How Trade Unions and Climate Advocates in California Can Forge an Alliance

In the wake of a massive explosion at ExxonMobil’s refinery in Torrance, California, in early 2015, environmentalists organized to convince regulators to limit the refinery’s use of a deadly chemical called hydrofluoric acid (HF). Keeping close tabs on the debate was the Los Angeles affiliate of one of the biggest labor unions in California, the State Building and Construction Trades Council, reporting in its trade publication that workers had shown up at hearings to oppose the proposed regulations.

The trade union had just succeeded in negotiating a Project Labor Agreement with PBF, the refinery’s owner after ExxonMobil sold it, and saw the proposed rules for the highly volatile acid as a threat to its members’ jobs. Switching to an alternative to HF, which the refinery uses to convert crude oil to high octane gasoline in a process called alkylation, would be expensive, and the oil companies privately suggested they could shut down the refinery rather than switch.

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But the Building Trades represented only about half the workers at the refinery, all working for contractors. Another 650 permanent workers who manage day-to-day operations are employed directly by PBF; they are represented by the International United Steelworkers (USW), the nation’s largest industrial trade union, and were initially on the opposite side of the HF issue from their co-workers.

For decades, the USW fought to organize refineries across the country and now represents workers at many of them. When the Torrance refinery exploded in 2015, the USW was in the middle of organizing strikes nationwide for safer standards at refineries. Last year, Torrance refinery workers represented by USW Local 675 won a $3.2 million settlement after suing over unpaid wages and denied rest breaks.

At first, the USW was on the side of those who wanted to ban HF, clashing with the Building Trades on the issue, according to David Campbell, the secretary-treasurer for Local 675. The union was a co-founder of the group Torrance Refinery Action Alliance pushing for the ban.

Campbell is no stranger to taking on the refinery, once dumping a truckful of manure in front of the administrator’s door in protest after the explosion. His union also has a deep history of opposing HF at refineries. The USW has campaigned against HF since 2009, after the release of HF during a refinery explosion in Corpus Christi, Texas. Eight years ago, the union put out a report asserting that 26 million people in the U.S. were at risk from HF-based alkylation.
 

“Trade union leaders who advocate for social policy that eliminates members’ jobs without having alternatives are not trade union leaders for very long.”

~ David Campbell, the secretary-treasurer for USW Local 675

 
The union and, specifically, Local 675, also has a progressive reputation. This year, Local 675 endorsed a report released by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst calling for California to invest $138 billion annually until 2030 to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy infrastructure, a number that dwarfs expert estimates of current investments.

Statewide, the USW is small compared to the Building Trades — representing only about 20,000 workers in California — and it doesn’t have a major presence in Sacramento when it comes to lobbying state legislators. Still, the union’s support energized the anti-HF campaign in Los Angeles. Campbell emphasized that it was contingent on officials planning for a just transition for laid-off refinery workers if the oil companies decided to shut down the refinery.

When a transition plan failed to materialize, Local 675 switched sides and began advocating against the ban. Campbell claims it was about jobs.

“If we’re going to advocate that our folks’ jobs be gone, we have to be able to show them that we are taking care of their interests,” Campbell says. “Trade union leaders who advocate for social policy that eliminates members’ jobs without having alternatives are not trade union leaders for very long.”

Complicating matters was the USW’s turf war against the Building Trades at the refinery. The USW had actively opposed the Building Trades’ efforts to organize at the refinery after 2014.

Whatever their differences, both trade unions had a strong motivation for defending oil and gas jobs in the face of proposed environmental regulations. It’s a dynamic that could become more problematic as state and local authorities try to hasten a transition away from fossil fuels, environmentalists and some legislators say.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, during remarks in the aftermath of the devastating oil spill off the coast of Orange County in early October, acknowledged that a ban on drilling in the state was a no-brainer, but “the deeper question is how do you transition and still protect the workforce?”
 

While rank-and-file energy workers across the country support proposals like the Green New Deal, a history of transitions that shed millions of jobs during deindustrialization at the end of the 20th century has inspired distrust.

 
Unions aren’t monoliths, said Mijin Cha, an assistant professor at Occidental College and a fellow at the Worker Institute at Cornell University. Even within trade unions like the USW or the Building Trades, affiliates can differ in their advocacy and political leanings. Her research indicates that while rank-and-file energy workers across the country support proposals like the Green New Deal, a long history of “unjust” transitions that shed millions of jobs during deindustrialization at the end of the 20th century has inspired distrust.

Without getting an offer of new jobs that pay commensurate wages, workers have much to lose. At the very least, Cha says, officials should offer something like a five-year wage replacement fund, which would give workers time to retrain for new jobs.

“If you offer a transition package and workers don’t take it, then you’re in a different political atmosphere, but that hasn’t happened,” Cha says. “We have to give people like David Campbell the option to both stop using this dangerous chemical and also to take care of his members.”

Some critical coalition-building opportunities in California have already been lost, according to UC Berkeley’s Carol Zabin, director of UC Berkeley’s Labor Center Green Economy Program and a governor’s appointee to the executive council for the California Workforce Development Board.

One example is how unions were shut out of major ratepayer investments designed and administered by utility companies in retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient. The State Building Trades spent “a lot of money and energy” trying to convince the Public Utilities Commission to require companies to add skill certification requirements in order to access the funds, says Zabin.

The certification requirements could have ensured that the retrofitting jobs would go to unionized contractors who invest heavily in apprenticeship — the gold standard for training construction workers. Yet neither the utility companies nor the PUC included such requirements, allowing the work to go to nonunion contract workers — a cheaper option for contractors, but a setback for blue-green solidarity.

