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Other union members joined in on the conversation. One explaining that, as a maintenance guy, he knows how to fix things, but he may not know where certain chemicals are at that exact time, but one of the chemical engineers will. The Chemical Engineer would accompany a repair technician into certain work areas to ensure the safety of not only the technician, but the plant and the community for example. In many situations, safety is a team effort.

Benson explained one aspect that should terrify the community.

“Our emergency response team for the refinery is made up of probably 90% of the people out in the street right now. So, I don’t know that they’d even be able to respond if there was an emergency. You know if there’s a fire or an explosion I think they lost a lot of their safety.”

The emergency response teams at refineries are trained to handle industrial emergencies. A key aspect to the difference between their training and the training of community EMS personnel is that community EMS, especially fire crews, do an outstanding job with what they are tasked and taught to do. Building breaches, standard structure fires, etc. While the area refineries work hand in hand with community EMS, their training is different. They are trained to handle the addition of dangerous chemicals. In fact, the Marathon emergency response team were available to assist St. Paul Park EMS with the chemical scare at the Tennis Recycling center in 2019.

When a fire breaks out in an industrial setting, there are multiple things that need to be assessed, such as, what happens if we let this fire burn or put it out? If we put it out, does that create a gas cloud that will explode once it moves to an area and finds an ignition source? Does it create a poison cloud? If we let it burn, will it damage other equipment or cause a larger explosion. Timing is critical with multiple teams. One mistake could lead to catastrophic results both at the plant and in the community.

One member, who spoke anonymously said, “But the safety of the refinery, and the safety of the workers, not only encompasses those it also encompasses the safety of the surrounding communities. If there’s an accident, it is not going to stay within the confines of the refinery. Cottage Grove should be concerned.”

That also means St. Paul Park and Newport should be concerned as well if the right people are not in place at the refinery. Simply look at the catastrophe that took place in Superior Wisconsin at the Husky plant. 36 employees and contractors were injured fighting the fires that erupted there. Those fires also forced residents of Superior, Wisconsin to evacuate for most of the day.

Readers, this cannot be stressed enough by the folks on strike, if you are thinking, why should this concern me?

“Because it directly effects your safety,” the union member stated simply.

How has Marathon publicly responded to the strike? Here is their statement.

“Marathon Petroleum was notified late yesterday afternoon that the Teamsters-represented employees at our St. Paul Park refinery intended to strike that evening. We safely assumed operation of the refinery with trained and qualified personnel. Our comprehensive contingency planning has prepared us to continue safely operating the facility, including maintaining our vigilant focus on compliance, reliability and care for the environment.

We do not anticipate supply disruptions in Minnesota or the Midwest region, including at our Speedway stations, and we expect to continue meeting all of our customer commitments.”

According to a Facebook post made by Aaron Kothe, the proverbial ‘straw that broke the camel’s back was: “The company informed two union employees on Thursday morning, after a 12-hour shift, that they needed to report to HR at 4:30 pm. This meeting was regarding an incident that happened over a month ago, where supervisors instructed operators to proceed with a unit startup after they vocally expressed safety concerns in doing so. This supervisor’s decision resulted in a unit upset that forced entire crews to remain outside for 12 hour shifts with windchills under -15F at times. These supervisors’ decision put almost 20 operators into a situation with greater risk to their safety. Supervisors were repeatedly heard apologizing for their poor judgement and agreeing to take sole blame for the incident. Before this meeting took place with HR they met with our union steward and expressed their intent on punishing our operators with this incident in December. There is no question that this was a tactic to incite us to strike for our safety and our members being unfairly punished.”

The union members have been expressing their frustrations with Marathon’s lack of negotiations.

“Definitely the way we see it, they’re not bargaining in good faith at all. They are not making much of an effort,” Benson explained.

So much so, the Union has filed suits against Marathon for bad faith negotiations.

“There’s times where they go several hours where they won’t get back to us. They don’t change anything from the time before. They don’t respond. They’ve only talked about some of our proposals that we want, to make changes only a couple times in a month,” Benson added.

Other union members have expressed concern with the 1.1 billion dollars Marathon has received in tax incentives due to the pandemic. One member pointed out that the St. Paul Park refinery has received $4 million of that money to help cover costs. The feeling is that Marathon is simply lining the pockets of the CEO’s and trying to squeeze more out of the workers.

