Union cites safety fears if refinery hit by strike
Co-op says managers, contractors have all the necessary expertise
Unifor members joined a professor to raise the alarm on plans to run the Co-op Refinery Complex during a possible strike or lockout — warning it could put workers or the community at risk — although the company disagrees.
“Locking out the workers and having the plant run by untrained, underqualified replacement workers is like a 12-year-old kid taking dad’s car for a joyride,” said Dan Josephson, a recently retired process operator who worked at the refinery for 38 years.
“He might be able to navigate that car for a little while down a straight road. But as soon as the curves start coming, and the traffic hits, there’s going to be an accident.”
But managers countered that the refinery will remain safe if unionized workers are replaced by managers and contractors, whom they insist have similar qualifications and training.
They say they’re ready for what remains a “hypothetical” labour disruption and strongly resist any notion that they’ll be putting people in danger.
“We are confident in our ability to safely and reliably operate,” said Lenita Knudsen, the refinery’s director of health, safety, security and environment.
Sean Tucker, a specialist in occupational health and safety with the University of Regina’s department of business administration, organized a town hall on refinery safety this week.
The event attracted more than a dozen Unifor members, two NDP MLAS and Regina city councillor Andrew Stevens.
Josephson said he was asked to speak by the union, which is at loggerheads with the company over changes to the pension plan that workers call a 17.5 per cent rollback. Mediation this month failed to resolve the dispute. The two sides are now in a cooling-off period until Nov. 26, after which they would be legally entitled to give 48-hours notice of a strike or lockout.
Tucker argued plans to run the refinery using replacement workers and managers would create an “unacceptable level of risk.”
Management has erected a camp to house those workers on site. Vice-president of operations Gil Le Dressay said the contingency plan would see staffing of between 600 and 700 in the event of a strike or lockout, with some other functions filled off site. That’s down from the roughly 1,000 people, both unionized and out-of-scope, employed to keep the refinery running 24 hours a day.
Tucker argued the staff filling in would be “relatively less experienced” than Unifor members and may be more subject to fatigue due to long hours and work-camp living. He noted there have already been accidents at the facility, including explosions in 2011 and 2013 and documented incidents that resulted in worker injury in the years since.
“I don’t want to be alarmist but there are risks to the community if we have replacement workers operating the refinery,” he said.
Knudsen said process operators currently work 12-hour shifts and that will continue to be the pattern in the event of a strike or lockout. Though she acknowledged there may be increased hours in some cases, she said the refinery will follow all the requirements of the Saskatchewan Employment Act.
“The safety of our people and ensuring we’ve got well-rested and healthy people to do this work is always top of mind,” she said.
Le Dressay said managers are often former process operators with decades of experience. He said many have remained in touch with front-line work through their role as supervisors. As for the contractors, he said they’re highly skilled tradespeople who, in many cases, have worked at the refinery for turnarounds or capital projects.
He said the workers on shift during a strike or lockout would be trained by the same people who train the unionized operators. They have to pass the same exams and follow the same regimen.
But Josephson has his doubts. He doesn’t believe the contractors who do turnarounds are anywhere near as experienced as unionized staff, saying many only work “maintenance” and are “handled with kid gloves.” As for managers, he said some have been away from hands-on duties for years and may lack the required “proficiency.”
He said things can go wrong at every stage of the refinery process. In his view, the main safeguard against disaster is the training and experience of staff. He ran through training they take — in everything from fall protection and respiratory protection to inorganic chemistry and thermodynamic theory — and said it takes at least seven years to truly master the work.
He said replacement workers lack that experience and simply “cannot do this job.”
“This is a dangerous industry,” he said. “The potential for problems or disaster is tremendous.”
But Le Dressay resisted that argument. He called the industry “high hazard,” but not dangerous or high risk. He said those hazards are manageable, while the public would be protected by “multiple levels of safety systems.”
“We will not run in dangerous situations,” he said.
The town hall heard concerns from members of the public, including a former Regina firefighter, who worried about fire response. Knudsen said the facility will preserve its emergency response capacities, notably by bringing in supplementary qualified firefighters.
The Co-op Refinery Complex and its parent company Federated Co-operatives Limited did not make anyone available for the town hall on Monday, despite Tucker inviting management “a couple weeks” in advance. He said it was “very problematic” given the community-minded brand of the company.
“I think the public needs to know that they are very resistant to talking to this community, and they should talk to this community and I’m disappointed that, again, they had another opportunity to come out and speak to the community and they declined to do so,” he said.
“People join the Co-op ... because they’re different. And what we’re seeing is that the Co-op may not be so different anymore.”