BP Whiting Lockout Enters Month Two With a 56-Year Bargaining Framework Broken

BP has locked out roughly 800 United Steelworkers Local 7-1 members at Whiting, the largest refinery in the Midwest by capacity, and is running on replacement workers. BP broke from the USW National Oil Bargaining Program, the 56-year framework Marathon Petroleum accepted on behalf of 26 companies covering about two-thirds of U.S. refinery capacity, including a 15% wage increase and a $2,500 signing bonus. BP's proposal includes wage reductions across most job classifications and a 150-day strike-notice requirement. The USW has filed 15 unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB. Unplanned Whiting outages have historically driven PADD 2 diesel basis higher within days, and running a refinery of that scale on replacement contractors carries process safety risk worth a line on your register now.

Qualis Engineered Plastics Opens at 1700 Lynch Road in Evansville

A new custom compounder is launching in Vanderburgh County with 30 jobs, $400,000 in IEDC performance-based credits, ten bulk-resin silos, and a CSX rail spur, entering the market as Polyram completes its own $12 million Evansville expansion. A specialty plastics cluster is forming in Southwest Indiana. If you source specialty compounds from long-haul suppliers, Qualis is worth evaluating, but validate their quality system and PPAP capability before qualifying them into a critical BOM.