Refinery Turns Off Warning Equipment to Deflect USW Strike Safety Concerns

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More than a month has passed since employees across the nation walked out of refineries, citing concerns about industry wide disregard for employee safety.

“If something goes wrong at the plant, the guy who saved the company a few bucks on safety equipment still goes home in a nice Cadillac, and I go home in a box,” said Joshua Lege, a striking worker, when discussing the disconnect between executives and rank and file employees.

Ordinarily, discussing corporate disregard for safety is heavily discouraged by company policy, but the strike has given employees unusual amounts of media attention. As a result, employees have been able to shed light on what really happens behind the gates of oil refineries, and that reality is quite frightening.

Chief McClelland Is #SorryNotSorry For Houston Police Brutality & Racism

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In the midst of public outcries against the racism and violence of the criminal justice system in the United States, police departments are trying to repair their images with the same lack of grace as Bill Cosby’s Far From Finished comedy tour.

“It’s not the race or ethnicity, it’s the behavior,” Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland said when asked why people of color had their vehicles searched at disproportionately high rates.

While speech like this is not uncommon in police departments, the McClelland’s choice of venue was questionable, as his voice filled the auditorium of Texas Southern University, a historically black college located at the center of a historically black community currently being ravaged by gentrification.

Gulf Coast Refineries: Texas’ Ticking Time Bombs

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Do you remember the Union Carbide plant that leaked toxic gas and subsequently killed an estimated 15,000 people? What about the BP well in 2010 that spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months or perhaps the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas that registered on the Richter scale?

These and many other industrial disasters were completely preventable, and all shared a common thread, like the majority of large scale industrial disasters: corporate decisions to deliberately neglect reasonable safety practices.

The United Steelworkers aren’t just on strike because of wages. They’re concerned about safe practices, because workers are in constant danger from a corporate culture that does not care for their safety.