“​​That was a lesson for the Building Trades’ leadership,” Zabin says. “They saw that the state wasn’t really supporting union labor on the energy efficiency side.”

Around the same time, California passed the Building Trades-backed law mandating that 60% of oil refinery contract workers graduate from state-certified apprenticeship programs, virtually guaranteeing a huge increase in Building Trades’ union membership via refineries. It represented a significant victory, since unions overall have continued to lose members nationwide.
 

In a state like California, where Democrats enjoy a supermajority in the Legislature, opposition from influential unions like the Building Trades can sway key lawmakers away from tighter regulations on the oil industry.

 
That’s not to say that the Building Trades haven’t supported other initiatives, such as the Renewable Portfolio Standard, that directs the state’s utilities to meet an ever-increasing percent of their electric load with renewable energy — the trade union says the program has resulted in tens of thousands of job opportunities. To cite one example, a Kern County union local represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers secured a Project Labor Agreement to provide solar energy to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, slated to supply up to 7% of the city’s electricity.

But if the potential of renewable energy jobs represents a way out of a standoff between construction unions and environmentalists, proposed regulations on the existing oil and gas industry is where you find a schism. And in a state like California, where Democrats enjoy a supermajority in the Legislature, opposition from influential unions like the Building Trades can sway key lawmakers away from tighter regulations on the industry.

About 100,000 Building Trades members work throughout the oil industry in California, including refineries and oil fields. In the spring, as Capital & Main reported, opposition from the Building Trades was critical in killing a piece of legislation that included a phaseout of extreme oil and gas drilling techniques and regulations on how close oil companies can extract oil near homes and schools.

The bill would have been one of the state’s most comprehensive sets of regulations imposed on the industry, and environmental groups lobbied hard for its passage. (This month, Gov. Newsom announced a proposed rule that would institute setbacks of 3,200 feet between new oil wells and sensitive sites.)

The legislative version of the setbacks rule ultimately died in a State Senate committee because three Democratic legislators failed to approve the bill, siding with Republicans. More than a dozen Building Trades members showed up to testify against it.

State Sen. Robert Hertzberg (D-San Fernando Valley) took $68,000 from trade unions and their PACs while Sen. Ben Hueso (D-Imperial Valley) took $50,000 (in addition to $63,500 from the oil and gas industry). Both abstained from voting on the bill.

Sen. Susan Eggman (D-San Joaquin) took $22,500 from trade unions during her first state senate campaign in 2020. The oil and gas industry has given her a collective $51,400 throughout her career. At a committee hearing in April, she voiced doubts that workers would fare well if the new rules were implemented.

“The just transition of jobs is very, very, very slim and not real,” Eggman said of the possible outcomes of the legislation. “Because we know a major impact of this is the huge amount of jobs and the corresponding jobs that will be lost that go along with this.”
 

California refinery workers have filed at least four class action lawsuits against their employers over unpaid wages and rest breaks since 2008, resulting in more than $10 million in settlements combined.

 
The influence of the Building Trades in opposing new regulations on the oil and gas industry was also on display this past summer when the Bay Area Air Quality Management District was deciding whether to approve a new rule limiting particulate matter pollution from four regional refineries. Oil companies warned that nearly 200 workers could lose their jobs.

The Contra Costa Building and Construction Trades Council, a local affiliate, purchased ads asking readers to lobby against the rule, which would have “blown up jobs for men and women of color who have worked so very hard to carve out a middle-class life for themselves,” according to Bill Whitney, CEO of the council.

Despite opposition, Bay Area regulators approved the limit on pollution. Refineries have five years before it takes effect, and emissions must be within the limit set by the Bay Area air district. Thus far, the regulator hasn’t backed any kind of transition proposal for workers who could lose their jobs, and it’s not clear if it has the authority to implement one, though board members could advocate such policies in their home cities and counties.

Oil lobbyists have recognized for a long time the benefits of the alliance with big labor. Since 2009, the American Petroleum Institute has maintained a partnership with 15 unions to oppose legislation unfavorable to the oil and gas industry.

Sometimes, though, unions are actively trying to be part of the winding down of fossil fuels. This past year, the Building Trades supported legislation that would have encouraged union labor for plugging thousands of abandoned wells across the state. The industry opposed it, as did pro-oil Republican legislators.

Martin Rodriguez, president of the Building Trades Council of Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo/Ventura, says that officials who want to phase out oil operations have to be “accountable” to workers in his union and put more resources into developing supply chains for renewable energy and ensuring good pay for cleaning up oil operations.

“The conversation was about plugging oil and gas wells and making sure that those wages were the prevailing wage,” Rodriguez says of the legislation he supported, adding that the Building Trades also support the use of carbon capture technology that could prolong fossil fuel infrastructure. But he insists, “We’re very aware of climate change.”

Last year, North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) released a report indicating that oil and gas jobs are generally a better deal for workers than renewable energy jobs. The trade union surveyed more than 1,600 union members, who indicated that fossil fuel jobs pay better and offer better benefits and career prospects.

That could change if legislation and policy more closely linked renewable sector jobs to unions, which historically have been better able to guarantee higher wages and other benefits. And even though the oil and gas industry currently has higher rates of unionized workers than does the renewable energy sector, it has long opposed unionization and can be an exploitative employer. In California alone, refinery workers have filed at least four class action lawsuits against their employers over unpaid wages and rest breaks since 2008, resulting in more than $10 million in settlements combined.

“When people talk about fossil fuel jobs being unionized at high rates, that’s true, but it dates back to when coal miners were being murdered by coal companies,” says Cha. “The oil industry wants labor to carry water for them, but they certainly won’t keep them employed if it eventually goes against their bottom line.”

 
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