Exxon Noble - Guyana Quarantine

I have first hand knowledge of the conditions at Exxon Mobil - Guyana Quarantine at the Sheraton in Houston.

You spend 22 hours a day locked up in your hotel room. You get 3-45 minute breaks a day in a cigarette butt littered courtyard. Even a 5 star hotel room is a prison cell when you’re not allowed the freedom to leave it. Crappy food slopped into styrofoam cartons and guards sitting at the end of the hall to make sure you don’t leave your cell…Room. Ordering take out is strictly prohibited. At break time you have to line up outside your cell door with mask, gloves, and hi vis vest where you are marched down as many as 7 floors to the “Courtyard “ (Elevators are prohibited) I guess the Hi Vis Vest is so you don’t try to make a run for it during “yard time”. Don’t even think about complaining because you will be escorted off the property immediately. “Insubordination” is not tolerated. They encourage the use of social media to stay in contact with family and friends but taking pictures and video of the facility is strictly prohibited. I wonder why? All this, 150 dollars a day, and a lying piece of shit used car salesman as a manager. At least prisoners get to exercise and congregate with each other.

I’m not necessarily a union supporter but if there was ever a time for them to try another push, now would be probably be a good time. People are pissed and tired of getting screwed. Conditions sure seem to get a lot better when the unions are prowling around Fourchon.

Chouest is taking advantage of the situation because a lot of guys have been out of work for months, they know we don’t have any choice but to take the pittance they offer, and they think we should all be grateful to them for the job. It’s unfortunate that we can’t stick together as mariners and force them to treat us better. But instead we always have some worm willing to back stab his own father for a chance to climb the ladder. We need to remember without the boat crews they have no company.

Chouest is NOT the same company I signed up with many years ago. I think Mr Edison would be extremely disappointed in how his children and grandchildren treat their “most valuable assets”

1 Like

JB1, there is a reason the unions are around. Gulf guys have more than often were deterred from that direction by corporate types for a reason. Representation in united numbers is a valued opportunity to have right now, something your employers fought against.

Unions are socialist, corporate representation and tax havens are free market democratic capitalism, all US citizens know that.
If Exxon and Noble have the same contract as most others I’ve seen in the last 20+ years Exxon is covering the cost and paying for this. It also would not be the first time I have seen a contracting company take the full pay the oil company is paying, pay the crew less and pocket the difference. It is especially would not surprise me if Noble and or Chouest did that. Keeping or retaining people has never been a high priority as long as they can find enough bodies to man the vessels and that is certainly not a problem at this time.

Here we go again. It is in the unions best interest to represent the members in unison and numbers., Do their best to retain dues paying members.,and try their best to keep them employed as the opportunities present themselves. Those very items you mention are of heightened interest. Times are hard perhaps, but much harder without representation within the industry with fractured support. Make your own bed, but don’t bitch later if a bed bug bit you.

If I had to choose between sitting in a union hall in Fourchon, Houma or Morgan City paying for my own hotel & food, not making a penny for months to catch a job then going to a crappy prison hotel for 2 weeks at full pay OR going directly to a prison hotel for reduced pay for 2 weeks then to Guyana for full pay I would choose the later. I worked for 2+/- bayou companies & I would guess that the majority Cajun workforce would follow suite behind the Northeast & West Coast labor forces by having union halls locally to keep outsiders to a minimum. For me, it was hard enough to work for the GoM Cajun companies & I wouldn’t even bothered if I had to go through a GoM Cajun filter union to get a job. Recently on a long flight I finally watched the 3 hr long “Irishman” movie. As a former member of Local 333 in NY I found every aspect of that movie concerning unions believable.

I would never vote to break a union & I don’t think I would ever vote to form one either. Just play the cards delt, if you think the deck is stacked then go to another table. Somebody will take your seat as soon as you stand up.

3 Likes

Chouest is the same company. The market conditions it operates under are radically different. The purpose of the company is to return cash to the owners. If the union companies were non-union they would do the same thing to maximize profits. The problem is they can’t. I’m not a union person, but i would say just the presence of the union keeps things from happening even if the union does nothing.

1 Like

Explain please.

