Lets talk about safety-

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 broken if things go wrong. 

Of course management has always preached “Safety is our number one priority”, but I challenge you to find a co-worker that doesn’t have a story of management pushing to ‘cut corners’ over their concerns when doing the right thing would have cost ‘too much’ or taken ‘too much time’.  

We’ve all been in those meetings where our local management listens to our concerns with grave faces, nods in agreement, busily scribbles down notes and promises us “I am going to elevate this, I completely understand why you are concerned and we’re going to find a way to make this right.”  You feel good! You did your job, you saw a safety concern, you brought it up and proposed a solution, management listened!.... So that problem got fixed, right?  RIGHT?

   You know the answer here.  Our local leaders are, for the most part, very caring genuine guys who want to do the right thing.  They probably did their very best to elevate the topic, but that’s to just one step above them, to a guy who cares less because they see you less, then maybe it got elevated to one level above him- to someone that doesn’t know your name, doesn’t understand your job and views “risk” as single line item on their accounting log.  To them- the “risk” of drilling a failed well and the “risk” of burning you to death is a very very simple formula, and it has this $ symbol in front of it.  When they say “we’re willing to take more risk.” part of that risk is your skin, not theirs.  

This is where the Union comes in:  

Once a Union is ratified we get to form a health and safety committee that meets with high level bosses about our concerns, not our well meaning but toothless supervisors.  We get a chance to bring our legitimate safety grievances to a very high level and look them in the eyes when we explain the issues, and it’s in writing. This makes it 1000x harder for Big Boss to pull the “if only I knew there was a problem I would have immediately taken steps”... The same bullshit they pull after EVERY accident and mishap. You’ve seen it, you’ve lived it, maybe you still have the scars from it.  

Unionization isn’t just about the money, or the job security, its about your voice being heard.  And right now, Pat and Ed don’t have a clue how concerned we are about vessels that are decades overdue for internal inspections or shortcuts that have been taken in order to keep TARs short, or headcount cuts that make emergency responses impossible or sleep schedules that keep getting messed with because they don’t have to hear us.  A union changes that.  A union is a voice, a union is safety.