On this day in labor history the year was 2005.
That was the day 15 workers were killed and another 170 were seriously injured in an explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas.
Workers were re-starting a unit down for repairs.
As they filled a tower with gasoline, it overflowed, sending a geyser into the air.
The igniting hydrogen vapor cloud created a chain of explosions that destroyed the nearby trailers, housing temporary contract workers.
The explosion shed light on many key problems throughout the industry: the increasing use of contract workers, safety short cuts and qualitative lack of industrial process controls.
A 2007 Chemical Safety Board report found that “years of cost-cutting, poor worker training and a safety culture with “serious deficiencies” left the plant ‘vulnerable to catastrophe,’ but company leaders ignored the warning signs.”
OSHA fined BP $21.3 million and more, but ultimately settled for $13 million.
For years, the catastrophe was studied closely to eliminate the hazards.
But 10 years later, a 2015 joint investigative series by The Texas Tribune and Houston Chronicle found that “there is little evidence that the 15 lives lost on that March day bought much of anything: The death toll at U.S. refineries has barely slowed… At least 64 energy company employees and contractors were killed in the decade before the blast. At least 58 have died in the 10 years since…
The Department of Energy has tracked nearly 350 fires at refineries in the last eight years — almost one every week.
Refinery workers have gone on strike demanding, among other issues, an increased emphasis on safety.”
For the United Steelworkers, it is a daily fight to implement the critical safety actions the union developed in the aftermath of the blast.
March 13 - Ending Jim Crow on the Job
March 12 - OSHA Safety Incentives
March 11 - Raising Conditions for an Industry
March 10 - Radium Girls
March 9 - Striking the Mines
March 8 - IBEW Strikes to Win
March 7 - Work Faster! Work Faster!
March 6 - International Unemployed Day
March 5 -Lordstown Syndrome
March 4 - Mismanagement Kills an Airline
March 3 - Wildcat Strikes Hit Chrysler and Briggs
March 2 - Greyhound Bus Strike Begins
March 1 - The Hoover Dam Goes Public
February 28 - Fighting for Equal Pay
February 27 - The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down
February 26 - The Battle at Bethlehem
February 25 - The Paterson Silk Strike Begins
February 24 - Muller v Oregon Decided
February 23 - Black Workers Lead Historic Strike at UNC
February 22 - Labelling Teachers as Terrorists
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