One final inequity for plant workers

There is an old saying about “adding insult to injury.”

Need proof? Just ask the longtime workers of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery in Southwest Philadelphia.

First their workplace was jolted by a massive explosion and fire back in June. Workers acted quickly and decisively – putting their own lives in jeopardy – to safeguard the highly toxic materials used in the unit where the blast took place.

Their reward for such heroic actions? They lost their jobs. Within days, PES announced its intention to shut down the sprawling, 1,400-acre facility – the largest refinery on the East Coast – and seek a buyer.

This struck some workers as odd, being that the explosion and fire damaged one unit, while leaving dozens of others untouched.

That did not stop company officials, who clearly had lost their taste for the operation that created 350,000 barrels of fuel a day. In a matter of weeks, they filed for bankruptcy protection for the ailing facility, the second time they had done so.

After initially indicating the union workforce would be laid off immediately, workers got something of a reprieve – five more weeks on the job as they worked to safely shut the plant down.

That reprieve ran out at the end of August, and 1,000 union workers were told their careers at the refinery were over. The members of Steelworkers Local 10-1 got no severance package. Their health benefits ended along with their jobs.

This week it got worse. They got their noses rubbed in it.

Court records indicate that right after the explosion – but before filing for bankruptcy – the company handed more than $4 million in bonuses to a small group of key executives.

They are called retention bonuses, and they are not all that unusual, especially amid troubled industries when many executives could be looking for an exit strategy.

The bonuses are a way of dangling an incentive to get top brass to stick with the company.

Reporting by the Philadelphia Inquirer indicates PES Chief Executive Officer Mark Smithy received more than $1.5 million in a retention bonus. Other execs received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses.

The workers? They didn’t get bonuses. They got shown the door, without so much as a thank you for their efforts in safely shutting down the plant and averting a catastrophe.

This final slap in the face was not lost on Ryan O’Callaghan. He’s the president of Local 10-1.

“It’s repulsive that they did that,” O’Callaghan said. “While they’re telling everybody else they’re poor, bankrupt, and nothing for severance and canceled benefits plan, … they stuffed their own pockets.”

He’ll get no argument from U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D5th Dist., who has been active in negotiations since the plant closed. She condemned the move by PES executives.

“While federal investigations concerning the safety and environmental impact of the June explosion and fire at the PES refinery are ongoing, it really adds insult to injury that PES executives chose to line their pockets with millions of dollars, while hundreds of workers were laid off without health insurance or severance pay.

“These workers, their families, and our community deserve better — and the truth.

“PES cannot simply get up and walk away from these workers and this community.”

For the workers, that refinery was their gateway to a solid, middle-class life. And now it’s gone. And they did not get the cushy landing or parting gifts showered on some executives.

The country is in the midst of a discussion of our national policies, who and what we are, and who we stand for.

Some Democratic candidates have drawn scorn for their policies, which some see as a form of socialism. That stems from the temerity of them pointing out that the deck too often is stacked against the working man or woman. That our economic system tilts wildly in favor of those at the top of the process, and that not nearly enough “trickles down” to those on the lower rungs of the ladder.

The next time someone screams “socialism” when it comes to a description of the inequities of capitalism, remember what happened at Philadelphia Energy Solutions.