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Ballots are just starting to trickle into mail boxes in the far reaches of Alaska.  Don’t panic if you haven’t received one yet, but you should be looking for it any day now  if you live outside of Anchorage. Please carefully read the instructions before completing the ballot.  Complete and submit the ballot IMMEDIATELY, ballots have to be RECEIVED in Seattle by Feb 9th to count - not submitted, received.  And given that it’s taking the damn mail 2 weeks to get here you can p

Isn't it crazy how all of a sudden the company realized some of the changes they made ‘might not be the right move’ and how they'd ‘really like to fix this issue’ but ‘we can't because of the union drive’.  Isn't it wild how all of a sudden we've be reassigned management that understands these fields and is willing to listen to us rather than say stupid shit like “well sometimes you'll just have to consider other job options”.   What changed?  What changed from 2 months ago w

No really!  We're serious, the junk mail the company is sending to your house is very, very important. You should have received 3-5 stupid flyers at your house that look like the posters around camp. Why is the junk mail important?  Because that is the address the company provided to the  NLRB (aka the government 3rd party) for mailing out your ballot.   So if you are NOT receiving junkmail at home from the company it is VERY important that you email lily.fried@nlrb.gov , te

This was a Facebook comment on a post about our union drive- its well worth the read. "This is a long winded post but a worthwhile read about Unions and Prudhoe bay from someone who was directly involved in the 1994 Union vote on the WOA. After reading all the pro’s and cons on this thread I’ll give you my $.02 worth: I grew up in Fairbanks and got hired by Sohio/BP in 1979 as a Millwright/Machinist apprentice. Life couldn’t have been better, I loved my job and the people

Editor's comment in red, Commenter in Black . This is a comment that a reader left under this blog post (a Q&A with our USW Staff Organizer), we thought we'd post it as a separate blog post to get it the visibility it deserves. This guy gets it. This was very informative and helpful—thank you! I’ve heard a lot of good feedback from folks today about how appreciated this Q&A is. Off topic from the excellent Q&A above, but the constant propaganda being sent to our homes is a

Sounds like some people had some questions they wanted answered directly by a USW rep- while most of this info has been posted before, here are the answers directly from Derek Swanson, our is USW District 12 Staff Rep/Organizer. I am posting his answers verbatim, we texted him the list of questions and I literally cut and pasted this from his email reply. 1. Is there a USW pension? Yes, there is a USW Pension. However, it is not something that new members just join automati

But first:  If you’d rather just get back to watching cat videos on Youtube-  you’ll pay about $90 per paycheck in dues if you’re a Step 5, less if you’re a lower step . Good?  OK, here’s a whole playlist of cats singing for you, thanks for your time. All-rightly then, now that the short attention span peeps have departed let’s get into it-   Dues, as we’ve said before and before and before, are 1.45% of wages, but there is a set of formulas for “a Cap” at 2.8x your average

The HR people just can’t help themselves; when it’s not outright lies, it’s lies of omission.  Once again they’re going around claiming that we’re not taking an immediate paycut, they say “We’re going to let the market catch up.”   That’s simply not true.  You will make about $13,000 LESS next year than you should be making, even if you weren't a lead.   Of course they don’t want you to know this, and they’ve used deceptive slides to ‘dampen’ or hide this fact but it IS A FA

Ryan and every other boss might think USW isn’t the right union for us because their next president was part of some organization that opposed Willow or whatever but so what?  Trump used to give donations to the Clinton Foundation and even directly to Hillary Clinton , does that make him a Democrat?  The WOA guys, the Montney guys, and thousands of other oil workers don’t have a problem with USW. Of course the bosses don’t like USW, this is back to the castle analogy. The

While you’re sitting in the meeting with Ryan today I want to remember 2 things-   1)You’re listening to a guy who’s quarter BILLION dollar net worth has been created by your labor.  Just his family trust alone made $360,000 off stock dividends this last year….Yes, THAT stock dividend, the one they just increased by 8% last month.  2)He spent between $25,000 and $42,000 just in jet fuel  to fly here and back Why should you remember these numbers?  You’re going to hear about e

Here’s some texts I got this morning I’d like to share-  Hey, I know you’re taking some heat for the shot at Chris and Mike but I feel it’s completely justified.  In my opinion the company is walking a very fine line of an Unfair Labor Practices complaint just by sending them both up here to “talk” to us.  They can claim they’re neutral all they want but the fact is they were sent to the slope by the company, are living in company housing and being paid by the company to coll

How did we decide on USW as our representative union?  Were other unions considered? Can we delay the union vote for 6 months or a year and see if the company does better? How do we speak to actual union reps? So we’ve heard there are various forms of these questions floating around and while we have previously addressed them elsewhere we might as well take another swing at them here in as brief of answers as possible.  We selected USW over other unions for several reasons-  

Your Vote is Secret and Protected The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal government agency in charge of Union elections, conducts this election to ensure it's fair and confidential. Your vote is secret—no one will know how you voted. The Mail Ballot Process Receiving Your Ballot The NLRB will mail your ballot kit to your address on file*  The mailing will begin December 29.   The kit will include your ballot, envelopes, and instructions Follow the specific ins

12/10/25 Our union rep and ConocoPhillips’ lawyers have finished negotiating the details of the union vote. Ballots will be mailed to your home on Dec 29th and will be counted in the Seattle NLRB office on Feb 9th. We know that some of you are concerned that your address on file (as of Nov. 30th) is not where you will be living in January.   In the next few days we will send you detailed instructions on how to get a ballot sent to your location.  Please be patient.

Crazy how interested the bosses have suddenly been in our jobs, huh?  I don’t mean our direct supervisors, I’m talking about the Superintendents, OIMs and VPs. All of a sudden they’re concerned about our work loads and want to know what they can do to make our work flow better, want to know where they can spend money to make things easier, faster, safer or more efficient. Wow!  They care!    Don’t fall for it.  They care because they’ve realized they’re losing control- they c

I'm not going to lie, I was giddy with excitement when I heard they put a website up. I couldn't wait to get it loaded and have a look at what kind of anti-union stuff the company had come up with. We were all geared up to counter attack, we had all sorts of subject matter experts on standby but, uh, yeah... not really much new to work with. Alas, once again, CPAI has seriously disappointed me- I don't know why I keep expecting more from them, I guess it's because they're a m

From a reader: "How about that, we fire a bunch of the knowledge in the field and today we post the operator position for 2026. My question for the union is. If these folks get hired after the union is ratified will they be included. Will the union reps be in the interview process. If one of the guys that got RIF’d wants to re apply is that even possible.  Now a question about pay. Rumors are going around that the new pay structure is in effect. I personally know guys that wo