May 2, 2020:

In a vote ordered by Saskatchewan’s right-wing provincial government, locked-out Regina oil refinery workers have overwhelmingly rejected a concessions-filled “final” contract offer from Federated Cooperatives Limited (FCL). The 750 workers, who are members of the Unifor union, voted by 89 percent against the proposed deal. FCL responded to the contract rejection with a terse and arrogant statement that it will continue with its massive government-backed scabbing operation, which has allowed the company to continue operating its Regina facility since the lockout began last December. “It is our hope the union membership will soon understand that the only deal that balances their requirements and also achieves long-term certainty for (FCL) is our best and final offer,” declared the company. FCL applied last month to the provincial Labour Relations Board to force a vote to end the now nearly five-month-long dispute. The proposed agreement presented by FCL would have imposed a long list of sweeping concessions on pensions, jobs and working conditions.

Prior to this, the government-appointed mediator, Vince Ready, tabled non-binding recommendations in March for a resolution of the bitter dispute that has seen FCL deploy a large scab workforce, with the unstinting support of the right-wing Saskatchewan Party government, the capitalist courts, and the police. The complicity of government agencies with FCL was further driven home to workers when health and safety inspectors gave the crowded, transitory and rudimentary scab encampment a clean bill of health in the midst of the global COVID-19 outbreak. Ready’s report granted virtually all of the company’s initial concession demands. The union, which had previously proposed a series of increasingly draconian concessionary climb-downs, accepted the mediator’s recommendations and scheduled a vote advising the workers to accept the rotten deal. On the weekend prior to this vote, the union, signalling its surrender, withdrew its pickets from the refinery gates. Since then, the union has not organized any picketing of the facility. Workers, starved out on the picket line and seeing no way forward, voted 98 percent to endorse the mediator’s recommendations. After the vote, local union President Kevin Bittman cynically told reporters that Ready’s report, which contained everything the workers had fought against for almost four months, was “a reasonable compromise.” However, FCL then refused to accept the non-binding recommendations from mediator Vince Ready. The company cited the downturn in the oil industry due to the economic slowdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing collapse of stock and oil prices to demand even deeper cuts, in particular, to its pension program. FCL then cut its refining production by 30 percent. The lockout continued. Last week, FCL sent 124 layoff notices to locked-out workers effective upon any return to work.

Fearing that an endorsement of FCL’s new, “final offer” under the hammer of a forced vote by the government’s Labour Board would expose its complete inability to defend its own membership, the union called for FCL’s offer to be rejected. However, it did so not as part of a struggle to mobilize the working class against all concessions and the right-wing provincial government, but rather to provide political cover for yet another sordid attempt to convince the province’s right-wing pro-corporate premier, Scott Moe, to intervene and end the dispute. Following the massive “no” vote, Unifor president Jerry Dias pleaded with Moe to end the lockout on the basis of the Ready report. There is widespread popular outrage against FCL’s use of the pandemic to further increase the bottom line of an already highly profitable company, but rather than mobilize this support, Dias continues to appeal to Moe and his ministers, claiming these inveterate right-wingers can be pressured into acting as neutral arbitrators. The government, once again, rejected Unifor’s appeal, insisting that the dispute was a private matter that the company and the union must settle on their own. Of course, when it came to countenancing the use of a massive scab labour force, the courts and the police to maintain production, the Moe government showed no such “impartiality.” For over a decade, the Saskatchewan Party government has mounted major attacks on workers’ rights and living standards, including restricting public sector workers’ right to strike through “essential services” legislation. Moe’s government green-lighted FCL’s scabbing operation before the lockout began, publicly declaring that it would only intervene if the workers succeeded in crippling the refinery’s output. In February, the premier personally exhorted the police to smash worker blockades of FCL operations. Moe’s actions are a damning indictment of the perspective of Unifor and the union-backed New Democratic Party, which, while in power, refused to pass anti-scab legislation and does not endorse it even today. Since the outset of the lockout, Unifor has insisted that the dispute be viewed as an industrial relations matter that must not go beyond traditional state-designed, pro-employer collective bargaining mechanisms. But as FCL and the Saskatchewan government have proven, the fight has, from the beginning, been a political one with all the forces of the capitalist state marshalled against the workers.

The outbreak of the pandemic has further intensified this clash of irreconcilably opposed class forces. Like FCL, companies across Canada and internationally are seizing on the economic impact of the coronavirus to impose even deeper austerity and attacks on wages on working people. Having received hundreds of billions of dollars from their hirelings in government, Canada’s corporate elite, in close collaboration with the trade unions, are preparing to reopen the economy as the pandemic continues to rage on the basis of a vast intensification of exploitation. While Unifor begs Moe to enforce concessions on FCL workers, it is working hand-in-glove with the Big Three automakers in Ontario to open their plants as soon as possible, even though over a dozen autoworkers in the United States have died from the coronavirus. But the dramatic changes in the economic and political situation produced by the pandemic also creates the conditions for FCL workers to mount a counter-offensive. All around the world, workers have launched strikes and protests against the criminal indifference of the ruling elite to their lives as the “back-to-work” campaign gathers pace. Amazon workers in the United States and Europe, transit workers in Canada and the US, postal workers, and meatpacking workers have all protested the lack of even the most basic safety measures in their workplaces as the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths grow. FCL workers must unite their fight for job protection and the defence of their pension rights with this new upsurge of working class struggles. Doing so requires a decisive political and organizational break with the Unifor bureaucracy, which is leading the locked-out workers to certain defeat. Instead of bowing and scraping at Moe’s feet, FCL workers should form independent action committees to fight for their entirely legitimate demands and make their anti-concessions struggle the spearhead of a broader working-class challenge to the assault on workers’ social rights.

