USW Members at Tesoro Martinez Ratify Contract

Contact: Lynne Hancock (615) 828-6169, lhancock@usw.org

Martinez, Calif.—United Steelworkers (USW) members voted last night to accept Tesoro’s offer for workers employed at the company’s refinery here.

This was the last Tesoro contract to be ratified. The Kapolei, Hawaii contract settled in March. The Salt Lake City contract settled in April, and the Mandan, N. Dakota, Anacortes, Wash., and Wilmington, Calif. agreements were ratified in May.

“The Tesoro locals stood together in solidarity these past six months and this enabled them to get a provision that the company won’t make substantial changes to their benefits for most of their contract,” said USW International Vice President Gary Beevers, who heads the National Oil Bargaining program. “Unless it’s in their contract language, most of the oil locals don’t have this provision.

“The ratified agreements at all the locations were drastic improvements from Tesoro’s “last, best and final” offer it put forward last February,” Beevers added.

All of the Tesoro contracts are for three years and all of them, except for the Wilmington (Los Angeles) local, have a Jan. 31, 2015 expiration date. The Wilmington contract expires April 30, 2015.

“Our local and the other members of the Tesoro Council learned a great deal from negotiations this time and we can build upon our solidarity to prepare ourselves for bargaining in 2015,” said Local 5 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Clark.

The USW represents over 450 workers at the Tesoro Martinez refinery. Across Tesoro’s refineries, except for the Kenai, Alaska refinery which is non-union, the USW represents over 1,300 workers.

The USW is the largest industrial union in North America and has 850,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. It represents workers employed in metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining, renewable and atomic energy, plus the service and government sectors.

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