Refinery Town

by Steve Early

  In 2012, to boost public school funding, California voters did pass Proposition 30, a tax hike for higher-income earners (some of whom tried to hide their heavy personal spending against it).16 Unfortunately, Governor Brown pressured the California Federation of Teachers to withdraw its own stronger “millionaire’s tax” as a competing referendum proposal. Later on, Brown balked at extending Proposition 30 beyond its scheduled 2019 expiration date, a question placed before voters in November 2016. The governor was similarly unwilling to undo Prop. 13 despite having once described it as “a fraud and a rip off.” In a speech to a real estate industry audience, Brown claimed that taxing commercial property at current market value—the system in place everywhere in the country except California—would involve “a lot of complexity.”17

  Make It Fair, a coalition of twenty-five labor, community, and nonprofit organizations, strongly disagrees with Brown, and so did 55 percent of likely California voters when they were polled in May 2015 about closing commercial-property tax loopholes.18 The tax reformers in this coalition nevertheless decided not to put the issue before voters in 2016. Make It Fair organizers plan to do so in the future when they have built even broader popular support and a war chest big enough “to withstand fierce industry opposition spending $50 to $100 million against us.”19

  STILL KING IN CALIFORNIA?

  Amid raging forest fires and a four-year drought (at least partially attributable to climate change), some of the same business interests opposed to property tax reform also thwart action on global warming. In its 2015 session, the state senate voted to cut “petroleum use by cars and trucks in half over the next 15 years and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels over the next 35 years.”20 Governor Brown described this legislation as “absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.”21 He urged the state assembly to pass a companion bill to SB-350.

  In a countermove familiar to Richmond voters, Chevron’s regional trade organization, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), created an “astroturf” group called the California Drivers Alliance. The alliance ran $10 million worth of ads warning that Sacramento was trying to “limit how often we can drive our own cars” and “penalize and fine us if we drive too much or use too much gas.” This propaganda targeted assembly Democrats worried “that the measure would harm the low-income communities they represent.”22 To stoke that concern, Chevron doled out $235,000 in new campaign donations to key assembly members, mainly Democrats.23 That corporate spending, plus $1.5 million paid to various lobbyists in Sacramento, helped derail the assembly version of the senate legislation.

  On September 10, 2015, Brown abandoned his own administration’s attempt at a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use by 2030. Senate president Kevin de León acknowledged environmental defeat at a press conference bemoaning the oil industry’s “bottomless war chest.” Said de León: “I don’t think we’ve seen an amount of money spent like we have seen in the last four months—tens of millions of dollars to create this smokescreen.”

  The Sacramento Bee was even more blunt and scathing in its editorial page postmortem: “In the Capitol and in the campaign for public support, the oil industry and its lobbyists and consultants outmaneuvered and outmuscled the governor, Democratic leaders and environmentalists.” With genuine alarm, its editors asserted that “global warming will consume us if we don’t overcome our carbon dependence” and asked, “How long will this blue state let oil remain king?”24

  How long indeed? Labor and community activists often ask the same question about the status of new rules designed to make refinery operations and crude-by-rail transport safer or less polluting. The acronyms of the various regional, state, or federal agencies involved in these efforts may be different. But all of them—the CSB, DOT, EPA, Cal-OSHA, and BAAQMD—proceed either at a snail’s pace, with not enough clout and a thinly disguised industry orientation, or with an overdose of due process for those being regulated and inspected.

  “Right after the Richmond fire, there was great momentum for real reform,” said USW Local 5 leader Jim Payne. “Now some are forgetting that nineteen people almost died.” When I met with Payne and his union coworker Mike Smith at their office in Martinez in August 2015, California’s Interagency Refinery Task Force had just visited Richmond. Smith had attended its presentation, which focused on ways that state regulators could improve “process safety management” in California refineries, a concept promoted by the CSB. Much of what Smith heard was positive and headed in the right direction.

  The long projected time line for adoption and implementation of new refinery safety rules was worrisome, however. “We’ve already seen draft language erode due to the industry strategy of attacking parts of it,” Smith reported. Formal public comment on the proposed rules wasn’t scheduled for another year. This led Payne to speculate, with a mix of realism and resignation, that “regulatory reform is not going to be what we hoped.”

  Despite these doubts, Local 5 continued to bird-dog the rule-making process. The union’s advocacy got a boost eight months later when a RAND study confirmed “that new process safety management regulations would improve safety at California refineries” and “result in fewer releases of hazardous materials.”25 If stop-work/shut-down authority for refinery operators remained part of the new regulatory regime, when finalized by California in 2017, that would create an important precedent for other states and federal OSHA.

  The changes would also strengthen Local 5’s future bargaining with Chevron over job-safety issues and, in Richmond, be more “empowering” than Kory Judd’s pocket-card. Of course, in the meantime, Chevron was still contesting, rather than just paying, the $963,200 in penalties originally assessed by Cal-OSHA for its August 2012 violations of the old rules. In response to the company’s administrative appeals, some of those fines had already been reduced.

