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Breaking news!  ConocoPhillips says USW is difficult to work with, shocking isn’t it? That’s like asking a medieval warlord what their opinion is of castles. You- “Do you like castles?”  Warlord-  “I hate them, they make things difficult.”   You- “ Well dear warlord, can you elaborate a little bit more, it seems like castles would provide a lot of defense.” Warlord-  “Yeah!  That's the problem!  Every time I want to go slaughter villagers they run into that damn castle-  it's

Reason number 83 for needing a Union-  “At Will Employment”  Have a look at your new hire paperwork- you will notice a phase there “At Will Employment”; you’ll see that same phase listed in a few other places too.  What, exactly, does that phase mean?  In short, the company can ‘release’ you for any reason, at any time, and you have no recourse.  I know the counter-argument is “yeah, but they don’t do that. As long as I’ve been here they’ve never fired anyone without cause, o

Here’s a few questions we sent our USW rep: “There’s some concerns for us [maintenance guys] since the union that was chosen largely is operations focused. Sounds like there are better unions out there that focus/ protect maintenance better than USW. Also, sounds like there are a handful of people over here that worked for USW at some point and they said as a whole were not impressed with them. " Response from USW:  On the first point, it’s simply not accurate.  Almost every

Here's a fun email that was submitted to the website- I was talking things over with a coworker, he's on the fence about the union stuff. He agrees we're getting screwed and is in favor of a union at this point but not by much. I asked him what it would take for the company to win him back. Him- "Oh, I don't know, I liked the idea of work force engagement but they kind of screwed us on that one. I don't think a simple promise would be enough." I pushed him- "Yeah, but what w

Well, its official, if you hadn't guessed it already, we've contacted the NLRB and our petition has been accepted- but you probably already knew that. The card drive was amazing, truly amazing. Now our next task is at hand:  You need to work, play, sleep and eat... that's it. There will be another  time for action and bravery, but now is not that time.  Keep motivated in your job, stay healthy, and enjoy Thanksgiving with your families- either your family at home or with yo

Management seems to know all about inflation, except when it comes to our wages.  Here’s some fun quotes from the 2025 3rd Quarter Earnings New Release: https://static.conocophillips.com/files/resources/3q25_earnings_release.pdf Both from page 2: Quarterly dividend ConocoPhillips raised the fourth-quarter ordinary dividend by 8% to $0.84 per share, payable Dec. 1, 2025, to stockholders of record at the close of business on Nov. 17, 2025.  Major projects update At the Willow p

We've had a few email inquiries wondering what's up? Why no posts? Well, a few reasons I guess... Firstly- a man's gotta sleep! But even in my sleep I dream of ways to ruin management's day, so that's what we've been up to.... It seems like our bosses got send a few emails that resulted in some rather hastily convened meetings at the end of this week..... Oops. We might have ruined some of the bosses' holiday plans- oh well. We'll discuss those emails more later next week

Let’s talk about the good ole days.   The days when pensions, a year's worth of short term disability, crab legs and stellar wages made Kuparuk a great place to work.  Many of you won’t remember those times but some of us do!  You got a cool trinket when we hit major milestones like 1 billion barrels of total production or the 30 year anniversary of the field.  The field managers used to sit down and have dinner with regular operators and tell hunting stories, you even got a

Yep, they might.  But I’d bet a paycheck that Kuparuk will be on the auction block regardless of a union status by 2029.  The asset is over 40 years old, when it was designed the engineering criteria was “30 year life”.  If you don’t believe me go dig up old Sterns Catalytic engineering drawings.  The field is well past its prime and running with equipment that’s tired as hell. How long will ConocoPhillips want to hold a liability? Probably the only reason they didn’t sell Ku

We’ll keep this one short because we’ve got a lot going on behind the scenes.  Here’s two quick examples from the very recent past how USW (the union we’re signing with) helped protect guys exactly like us: Now keep in mind-  these aren’t random examples of “great union wins” cherry-picked  from a google search-  one example is from our North Slope neighbors, WOA, who are represented by the same union we’re dealing with.  And the second example is from a ConocoPhillips owned