Additionally, managers are starting to press for higher level cross training so that one employee can do the work of two. This adds to the safety concerns because of the time and practice it takes to become proficient at one job, now many will need to be doing that for two, three or more jobs and that is not only not practical, it’s not safe.

One member with nearly 20 years’ experience talked about how he and his co-workers try to guide policy to balance safety and efficiency. The employees know what it takes to learn one job, two jobs, three jobs. The know where the drop off is. It’s kind of like anything you do for work, you won’t be as good at any one of the four you have to do, but you’d be a lot better if you only did two. There has been a lot of discussion about that, the employees feel too much cross training is detrimental to the entire team.

January 19th, State Senator Karla Bigham penned a letter to Marathon Petroleum. In her letter she highlighted her concerns for community safety.

“I write with great concern about the safety of our community, due to the status of the contract for thousands of union workers at the refinery. The safety of our community is the top concern for me. I have previously expressed concern about Marathon wanting to sub-contract out jobs from the refinery and I have raised direct opposition to Marathon using out of state contractors who are not trained to the same level as your employees inside the refinery. Inexperienced and untrained workers pose a direct safety issue not just to their fellow workers, but also our community,” Bigham wrote.

She also explained her connection to the employees in the area as being classmates and neighbors and that bringing out of state workers hurts our local economy. Closing out the letter, she encouraged marathon to negotiate in good faith with their employees because they are the ones that keep our communities safe from the dangers at the refinery.

Just a few days after the letter from Senator Bigham, the union opted to return to work with the understanding that negotiations would continue Monday the 25th. Citing concerns for community safety, they believe they are the people that should be the ones working and that they give the community the best options for safety. Marathon’s response? No thanks.

On January 22nd, the Teamsters Local 120 issued a statement.

“Union employees at Marathon Refinery offered to return to work this evening after confirming that talks with the company would continue on Monday. In a move the Union calls astounding and incredibly reckless, Employees were denied entry when they went to work.

The St. Paul Park refinery utilizes hydrofluoric acid, the same chemical which necessitated the evacuation of Superior WI after the explosion at the Husky refinery in 2018. According to the Union, they offered the unconditional return specifically to minimize the risk of accident with the toxic chemical.

“Hydrofluoric acid is deadly, plain and simple. Marathon is gambling with the lives of Minnesotans instead of ensuring this facility is as safe as possible. This has been about safety the whole time, and their actions tonight proves that isn’t a priority for Marathon,” says Teamsters Local 120 Business Agent Scott Kroona.

Teamsters Local 120 President Tom Erickson put it more bluntly.

“I have been involved in Union negotiations for over 30 years. I have never seen a company do something as reckless as what Marathon did tonight. Their decision could have major consequences to peoples lives. For the sake of everyone I pray they get lucky and it doesn’t.” says Erickson.

Teamsters Local 120 covers large portions of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa and is dedicated to fighting for increased rights for workers and communities.”

The apparent lack of concern on Marathon’s part is a bit worrisome and was also evident at some tense picket line moments. There have been a few reports of semi’s not stopping for the picket lines resulting in individuals being nearly hit. Cottage Grove Police officers have been brought in to provide security at the various entrances to the Marathon property, but some union members see that as a scare tactic. Again, at the requests of being anonymous, several picketers have stated that officers have threatened to arrest them because they were moving too slow and not letting trucks in. Our observations of the entry point show picketers crossing slowly, twice in front of vehicles as they enter and exit the grounds, then allowing one vehicle each way to proceed before they started the procession over.

An area neighbor came out to show his support talking about his primary concern being safety. If something catastrophic were to happen, he knows his neighborhood would be one of the first ones affected.

The bottom line for this situation is safety. The striking employees recognize that they went on strike to get Marathon’s attention, offered to go back to work as a show of good faith and were told no by Marathon. Just like sports teams need their best players to win consistently, a refinery needs its best employee’s working to win consistently. Sadly, the second stringers are in, and if they lose, they will not just lose a trophy or money, lives could be lost and because of that, Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, Newport and the surrounding communities should be concerned and Marathon should be ashamed.