  As the fourth anniversary of the Richmond fire approached, Local 5 joined environmental groups long toiling on a parallel regulatory track. Together, they pressed the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to adopt “an enforceable numeric cap on emissions that negatively impact our workplaces and the environment.”26 Industry opponents of the cap responded with a mass mailing from “Bay Area Refinery Workers” to elected officials and their constituents in the nine counties covered by the district. This largely nonunion front group described refineries in the region as “the cleanest in the world” and questioned whether “local government employees should decide what technology and equipment will best protect air quality.”

  By mid-June 2016, the BAAQMD was leaning the wrong way on the cap, even though it might prevent future importation of dirtier crude, from Canadian tar sands. In weaker or stronger form, the new emissions rule ultimately adopted by the district board faced a likely legal challenge. The oil industry was already suing over five other recent BAAQMD rule changes “that tightened controls on equipment and required refiners to disclose changes in the properties of crude oil they use.”27

  The encouraging display of “blue-green” cooperation at the BAAQMD was not evident around SB-350. In drafting that bill, Governor Brown and Democratic leaders failed to address the employment impact of California drivers reducing their petroleum use. Because of this serious omission, some USW strike allies, like the RPA and Sunflower Alliance, were themselves torn about endorsing SB-350. The bill’s lack of any job security protections or displaced worker benefits led to pressure on Local 5, from USW headquarters in Washington, to join the industry lobbying that killed the legislation.

  As Tony Mazzocchi, who died in 2002, often reminded us, trade unionists will not join “blue-green” alliances in large numbers unless they’re assured of a “just transition” to nonpolluting employment. To facilitate that shift for refinery operators and others he represented, Mazzocchi proposed that a federal “superfund for workers” be created to pay for their retraining and job transitioning. Mazzocchi�
�s visionary idea built on methods of environmental remediation still in use today, but its adoption is nowhere on the horizon, notwithstanding the best efforts of those who carry on his work.28

  “It’s going to be many years until we can actually transition workers—our members in the oil industry—to jobs with equivalent wages and benefits,” one Local 5 leader concludes. In the meantime, as this leader knows better than anyone, embracing environmental concerns, while representing oil workers, is “like walking a tight-rope.”

  COP 21—TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

  How much time we have left for remedial environmental action, whatever its job impact, was much debated at “COP 21”—the United Nations–sponsored talks on climate change in December 2015. Prior to that global negotiation in Paris, 350.org, cosponsor of the biggest environmental protest in Richmond history, was sounding the alarm about the latest sign of global warming, saying that 2015 was “on track to be the hottest year in recorded history.”29 With that, plus floods, fires, droughts, rising sea levels, and related catastrophes helpfully focusing their minds, world leaders met and agreed on common goals for reducing greenhouse gases.

  At the invitation of Paris mayor Ann Hidalgo, Richmond’s new mayor Tom Butt attended the simultaneous Climate Summit for Local Leaders. There Butt reported on community choice aggregation (CCA) and other green energy initiatives that have made Richmond a model for sustainability. He then returned home and discovered, much to his dismay, that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), appointed by fellow Paris conferee Jerry Brown, was making it more costly for consumers to switch from investor-owned utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric to renewable energy suppliers like Marin Clean Energy, the option Butt has promoted in Richmond.

  One part of the Paris deal that will be particularly hard to implement is curbing further exploitation of vast underground oil reserves owned and controlled by companies like Chevron. According to 350.org, what’s required, sooner rather than later, is a multinational commitment “to keeping at least 80% of fossil fuels underground and financing a just transition to 100% renewables by 2050.”30 That’s not the kind of energy solution Chevron has in mind in Richmond or anywhere else it operates. So, as Bill McKibben argues, environmental justice campaigners must still fight everywhere to insure “that the Paris agreement turns into a floor and not a ceiling for action.”

  On the US presidential campaign trail in 2016, there was only one candidate talking the same way. Like McKibben, he was from Vermont and a past visitor to Richmond. Bernie Sanders called for a tax on carbon emissions to cut the country’s greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050. In his challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, Sanders also promoted legislation called the Keep It in the Ground Act. It would cut potential future global warming emissions in half by blocking extraction of oil, natural gas, and coal from public lands or offshore. When asked by environmental groups to refuse campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies, Sanders immediately took the pledge. Hillary Clinton and all Republican presidential candidates refused to follow suit. Greenpeace estimated that by April 2016 Clinton had collected $4.5 million from oil industry employees and registered lobbyists. The Clinton Foundation’s solicitation of large donations from Chevron and other oil companies also drew fire from environmentalists like Naomi Klein.31

  Sanders rose from near invisibility in national polls, as an undeclared candidate at the time of his 2014 town hall meeting in Richmond, to becoming Clinton’s main rival for the nomination. By the following summer, Sanders was drawing rock concert–size crowds forty to fifty times bigger than his Richmond audience. One reason his message resonated so widely was growing public rejection of big money in politics. In a June 2015 poll, the New York Times found that a large majority of US citizens “reject the regime of untrammeled money in elections” and “favor a sweeping overhaul of how political campaigns are financed.”

