BP Locks Out Nearly 1,000 Steelworkers at Whiting as the Dispute Enters Its Sixth Day

BP has locked out close to 1,000 United Steelworkers members at its Whiting refinery, now in its sixth day with no new bargaining date scheduled. USW national oil bargaining chair Mike Smith said in an IndustriALL union release that BP declined to adopt the national pattern Marathon Petroleum already settled, a deal that included a 15 percent wage increase and a $2,500 bonus. USW District 7 director Mike Millsap said in the same release that the company is "gambling the community's safety on inexperienced replacement workers."

BP reportedly hired Jordan Marcks, the labor relations director who ran the 2021-22 ExxonMobil Beaumont lockout, and has proposed outsourcing the refinery's environmental technician department and four maintenance craft lines to Turner Industries. The union plans to mobilize around BP's April shareholder meeting outside London. The dispute is running alongside NIPSCO's separate lockout of roughly 1,700 USW utility workers in the same region, two of northern Indiana's largest employers taking the same hardline position against the same union at the same time. For manufacturers that draw fuel or feedstock from the Whiting refinery, a sustained throughput shortfall is the operational number to track this week.