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(Bloomberg) — United Steelworkers members on strike at some oil refineries across the U.S. will remain off the job until they receive offers that match up with a national deal reached Thursday, a union representative said. USW members at Tesoro Corp.’s Carson oil refinery in California have been on strike since Feb. 1 and their return to work hinges on a local offer that the company has yet to make, Dave Campbell, secretary-treasurer of the USW local representing the plant, said. It’s unclear whether Tesoro will honor the “national pattern” agreement that union leaders tentatively accepted Thursday, he said. “Just because there has been a national pattern agreed to by our national policy committee doesn’t necessarily mean that the strike is over,” Campbell said. “We are hopeful it is, but the next move depends on what Tesoro offers, and we don’t yet know whether it will be acceptable.” Negotiations at individual refinery sites including Carson threaten to prolong a strike that began at seven U.S. oil refineries on Feb. 1 and has since expanded to cover 12 sites accounting for almost 20 percent of the nation’s refining capacity. The USW has members at plants that together represent 64 percent of U.S. fuel output. Tesoro said on its website late Thursday that it supports the national deal and was “prepared to properly conclude the local negotiations” that would bring its employees back to work. “The strike continues until a contract is ratified” by USW members, Wayne Ranick, a United Steelworkers spokesman in Pittsburgh, said by e-mail on Thursday.

Tentative Deal

The USW, representing 30,000 U.S. oil workers in all, struck a tentative four-year deal with Royal Dutch Shell, which was negotiating national terms on behalf of oil companies including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. The pact includes annual wage increases and maintains the cost-sharing ratio of the union’s current health-care plan, the union said in a statement on Thursday. It also contains language addressing the USW’s concerns about worker fatigue and contractors performing routine maintenance at oil refineries. The national agreement, which addresses wages, benefits and health and safety, serves as a foundation for companies and union locals to use when negotiating site-by-site contracts. Individual units may still strike if the terms they’re offered don’t mirror those in the national agreement or don’t address their concerns, Campbell said. The walkout began on Feb. 1 with Tesoro’s plants in Carson and Martinez, California, and Anacortes, Washington; Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky and Galveston Bay site in Texas; Shell’s Deer Park complex in Texas and LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston plant. It later expanded to include BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, and Toledo, Ohio, refineries, as well as Motiva Enterprises LLC’s Port Arthur, Texas, refinery and Convent and Norco sites in Louisiana. “It’s possible that action will continue,” Campbell said. “It would just continue on a local level rather than nationally.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco at ldoan6@bloomberg.net; Barbara Powell in Houston at bpowell4@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net Richard Stubbe