  More than four in five Americans say money plays too great a role in political campaigns . . . while two thirds say that the wealthy have more of a chance to influence the election process than other Americans. . . . Some expressed a profound alienation from their own government. They said they did not expect elected figures to listen to them. They described politics as a province of the wealthy. And, despite being inundated with political advertising—and being repulsed by the billions of dollars required to pay for it—they said they sometimes did not feel informed enough to come to an opinion about the candidates.32

  Sanders introduced Senate legislation authorizing public funding with a formula far more favorable than Richmond’s modest municipal election match.33 Meanwhile, the fund-raising division of labor for business-backed presidential candidates looked familiar to any observer of our 2014 experience. A PAC controlled by close allies raised the bulk of their money and covered major paid-media costs. Any money given directly funded “a smaller campaign operation handling the candidate’s travel, press relations, and strategy.”34 According to Wall Street Journal reporters using disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, “Super PACs backing 17 presidential candidates raised more than $250 million in the first six months of [2015], roughly doubling the $125 million raised by the candidates for their campaigns.”35

  Wealthy Democrats, including friends of Hillary Clinton on Wall Street, gave millions to Priorities USA Action, the Moving Forward of her campaign. To raise $112 million in 2015 alone, Clinton relied heavily on exclusive fund-raisers with a minimum ticket price of $2,700. Meanwhile, she argued “that the only way to overturn the Citizens United ruling and do away with super PACs is to elect a Democrat.” Of course, she also said, “we can’t unilaterally disarm”—a refrain common among Democrats, like Barack Obama, who promise election-law reform before they get elected but neglect that goal afterward.36 When Clinton unveiled her own campaign-finance proposals, one of her advisors publicly acknowledged that “90 percent of those things aren’t going to happen anytime soon.”37

  Sanders, on the other hand, declared that he was “not going to start a super PAC” or “go around the country talking to millionaires and billionaires, begging for contributions.”38 Those who did so, he implied, were not true critics of a legal decision that “undermines American democracy and moves us towards an oligarchy in which the economic and political life of the country is increasingly controlled by a handful of billionaire families.”

  Instead, the Vermont senator raised more than $220 million in 2015–16. His small donor base grew to an unprecedented size—reportedly 2.5 million people, who gave more than 8 million times. Even the New York Times—whose reporters often dissed and dismissed Sanders throughout his campaign—was forced to acknowledge that the “insurgent social democrat . . . has shown that it’s possible to amass a war chest from ordinary people who are sick and tired of big money in politics.”39

  Wherever he could on the presidential campaign trail, Sanders linked up with local candidates like the Richmond progressives he aided in 2014. (And three of them—McLaughlin, Beckles, and Martinez—provided reciprocal support for Sanders two years later; Arkansas-born Tom Butt stuck with Hillary Clinton and her husband, who had a Richmond reunion with the mayor shortly before the California primary.) In Chicago Sanders helped Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) vice president Susan Sadlowski Garza defeat a longtime city council incumbent, who was backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. She became the first CTU member to serve on the city council, after running a very Richmond-style campaign that “focused on public health and workplace safety campaigns” and “brought together refinery workers with community environmental activists.”40

  A later Sanders-for-president rally in the Windy City featured Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a twenty-six-year-old newly elected gay colleague of Sadlowski Garza’s who was outspent 3 to 1 in his race for office.41 In Sanders’s home state, his presidential campaign inspired other young supporters to seek legislative office, either as Democrats or candidates of the Vermont Progressive Party, already the most succe
ssful third party in the nation.

  At giant rallies, attended by an estimated 1.5 million people, Sanders made it clear how his supporters could overcome corporate opposition in cities and states across the country: “Real change only comes about when a large number of ordinary Americans speak, vote, and get involved in the democratic process. If we stand together, we will win. If we are divided, the big-money interests win.”42 However, as the RPA’s experience in Richmond demonstrates, even successful electoral work conducted at the local level over many years does not by itself build year-round, multi-issue political organization. That takes an unconventional approach to politics, before, during, and after any election.

  In Richmond, during its 2016 election, one thing remained unchanged: campaign spending by powerful business interests was still not subject to any curbs. A year before the voting, Chevron spokesperson Leah Casey would only confirm that her employer had not yet “defined how or if we will participate in the local Richmond elections”—a stance subject to change. In the same e-mail message, she did reassure me that the company’s electoral participation, if any, would be “fully transparent.”

  In the 2015 session of the California legislature, concern about the growth of independent expenditure campaigns—which now account for 25 percent of all legislative election spending—did lead to increased “transparency.” A bill signed by Governor Brown now requires “larger, bolder disclosures on campaign mail sent by independent groups, stating that the advertisement doesn’t come from a candidate.”43 In Richmond, this means that readers of future Chevron mailers may no longer need magnifying glasses to locate the small-type disclosure of their funding source. As no less a fund-raising expert than Andrew Cuomo points out, Citizens United created a “fiction” that independent expenditure committees “would actually, truly act independently” of their favored candidates. Instead, what Cuomo calls “the collusion, the coordination, the subterfuge, the fraud in the current political system is rampant,” from New York to Richmond, and requires bigger solutions than less fine print.44