The deepening capitalist crisis has laid bare the reality that even the most immediate needs of workers, including decent pay, pensions, and workplace safety measures, can only be achieved in a political struggle that rejects the profit system and all its defenders in the NDP and trade unions. FCL and other major corporations must be transformed into publicly-owned utilities under democratic workers’ control. Only in this way can the ill-gotten gains of the super-rich be deployed to tackle the crisis produced by decades of austerity and concessions-laden contracts, and the social and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

By www.wsws.org

May 2, 2020:

Demetrios Haseotes, owner of Hemisphere Limited LLC, the umbrella corporation that is nerve center for 12 businesses in about 10 states, said the COVID-19 pandemic has had little effect on his operations “ ... because all my businesses are essential and all are operating.” Hemisphere Limited is in the former First and Farmers National Bank building in downtown Somerset. Haseotes bought the building earlier this year after the bank built its new headquarters on South U.S. 27 at the former Golden Corral location. “It has worked out exactly as I thought it would,” commented Haseotes, alluding to consolidation of businesses downtown. He said a total of nine people are working at the downtown former bank location. Haseotes has made a solid footprint in Somerset and Pulaski County. He formed Somerset-based Continental Refining Company in 2011 and purchased financially troubled Somerset Refinery after the landmark refinery had been shut down for about three years. Refining operations resumed in January 2013. Continental Refinery nearly two years ago again ceased production and announced a two-phase transition that would include a $75 million investment to reconfigure and upgrade every single unit of the plant. Haseotes said the company has spent in excess of $40 million since he bought the refinery.

“A restart (of production) would take two years,” Haseotes said. He very candidly told his employees and the Commonwealth Journal the refinery is undergoing evaluation and its future is uncertain. He said Thursday a decision about whether the refinery will resume operation “ ... will be made in late June.” Currently, about five people are working at the refinery, he noted. “We want to do the right thing,” said Haseotes. “If we restart (the refinery) we want it to be top of its class.” He emphasized at this point no decision has been made as to the refinery’s future. Since he came to Somerset and Pulaski County, Haseotes has fallen in love with the area. That’s the reason he took advantage of the vacant bank building to consolidate headquarters of his distant business locations. In addition to Continental Refinery, he owns the Circle K convenience store on U.S. 27 and has hinted another Circle K (without gasoline pumps) might eventually be located in the bank building downtown. The Commonwealth Journal editorially has called Hemisphere Limited and its cluster of business headquarters one of the most concrete steps to revive Downtown Somerset since the Great Migration of businesses to U.S. 27 during the 1960s.

By www.somerset-kentucky.com

May 1, 2020:

The City of Regina is echoing the same request as Unifor, by officially asking the government of Saskatchewan to impose binding arbitration to end the 147-day lockout at the Co-op Refinery.  “Enough is enough,” said Coun. John Findura.  In a 9-1 vote, Regina councillors endorsed the need for binding arbitration. The vote came one day after Unifor Local 594 voted 89 per cent against Co-op’s “best and final offer.”  The province previously appointed a special mediator, but after 20 days of meetings, Co-op rejected the recommendations.  READ MORE: Unifor rejects Co-op’s latest offer, calls on province to end labour dispute  “There’s been a misconception in the public that the provincial government can’t do anything else, which is untrue,” said Coun. Andrew Stevens, who introduced the motion to call on the province to fix the labour dispute.

“There’s a long history of back to work legislation, and binding arbitration through special legislation in this province that withstood constitutional challenge.”  Council said they have received hundreds of emails since the lockout began, many from workers, truckers and businesses who have asked for this to end.     The dispute has also put pressure on the city’s police force. According to the Regina Police Service, the lockout has cost taxpayers a minimum of $111,000 since March. The number doesn’t reflect the cost of personnel who have had been assigned to patrol the refinery and picket lines.  “It’s a very much divisive issue, and it’s not an exaggeration to say how divisive this is,” Stevens said.  Although the city is calling on binding arbitration, the municipality doesn’t have any jurisdiction over the matter.  Mayor Michael Fougere — who voted against the endorsement — said the city cannot use its moral weight to effect change. He called the motion “symbolic at best.”  “We do not have jurisdiction in a private labour dispute. We have no levers at all,” Fougere said. Instead, Fougere suggested the city “strongly stay away from this” while having a general statement that urge both parties to get back to the table. But council didn’t agree. On Wednesday, Premier Scott Moe said during a press conference he would not call back legislature to impose binding arbitration. 

