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The largest U.S. refinery strike in 35 years entered its fourth week as workers at 12 refineries accounting for one-fifth of national production capacity were walking picket lines as of 12 a.m. CST on Sunday, according to union officials. A total of 6,550 members of the United Steelworkers union at 15 plants, including the 12 refineries, are involved in the work stoppage that began on Feb. 1 when talks for a new three-year contract between the USW and lead oil company negotiator Shell Oil Co stopped.... After the latest breakdown between the two sides, Steelworkers leaders targeted Shell, which is...

The first nationwide oil refinery strike in more than 30 years was expected to grow by four more plants over the weekend, including the largest refinery in the U.S., the Motiva Enterprises refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The United Steelworkers union said Saturday workers at the Motiva Enterprises refinery started their strike at midnight Friday. Employees at two other refineries and a chemical plant in Louisiana planned to strike at the end of Saturday. The union said in a statement that it expanded the strike that started Feb. 1 at refineries largely in Texas and California because the industry has...

In an open letter to employees, the manager of LyondellBasell’s Houston Refinery is asking its striking employees to come back to work. The workers, who walked out of the refinery on Feb. 1 as part of a nationwide strike after national oil bargaining talks broke down, have left the refinery scrambling to operate with supervisors. The United Steelworkers union is on strike against 11 refineries and chemical plants nationwide, including five in the Houston area. The letter outlined the negotiating efforts both sides made before the strike began and how the company had requested a rolling 24-hour extension to keep...

Tensions escalated Friday in the nearly two-week strike after picketers were told to get off the Shell Deer Park Refining property. The order puts the strikers in danger because the refinery fronts the feeder road on Texas 225 and there is no sidewalk on which to stand, said Lee Medley, president of the United Steelworkers Local 13-1. He said Shell gave the strikers walking the picket line 30 minutes to get themselves, their chairs, ice chests and other equipment off the property. Shell issued its order in response to unsafe behaviors by the picketers including blocking entrances with picketers and...

The United Steelworkers union is broadening its nationwide walkout to include two more refineries. Early Sunday, the union is planning to go on strike against two BP facilities in the Midwest, union spokeswoman Lynne Hancock confirmed. That will bring the total number of plants on strike to 11, after union members walked out of nine facilities, including five in the Houston area, a week ago. The latest work stoppages are scheduled to begin 12:01 a.m. Sunday at BP’s refineries in Toledo, Ohio and Whiting, Ind., Hancock said. BP issued a statement saying it is disappointed the union is launching a...

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced that loading and unloading operations at all 29 West Coast ports would temporarily be suspended this weekend in response to union slowdowns that brought freight movements at the ports to a near standstill. PMA members stated that they cannot afford the almost $1,200 per day cost to employ International Longshore and Warehouse Union members to do little work. After Breitbart broke the story on Thursday that union members of the ILWU planned to “walk out within the week,” the PMA employer group announced they can no longer continue to pay workers the premium pay...

Reflections on the days when a labor leader led our nation, on the great man's birthday... As the author writes this column, dozens of ships, each one laden with tens of thousands of truckloads of cargo, are sitting in the Pacific, parked for weeks at a time in a line, waiting for the longshoremen to stop their slowdown and get back to work. Modern containerships are measured in TEUs, a unit of measure specific to the transportation industry. The standard intermodal container (so-called because it can be transported by truck, rail, or ship, easily transferred from one to the next...

Belgium risks coming to a virtual standstill Monday as the biggest national strike for years grounds all flights, halts public transport and severs international train links in protest at the new government's austerity policies. The strike, which is the climax of a union movement that began last month with a huge march and violent protests in Brussels, will also likely close schools, businesses, factories and government offices. Unions say there is "no choice" but to go ahead with the strike after the right-of-centre government of Prime Minister Charles Michel pushed ahead with plans to save 11 billion euros ($13.7 billion)...

Organizers of a post-Thanksgiving protest on behalf of workers at a Walmart in downtown Washington, D.C. identified only one of the participants as actually working at that store. The admission underscores the fact that few Walmart workers have been involved in the protests. "Thirty striking workers from Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland took part in today’s protest, and Melinda Gaino, one of the striking workers, works at the H Street Store," said Julie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers union, which organized the event. Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg claimed the number was far...

