Announcements

12/1/25 ConocoPhillips employees located in the 3 North Slope oil fields operated by ConocoPhillips Alaska have taken the first steps to unionize after cuts to employee headcounts and wage reductions. We’ve been working in secret for months to collect signatures from all our co-workers in order to force ConocoPhillips to hold a union vote. There’s a lot of fear of company retaliation, but there’s also a lot of passion and support from fellow employees around this effort.

 

ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc (CPAI) recently re-organized the workforce, cut staff and removed key positions which increased the workload on the remaining employees. This has led many of us to question CPAI’s commitment to safety. We knew there was going to be some company wide staff reductions, that was no surprise. The company has bought a few other big oil companies since 2021 like Concho Resources and Marathon Oil so undoubtedly there was some overlap in office staff and some streamlining that could be done, but the hit we took here on the North Slope was shocking. We were already short staffed in a number of key areas, and now they’ve eliminated some of the positions that had the most experienced guys. These were the guys with 20 years of knowledge who saw problems before they happened and really kept us out of trouble. These ‘lead’ positions are somewhat like a harbor pilot for shipping; they aren’t the captains of the ship, but they are the local experts that keep your ship from ending up on a reef in shallow water. Removing them really exposes us to a lot of unknown hazards. ConocoPhillips did increase the number of supervisors but this hasn’t done much to quell concerns- It’s not the same, supervisors come and go- most hold the position for just a few years then move on, and often come from other fields. It’s not the same as a local expert.

 

ConocoPhillips keeps talking about its commitment to Alaska and its commitment to safety, but at the same time bringing in supervisors from fields in Texas with no arctic experience and increasing the workload on the remaining employees. There are guys in the field that are now covering the same amount of work area as 3 guys were just a year ago. It’s crazy really; this doesn’t put us in a position to respond to leaks, spills or processes issues.

 

There’s already been a few incidents in the field within the last year that have made workers’ question ConocoPhillips commitment to safety. Management seems to always favor the ‘fast way’ or the ‘cheap way’ over the ‘best way’, regardless of concerns being raised by experienced employees.

 

Additionally, we're unhappy about recent pay changes. While ConocoPhillips didn’t directly cut existing employees' hourly pay rate, they did alter how pay timing will be work- which affects the number of overtime hours an employee receives. The timing on when our work week clock resets is very important- Alaska Labor laws dictate that any hours over 40 in a work week count as overtime pay, which pays at 1.5 times the stated wage. ConocoPhillips just decided to ‘move’ when that clock ‘resets’, which reduces our number of hours which count towards OT. They also scrapped all sorts of “premium” pays, which were basically small temporary pay bumps for taking on tasks like coordinating major projects or training new employees in addition to our normal workload. These are all small hits, but added all together it’s taking substantial money out of working guys’ paychecks.

 

But the changes don’t stop there, they’ve announced they’re going to let our wages stagnant until inflation has significantly reduced them. It’s strange, they’re claiming we’re overpaid by something like 22-25%, but when you compare our wages and benefits to the other North Slope Operators our pay is exactly aligned with theirs. There are small differences between the companies, some pay higher bonuses compared to higher hourly wages or different 401K matching schemes but in general all the pay packages were very closely aligned- but now ConocoPhillips is telling us they’re going to trim our wages by 20-25% over the next few years by withholding raises- that really stings when inflation is making every grocery bill and electric bill dig a little deeper into our pockets.

 

But probably the most troubling sign of what lies ahead is the starting wages for new ConocoPhillips hourly employees: Starting pay is now 25% lower than it was 2 months ago. This is upsetting for a bunch of reasons- but most importantly these are some of the cornerstone jobs in our state. Almost all the other hourly jobs in the Alaska oil and gas industry use these particular jobs as their bench marks. This almost guarantees wages for everyone from scaffold workers to heavy equipment operators will slide as well. This steals millions of dollars out of working Alaskans’ pockets.

 

ConocoPhillips ran really public campaigns just a few years ago talking about how much they value Alaskan workers and how much they contribute to the local economy. They really leaned hard on this idea as they drummed up support for the legal approvals they need for their Willow project. But now that they have the green light for the project suddenly all the good paying jobs are starting to evaporate.

 

What is ConocoPhillips motivation for this? They stated “shareholder value” and say they needed to cut costs in order to have cash for funding the Willow project. But as you saw they increased the dividend paid on company stock, and they are also buying back $20 billion in company stock. They’re paying Wall Street with money taken right out of Alaskan workers pockets and we won’t stand for it. We’ve tried really hard to get management to listen to our concerns about staffing levels and pay but at this point it’s clear that they don’t value our voices. About 2 months ago we made the decision to contact the United Steelworkers Union because that’s our only defense against these corporate bean counter types that value money over our lives or livelihoods.