“If that would be done it would be unprecedented is this province’s history, and I’m aware of very few cases, if any across Canada where that has actually occurred,” Moe said.  “This is a private sector labour dispute that is occurring.”  The premier did state the Minister of Justice has reached out to both sides to have discussions “with what the next steps are.”  A division of Unifor represents some Global news employees.

By www.globalnews.ca/

May 1, 2020:

A Buenos Aires crude oil refinery operated by Argentine state-controlled energy firm YPF is running with a minimal level of workers due to a drop in consumption and a lack of storage space amid a crash in global oil prices during the coronavirus pandemic, a spokesman said on Wednesday. The spokesman for YPF said the company’s Plaza Huincul Refinery, which normally produces about 28,000 barrels per day (bpd), was operating at minimum staff levels, but had not entirely halted production. A methanol refinery that was part of the complex continued to operate as normal, he added. A return to full staff levels “will depend on how the demand for fuel evolves, which, in turn, is affected by social isolation measures,” he said, without offering details on how much current production had been impacted.

Another Argentina refinery operated by Brazilian company Raizen said earlier in April it temporarily stopped production at its 93,000 bpd refinery in the town of Dock Sud, local media reported. Oil company Refinor SA has reportedly also suspended operations at its 25,000 bpd facility in Campo Duran in the country’s north, according to trade publication Industrial Info. Argentina, home to the expansive Vaca Muerta shale deposit, plans to issue a decree setting a higher local oil barrel price to protect the domestic industry from being further decimated by the collapse in global prices and slumping fuel demand due to the coronavirus.

By MercoPress

April 16, 2020:

WASHINGTON - Oil refineries around the country are scaling back fuel production, amid a coronavirus pandemic that has caused a record drop-off in gasoline and diesel demand. With engineering limits on how much they can throttle back their plants, some refineries might soon have to shut down all together, as motorists stay home in the weeks or months ahead and the limited storage capacity for transportation fuels nears capacity.  “There will be more (closures) coming at some point,” said Ryan Todd, an analyst with the Houston-based investment firm Simmons Energy. “But all the refineries we talked to in the last week or so, everyone is cutting down to operational lower limits, and that’s about as low as you can go before you have to shut the thing in.” Already, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum said it was idling a small refinery in Gallup, N.M. until demand rebounds, following the shutdown of a refinery in eastern Canada last month. If more refineries shut, that would pose a severe threat to the oil-dependent economy of Houston and the wider Gulf Coast, with thousands of workers clocking in each day at refiners in communities such as Port Arthur and Baytown. Companies including Houston’s Phillips 66 and San Antonio’s Valero have already announced they are temporarily scaling back fuel production. Valero warned investors this week their margins on fuel, “have been significantly reduced.”  How much more they can reduce their output of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products without shutting down their refineries all together remains unclear.

Design limits

Typically, the crackers, distillations units and other equipment used in modern refineries are not designed to operate at less than 60 to 70 percent capacity, Todd said. Though some larger refineries, such as those along the Gulf Coast, can operate at less than 50 percent. As a whole, U.S. refineries have already reduced fuel production by about 30 percent, leaving little margin before facilities would begin stopping operations, said Marc Amons, an analyst at the research firm Wood Mackenzie. “If demand were to take another step lower you would see a second wave of refiners that would be forced to fully shut down,” he said. “There may be individual refineries already at the tipping point.” For now, energy analysts are projecting U.S. fuel demand to hit its low this month, with gasoline and diesel sales expected to begin picking up in May and demand beginning to approach normal levels by the end of summer. But that depends on city and state governments rolling back stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures as coronavirus cases begin to decline. At the same time, fuel storage tanks, as with those for oil, are already nearing capacity. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy reported gasoline stocks had risen to more than 260 million barrels, 15 percent above levels a year ago as gasoline consumption plunged by more than 30 percent.

“At current utilization rates, if it was a month or a month and a half, you could fill up inventories and storage,” Todd said. “At some point guys are not going to have anywhere to put their product.”

Could be worse

After a decade of economic growth, during which they enjoyed historically low prices of crude due to the oil boom, U.S. refineries largely came into the year with relatively little debt and plenty of cash to help them ride out the downturn, analysts said. At the same time they have taken steps to cut their losses by adjusting their refinery equipment to produce less gasoline and more diesel, demand for which has not fallen as greatly, with trucks still needed to deliver food and other good during the shut downs. But with massive fixed costs and a large workforce required to run their plants — no matter how much they reduce production — there is only so much cost cutting they can do. Already credit ratings agencies are warning creditors the risk of refineries defaulting on their debt is rising.  On Monday, Fitch Ratings downgraded PBF Holdings, the holding company of New Jersey-based refining giant PBF Energy, and warned it was considering doing the same to Sugar Land-based CVR Energy and Dallas-based Hollyfrontier. “Although refiners have historically shown an ability to adjust quickly to drops in demand, a key consideration is the unknown duration of the current downturn,” Fitch said.

By www.houstonchronicle.com