A 10-month lockout of union workers at an Exxon Mobil refinery was undertaken to save costs and improve profits at the Beaumont, Texas, facility, and not to eliminate union representation, an Exxon Mobil official told an administrative judge on Monday.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last year called for the company to compensate the facility’s roughly 650 workers for wage losses during what it called an “unlawful” 10-month lockout.An Exxon spokesperson called the complaint “an attempt to overturn decades of labor law and Supreme Court precedent,” and said Exxon expects to prevail. Exxon could face millions of dollars in back pay for the hourly workers. The NLRB judge is due to rule after hearing from the company and United Steelworkers’ officials.Union representatives are to testify this week. In the past, they have argued that the lockout was unnecessary and designed to decertify, or throw out, the union at the plant.“Decertification was never a factor in the lockout,” Exxon attorney Eva Shih said in opening remarks to Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey Wedekind.
Operating losses at the facility and prior costs for replacement workers in earlier negotiations were behind the lockout and demand for job and contract term changes, she said.The company had paid about $30 million to have employees on standby for four months after the prior contract talks dragged on in 2015, she said.In 2020, as the company began preparing for the subsequent contract, Exxon decided it “couldn’t run in EMCO mode again,” Shih said, referring to the standby workers.
That same year, Exxon lost $22 billion overall, in part because of the loss of demand for its oil and motor fuels from lockdowns and work-from-home programs tied to halting the spread of COVID-19, she said.In the planning for the 2021 talks, the company managers “discussed having to execute an offensive lockout as they knew bargaining was going to be contentious,” Shih said. “The company could not accept the costs and dangers of a possible strike.”She said it was unprecedented for Exxon to lock out workers in the absence of a strike. But potential processing unit shutdowns and start-ups that might come from a strike represented high risk.The union had issued a notice of a possible strike as early as May 1, 2021, and the company threatened to lock out workers on that date. The union did not call a strike, but Exxon launched the lockout.
The company also felt it needed to cut costs, Shih said. In 2012, the Beaumont refinery had the worst financial performance of the company’s refineries and faced a potential sale. Exxon gave plant managers instructions to improve performance in order to be considered for a $2 billion expansion that is now starting up.Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2023-02-12 12:00:03
Post from www.reuters.com
The oil and gas giant ExxonMobil recently argued that the lockout of skilled workers at its Beaumont, Texas refinery was not intended to target any union.
The lockout occurred at the start of 2020, when ExxonMobil blocked non-union employees from entering the plant after union members declined to accept the company’s “last, best and final” offer.
The event sparked an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which looked into whether ExxonMobil was attempting to target the union by selectively picking which employees it locked out. Local union officials claimed the lockout was intended to push workers to accept the offer.
But ExxonMobil issued a statement denying the allegations, arguing that the lockout was a necessary measure meant to protect its operations from any potential disruption from union workers who chose not to accept the offer.
The company went on to say that it has a long history of working with the union to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, and that the lockout was not intended to punish union workers, but rather to protect the safety and operations of the plant.
The NLRB investigation is ongoing, and it is expected to reach an official ruling in the coming weeks. In the meantime, ExxonMobil continues to defend its actions, maintaining that the lockout was not a targeted attack against the union, but rather a necessary measure to ensure uninterrupted production.