But remember, voters… there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve got the entire situation under control. Nurses across the United States will stage protest rallies and strikes on Wednesday over what they say is insufficient protection for health workers dealing with patients possibly stricken with the deadly Ebola virus.The California-based nurses’ union, National Nurses United, says hospitals still lack enough hazardous materials suits which leave no skin exposed and sufficient powered air-purifying respirators to properly protect nurses from exposure.“Inadequate preparedness for Ebola symbolizes the erosion of patient care standards generally,” National Nurses United spokesman Charles Idelson said on Tuesday. So...

The country's largest nursing union is considering the possibility of picketing hospitals if they do not offer more extensive training on how to treat Ebola patient. Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro said in a conference call Wednesday that her group may take "pretty dramatic action for nurses across the country" that could "escalate into possible pickets at hospitals." "We have heard consistently across the country that there are no protocols in place," she said.

Thousands of Liberian healthcare workers are set to begin an indefinite strike at midnight on Monday which could undermine the country's effort to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus and leave several hundred patients without care. Health workers in the West African nation threatened to abandon hundreds of patients in Ebola treatment units, clinics and hospitals if demands for better incentives, working conditions and protective equipment were not met.

Plane Cleaners Strike At NY Terminal Over Ebola Fears. FoxNews 10/09/2014 Plane cleaners strike at New York airport terminal over Ebola fears Published October 09, 2014Associated Press NEW YORK – Airplane cabin cleaners have set up pickets outside a LaGuardia Airport terminal over health and safety issues.

Burial teams in Sierra Leone reportedly went on strike over lack of hazard pay this week, leaving the bodies of victims of the Ebola outbreak in the country's streets.

The White House said over the weekend it was ready to "take action" against any threat to America as it indicated serious consideration of U.S. military strikes against the Islamic State (IS, formerly called ISIS) in Syria, AFP reports. The Pentagon has warned of the dangers of IS and said operations against it in Syria may be needed, after weeks of air strikes have slowed the advance of the Sunni group in Iraq. The White House also said late Friday that air strikes in Syria may be necessary, as deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes agreed that "any strategy to...

A reporter for France 24, Gallagher Fenwick, was reporting from Gaza Friday and explaining how its residents' “food security” has been affected by the fighting there, when something unexpected happened. "This was a rocket,”, a rattled Fenwick told his audience, “this was a rocket, rockets were just shot right next to where we are standing, so I'm not going to stand here very long because usually there's a strike just moments after this occurs.” The occurrence proves Israel's contention that Hamas fires rockets from among civilians, using them as human shields and manipulating any civilian casualties that are thus incurred,...

Now front page news soon to be in the corporate obituary column. First the board has to go. Why? It does not know the grocery business let alone Market Basket's. It does not know its employees or its customers. Lets step over that bump in the road for now. They hired co-CEO's. That never works again pointing to the lace of management structure needed to run a 71 store chain. Let's step over that hurdle also. One of the co-CEO's is from Albertson which was torn apart by a strike 10 years or so ago on the West Coast. never...

As the calendar turns to July today, summer is fully intact, but the West Coast ports labor situation is still apparently chilly. With the deadline for labor contract negotiations between ILWU (the International Longshore Warehouse Union) and the Pacific Maritime Association arriving aft midnight last night, the current status remains in flux as neither party is publicly commenting on their talks, which have been ongoing since May 12. The ILWU represents nearly 14,000 port workers in California, Oregon, and Washington, with more than 40 percent of U.S. incoming container traffic moving through West Coast ports at the Ports of Los...

It started with a brief walkout at a few restaurants in New York City back in November 2012, but on Thursday the campaign against low pay at America's fast food restaurants morphed into a global push. By 9 a.m., the organizing group FastFoodGlobal.org reported that two McDonalds outlets in New York City and one in Boston were shut down. Hours ago, young workers in the Philippines staged a singing and dancing flash mob inside a downtown Manila McDonalds during the morning rush hour. Their choice of music was the song "Let It Go" from Frozen. When the news from abroad...

Greenville, Pitt County-Fast-food workers in Greenville held a strike on Thursday demanding a raise in pay. Strikers want a $15 an hour minimum wage. The fast-food employees from McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King also want to form a union without retaliation.