Once again, this is going to be a little vague- not because we want to keep you  in the dark, but because we must  keep management in the dark… they happen to be dedicated subscribers to this blog as well.  (Which may not exactly be legal under Section 7 & 8 of the NLRA, but when has a few laws ever stood in their way?)   So you signed, your buddies signed [or said they did], and now you want to know when ConocoPhillips will bend at the knee and buy us all puppies.  The answe

Obviously the main reason we’re willing to work long hours in a harsh environment hundreds or thousands of miles away from our loved ones is for the money.  Full stop.  But I think we would all agree it’s only a price worth paying if we’re sure we get to leave the slope in as good of shape as we showed up (or slightly fatter).  All joking aside, safety is really our day to day number one priority- afterall it’s our skin that will get burnt, our lungs destroyed and our backs b

The short/easy answer is "Probably. We will fight for our previous wages and benefits."  But that's not a complete answer. Obviously the "complete" answer is "it's all what we bargain for and we can't see into the future, but we'll have a hell of a lot of leverage as a unit." To expand on this answer, I reached out to our USW contact for some more details and a few examples from their very recent past, have a read: "Hi WorkersFirst,   This is a loaded question and not easy

When is the right time to unionize? I think this is, unfortunately, a question that almost every workplace has to learn the hard way.  Obviously unionization drives tend to happen when things have gone to shit- wages cut, positions eliminated, benefits hacked to the bone.  But really, once that happens you’ve waited too long, now you have a hole to climb out of.  I think the BEST time to unionize is before things fall apart.  Think of unionization like rain gear- you want you

You all saw the email that Pat put out, or maybe not if you're offshift, but it's basically identical to the one Ed sweet talked us with last year- "we're family, we want to work this out together, we don't want you to lose your voice"....blah, blah, blah, you remember the one, and our response . So we discussed a few of the attached FAQ's in another blog post , but let's just dig in a little deeper into the rest of the FAQs. For the sake of brevity, click here to read 'the

Here's some tough but fair questions someone submitted to the website. We reached out to USW to get the answers straight from the horse's mouth. Settle in and have a read, there's details here:  I have a few questions: 1. What are the political ties of the USW? I don’t want part of my dues going to pay for some whacko libtard’s campaign or be told which political party have to vote for . Answer: The USW doesn’t support one political party over the other. Our Union has a very

It feels a little anti-climactic doesn’t it?  You rage-signed the card and punched send or you talked up the courage, took a deep breath, then tapped ‘signed’ and now….nothing.   No fireworks, no parades, no ConocoPhillips gestapo banging on your door….. just silence.  Hey!  Don’t fret, the wheels of progress grind on but it’s just not all in the open. Just like how SAP notifications take forever to grind their way through the system, our cards are the same way.... damn plann

Dear Pat,     Thank you for that really touching and heartfelt email.  It's great to see you stepping up to address some of our concerns.  I guess Ed was too chicken to do it himself this time.  In regards to your thoughtful letter we also have a few comments:    You mentioned “We want to emphasize how important our cooperative relationship is to us” .  Yes, we saw how you emphasized that when you RIF'd anyone that voiced any concerns over the sick time and workday changes. 

5 days in and we're doing spectacular. There are still rumors going around that 'the numbers aren't good' but that's completely false. Ask them what the numbers actually are- do they have an answer for you? No, of course they don't, because they heard from someone that heard from someone that heard from someone.... they're talking out their ass. These are probably the same illiterate retards that are claiming the company is going to drop our pay by 40% if we try to go

"Who actually knows if I sign an Authorization Card? How do I know the company won't find out?" That's a great question- and I have a simple answer for you. The only people who will ever see the cards/names are: Our assigned USW recruiter get an update when someone signs 2. One Technician in USW HQ, the same person who made the cards. 3. The NLRB agent when we send them into the NLRB to file for the election That's it. You will notice that conocophillips management is not