Labor, big oil in cahoots over oil and methane production, and workers are at risk

California union members have some serious thinking to do this Labor Day.

Because their brothers and sisters working in our state’s oil and methane fields face a very bleak future. Like the coal miners of Appalachia, their fate is tied to a dying industry that, like coal, must die because it kills.

Many oil and methane extraction workers already face early deaths after years of constant exposure to inescapable airborne toxins at their worksites, as will many unwilling others among the nearly 1.8 million Californians living in fence-line communities.

Fossil fuel-driven climate change due to the burning of coal, oil, and methane is wreaking havoc across the globe. The only certainty is that extreme weather events will continue to worsen throughout this century. Humanity’s challenge is to reign in the climate before it unravels completely.

But like the leaders of collapsed coal-worker unions, California labor heads appear unable or unwilling to develop a plan to preserve workers’ prospects by leading the urgently needed employment transition to public protection, land restoration and renewable energy jobs.

Instead, workers’ representatives are sitting on the same side of the bargaining table as the employer in a coalition dubbed Common Ground. Western States Petroleum Association and the Building and Construction Trade Council of California are seated there alongside a bloc of politically conservative Democrats.

Perhaps it’s a matter of momentum.

Oil companies and construction contractors have committed to hiring quotas for people from union apprenticeship programs. This ensures the skilled, stable workforce necessary for the hazardous work of constructing and operating refineries and power plants. Democrats in the statehouse have backed such efforts with legislation mandating the use of these qualified workers in a series of political victories for labor leaders in recent years. Union members and their families will continue to benefit as long as these methane and oil refineries have a future.

But they don’t. Not in the long-term. Because if there is to be a long-term — meaning a stable climate for the children already with us — then union members must give serious thought as to why we even celebrate Labor Day.

The forces of exploitation and insatiable greed that drove railroad workers to strike nationwide nearly 150 years ago and why President Grover Cleveland sent out 12,000 troops to quell the unrest are all with us today, more powerful and more emboldened than ever.

The politics of these clashing interests recently erupted in an unseemly outburst by state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles). He accused climate justice advocates of pulling a “publicity stunt” by advocating for the closure of oil and methane wells within 2,500 feet of where people live and work.

Hertzberg’s attack came from the dais of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water during the final hearing of the bill in question, AB 345.

Under the approving eye of Common Ground, joining Hertzberg in killing the public health protection measure was Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas), who seems intent on ignoring the plight of her San Joaquin Valley constituents. They might live far from her breezy, coastal digs, but Caballero should remember she still represents the people of Coalinga and Huron living atop active oil and methane fields.

Caballero claimed the cost in jobs would be too high and directed advocates to focus their efforts on Gov. Newsom and the state regulatory process.

Ironic advice given her support for SB 1012, an industry-friendly bill carried by Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Selma). Through this dangerous legislation, which fortunately stalled in the Assembly, Hurtado and Caballero sought to weaken rules ensuring fossil fuel companies, rather than taxpayers, pay for capping abandoned oil and methane wells and cleaning up these toxic sites.

It’s a tangled knot of oil executives, politicians and workers, and their respective motives of greed, ambition and fear, a white-collar battle over blue-collar futures.

So pressure for a real future must come from the ground up, from union members. As Eugene Debs, organizer of those 19th century railroad strikes once said, “The workers are the saviors of society.”

But only if they lead.

This story was originally published September 4, 2020 at 6:00 AM.