United Steel Workers Union Pulls Out Of Petroleum Industry Safety Talks

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/11695

By Doug Cunningham

The United Steel Workers union this week pulled out of talks with the American Petroleum Institute on development of new industry safety standards. The talks began after the catastrophic explosion and fire at the BP refinery in Texas City in 2005. The USW’s Lynne Baker says the union found the industry unwilling to use real consensus to come up with meaningful new safety standards to really protect workers.

: “They were willing to create standards that we felt weren’t worthy of having our name and that were just too weak.”

Baker said fatigue and how to reduce it was a huge issue – both in the Texas City disaster and in these talks between the union and the industry.

: “We want our names to be behind strong standards that protect workers. And the talks that we had with the other stakeholders in the industry showed that they really weren’t serious about getting standards that would change the situation and basically reduce the level of fatigue in the industry.”