The union that represents the bulk of the nation’s oil refinery workers walked out of talks with oil industry representatives on worker safety issues stemming from federal findings in the 2005 explosion at the BP Texas City refinery that killed 15 people.
The United Steelworkers had been in negotiations with the American Petroleum Institute to formulate new industrywide standards dealing with worker fatigue and safety monitoring.
The talks emerged from a set of recommendations by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board after its investigation of the March 23, 2005, BP Texas City explosion.
The American Petroleum Institute is an oil industry trade group that sets the non-regulated standards by which oil producers operate.
The chemical safety board recommended new procedures be put in place to monitor worker fatigue and better monitor process safety performance at oil refineries.
Gary Beevers, the international vice president for the union, said oil industry representatives would not include environmental and public interest groups in the talks and brushed off input from refinery workers on what the new standards would be.
“After months of very little progress, we found the API and the industry did not understand the meaning of consensus,” Beevers said in a statement Tuesday.
“This industry will simply not get serious about developing standards that have real meat in them.”
The oil industry group accused the union of deliberately derailing the talks.
“Unfortunately, the USW is attempting to undermine a process aimed at improving worker safety,” the API said in a statement.
“USW is trying to silence the voices of other stakeholders on the committee by making specific demands directly tied to their national oil bargaining strategy.”
National oil bargaining is a process where the union negotiates a national standard contract that sets wages and general safety provisions for all oil refinery workers.
Those talks ended with an agreement in the fall.
Local refiners said USW’s walking away from the safety standards negotiations would not impact their operations.
