Many issues with large scale drilling & fracking
Response to “Police and Gas Industry Monitoring Fracking Activists”
By S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
The FrackCheckWV article published on Wednesday deals with law enforcement in the Marcellus region. And, last night a former Marcellus worker called me to talk about what he knows. He was working for Chesapeake in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, on the border with New York. The County Seat is Towanda, PA.
Chesapeake hired the Sheriff out of Bradford County and perhaps 6 or 7 of his Deputies to form a sort of “Chesapeake police force.” The Sheriff became the head of Chesapeake’s security team. They continued to draw pay for their original duties and got an additional hourly sum to add to it. Sometimes they would drive out to a well site in Sheriff’s uniforms and change before going on the second job.
Most drillers use rotating shifts of workers and have men work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 weeks, then take 6 weeks off, for example. The former Chesapeake worker said Chesapeake only gave 2 weeks off, but after a couple of days rest he began to do lease work for another company. It turned out the other company was in competition with Chesapeake, so Chesapeake fired him.
The man who came on the job to conduct the firing and dismissal was the Sheriff, and he brought along many assistants as police-security. But the fired man had never had a fight or threatened anybody. The Sheriff seemed particularly proud that Aubrey McClendon (then the President of Chesapeake Energy) had chosen him to do the job. It felt like intimidation as the Sheriff stayed with him to go to his locker and every step he made until he left the well site.
Apparently, the usual procedure for the gas company was to make a substantial donation to the police department where salaries were in the $25,000 to $30,000 a year range, and hire these individuals in the $25 an hour range for the company work. Companies are still allowed to hire police, so far as we know.
A second effect of this hiring of policemen or sheriff’s deputies or other local officials may have been to inhibit the usual police work. The cops could be afraid of losing their extra pay if they vigorously pursued gas field workers for civil offences.
The crime rate effectively tripled as drilling & fracking & pipeline activities ramped up. Bar fights were frequent. Drugs followed up from the South, where many of them had been employed previously. My informant said a house of prostitution was established, patronized primarily by gas field workers. In his words, “The ‘ladies’ relocated from Oklahoma.” His telling reminded me of the notorious “high plains drifters” of cattle days in the West.
The “rent-a-cops” approach helped the gas company directly by providing a security force. It also freed up their other employees to get the high paying drilling & fracking jobs involved. But, to some degree, the taxpayers were robbed of the peace and quiet for which they pay law enforcement officers, to say nothing about the conflict-of-interest that prevails.
In conclusion, he said, nothing has been learned from the days of the Coal Mine Wars of owners against workers. These early miners organized a march of protest in Charleston WV back to the coal fields in southern WV . Thirteen years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, miners got the right to organize because of the sympathy they gained with the public. The current issues primarily involve the working conditions on the well pads, the working schedule and hours as well as safety and health conditions.
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Oil workers on strike in Houston and across the United States
From a Report of Eyewitness News, Houston (abc13.com), February 1, 2015
Oil workers from coast to coast are on strike. They started to walk off the job around midnight when their union failed to reach a deal with the energy industry. It’s not clear how many workers are on strike.
The contract in dispute covers about 30,000 workers at refineries, pipelines, oil terminals, and petrochemical plants across the country, including about 5,000 workers here in Houston. A representative for the United Steelworkers Association, which is the union for the workers, say there are work stoppage at these facilities in the Houston area: LyondellBasell in Houston, TX; Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, TX; Marathon Houston Green Cogeneration facility, Texas City, TX; Shell Deer Park Refinery, Deer Park, TX; and Shell Deer Park Chemical Plant, Deer Park, TX.
At the LyondellBasell plant in southeast Houston, workers started to protest around 6am. Last night, more than a dozen workers walked off the job shortly after midnight. “It’s about health, safety. It’s about issues that confront our workers every day,” said Director of the United Steelworkers, Ruben Garza.
Garza explains why the national union called a strike at midnight at specific refineries, many of them in here in Southeast Texas. “We have a lot of health and safety issues we have overtime issues, fatigue standards that the companies manipulate,” he said.
Shell is representing the energy industry in labor talks with the United Steelworkers Association. Shell hasn’t commented on what caused talks to break down. The USW sent a message to its members calling the latest offer from oil companies “insulting.”
USW International Vice President Gary Beevers, who heads the union’s National Oil Bargaining Program, said, “This work stoppage is about onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it; the industry’s refusal to make opportunities for workers in the trade crafts; the flagrant contracting out that impacts health and safety on the job; and the erosion of our workplace, where qualified and experienced union workers are replaced by contractors when they leave or retire.”
See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net
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