With a "man of the people" ready to move into the White House, it is worth looking at the energy industry through the eyes of a popular movement derided as a spent force: trade unions.
The International Federation of Chemical, Energy & General Worker's Unions (ICEF) met in Bonn early this month to debate a host of statutory changes. Delegates were given an ICEF report on industry trends.
Among its findings, the report showed wide gaps in wages for refinery workers from country to country in 1990.
Japanese refinery workers led a table of average wages at $22.12/hr. Sweden was second at $20.37/hr.
Most developed countries were in the $15-18/hr range. France was outside this group at $11.86/hr, its nearest comparisons being Israel at $11.60/hr and South Korea at $10.06/hr. Then there was a long drop to South Africa at $5.16, Portugal at $4.21, and Kenya at $3.03.
The bargain basement countries in terms of wages were Poland at 22cts/hr, China at 28cts/hr, and the U.S.S.R., as it then was, at 40cts.
The report says wide international wage gaps and the threat they pose to refinery workers worldwide are all too clear.
Like refiners, who also have problems with disparate regional figures in international organizations, unions have an impossible task in trying to reconcile the differences. But there is no doubting their intention to try.
ICEF already has the upstream sector in its sights. Its July conference for offshore workers concluded that use of contract labor is putting pay, conditions, safety, and manning levels under pressure on offshore platforms worldwide and must therefore be resisted. Expanded international trade union cooperation is essential, ICEF said.
In the U.K., unions recently have been on the winning side for the first time in a decade.
Arthur Scargill, the National Union of Mineworkers' leader, was accused during the Thatcher years of holding the nation for ransom. But last month he helped raise a public outcry against the closure of coal mines.
The anger of potential voters forced the government to reverse its policy. Now electrical power generators are believed to be preparing to sign coal supply contracts under pressure from Energy Minister Tim Eggar. And developers of gas fired power stations stand to lose out.
Trade unions took a heavy beating during the 1980s. As the about-turn on U.K. coal policy shows, though, union ideals can win approval when the economy is depressed and many peoples' jobs are threatened.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
