mailing list. It is call for solidarity with Honda workers who have been beaten up by the police in a suburb of Delhi during summer 2005. Some letters go back and forth. Here is a summary...
The other day in Cyberspace
Brazilian oil worker bumps into Berlin activist engaged in Indian car workers' solidarity
37 years fighting to farm - oil palm conflicts get hot in indonesia
In moments of occupation there is a temporary freedom when the company cannot operate, and the people have to decide how best to use that freedom.
Oil Palm: the ill-famed monoculture converts the islands of South East Asia into one big plantation, as commodity capitalism continues its troublesome advance over Indonesia and Malaysia's rural areas. The rainforests fall, to be replaced by oil-fields, as in distant capitals politicians with their eyes shut proclaim a new green biofuel, and the trees keep falling.
The World War II and post-war strike wave
Jeremy Brecher on the huge, often unofficial, strikes which swept the US during and after World War II, despite the existence of union-enforced no strike deals.
The institutional structures developed in the 1930s changed the relationships among workers, unions, employers, and government. Strikes during World War II and its aftermath share some but by no means all of the characteristics of earlier mass strikes.
Tanta Flax Company strike marks 80th day
Around 200 workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company staged a demonstration outside the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration in Cairo today, marking the 80th day of their strike, demanding the re-nationalization of their company. Hundreds of their colleagues back in the Nile Delta have also announced their intention to launch a hunger strike as of tomorrow.
Some 1,000 workers at the company had started their strike on 31 May, raising demands that include reinstating nine co-workers sacked under the pretext of "inciting labor unrest," the provision of workers' profit-sharing which has been overdue for three years, together with the incentive pay withheld since 2003.
In the Gulf, in the North Sea, we won't die for oil profits. Support North Sea strikers! Class war not oil war!
Leaflet produced in the lead-up to the 1990 Gulf War, linking the deaths of workers on North Sea oil rigs, and workers at war.
"I'd like some of those Congressmen to come out here, with all that patriotism, to feel the heat in the desert. I'd rather folks paid more for their oil, than pay for their oil with my life" (US soldier in the Gulf)
Energy workers to ballot for strike action across Britain
Construction and maintenance staff at the giant petrochemical complex in Grangemouth are to be balloted for strike action. Members of the GMB and Unite unions will vote on the issue along with those at seven sites across the UK.
The unions said the action followed a loss of confidence in employer's body the Engineering Construction Industry Association (ECIA). Both sides are currently involved in negotiating changes to the so-called NAECI agreement.
The National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry or NAECI dictates issues including pay and conditions and the use of local labour within the industry.
Total and unions reach deal on oil refinery wildcats
Early reports indicate a deal to end the bitter jobs dispute at the Total-run Lindsey oil refinery, which has led to unofficial walkouts by thousands of workers across the country.
The agreement follows talks between union leaders and employers of contract staff at the North Lincolnshire site. Unions said the deal involved the reinstatement of 647 workers sacked for taking unofficial strike action and would be put to the workers on Monday.