I understand where Oakley23 is coming from. Some of course will disagree, but when a union is lurking or trying to organize
, the wages mysteriously are a bit better just to keep them out. GOM has been a tough nut to crack, for many reasons. Nothing new here.

1 Like

True. Wages go up but no pension benefits and minimal health or other benefits. Chouest screwed over their guys 401K matching contributions years ago. I grew up in the anti-union south and the plantation management system there. It’s part of the culture.
Tough nut to crack? That’s an understatement.

In my attempt to be polite, yes, a giant understatement.

1 Like

The police and fire unions in NY make 333 look like kindergarten class at recess.

my point is that the mariner is a number on the income statement in the OPEX category that reduces operating/net income and cash flow. The mission (or really legal obligation) of management is to maximize shareholder value. Putting that into practice looks different under changing market conditions. 2014 vs 2020. GoM mariners were treated better in 2014 not because of the kindness or values of chouest or others but because of favorable economic conditions. the mere presence of a union limits the management of doing whatever they like without someone talking back.

also anyone whos been listening to the conference calls knows that these companies are desperately trying to preserve liquid balance sheets, drawing down credit facilities, slashing costs, etc. I know that even the recruiter i was trying to work with from Noble before is laid off

Those unstable market conditions over and over combined with anti-union presence would not be desirable to organize either way.

If the union wanted to move in and “help” the destitute mariners in the GoM, they could’ve came in anytime between 2015 to 2018 and had people signing up in droves. The push would’ve only needed 1/100th the effort they did in the early 00’s and again in the early 10’s. A lot of things were handled poorly buy the owners during the big downturn. A lot of people were rightly disgruntled.

The unions didn’t move in because;

  1. The money wasn’t immediately there for them to squeeze out.
  2. They were too stupid, fat or lazy to see the window.

Take your pick.

2 Likes

Why wait for a union to “move in”? I just searched for “how to organize a union” and this is the first hit:

https://ucommblog.com/section/good-jobs-now/steps-how-organize-union

1 Like

The fundamental element of the union is not the hall, it’s the contract. There is no requirement that the hiring hall system be used.

Even with the union hall system, in practice nobody sits in the hall for months. If shipping is slow and a mariner’s card is not competitive they just don’t come to job call till it is.

On this forum I read a few threads where guys claimed to sit in the halls for months trying to get their foot in the industry after graduation. In the below link about MM&P a frequent commenter who is a supporter of MM&P advises to live close to a hall to get on with them. In that thread you also bring up the fact the people who work for the union hall aren’t the best people to ask for help because it isn’t in their best to help everyone & only members of the club. I’m not going to argue “what ifs?” but in my opinion I don’t think working for a Fourchon, Houma or New Orleans based union would be that fun. The bayou/GoM companies would probably insist a union office be local & it would obviously be local residents who worked the Union office because nobody is moving there. The east & west coasts have crony unions & it could be expected the bayou/GoM guys would have the same.

Also, someone mentioned that the '15 oil crunch was probably the best chance for AFL/CIO to expand their business model into the GoM which might be true but the GoM guys I knows who stayed employed aren’t union type guys. The ones who might of been inclined to unionize were laid off pretty quick I guess? Also, non-union companies probably didn’t lay off by seniority but on merit, employee profitability & other factors. Mariners who made the cut were just happy to have a job & were worried that their companies were going to go belly up with some doing just that. IMO, a bunch of Cajun union crony middle men wouldn’t made anything any better except maybe for a select few Cajun croney union members in '15 in the GoM. Working in the GoM was bad enough for me. If I had to go through an additional layer of coonasses at a union hall to get a paycheck I wouldn’t of bothered. I sure the hell wouldn’t of stayed in a trailer on stilts bayou union hall all day praying for a job.

1 Like

It’s all about the contract. If the members don’t want a hall system don’t negotiate to create one. If the companies insist on using a hiring hall don’t agree to the contract.

True, and that is what the the GoM mariners & the majority of the US labor force is doing. If they don’t like the terms of employment they can refuse the job, try to renegotiate with their employer or bare through it. Whatever they choose. Pretty simple. Don’t need a bayou/GoM middleman union for that, unless they vote one in?

Assuming that true it doesn’t change the fact that both "why don’t the unions save us’ and “but I don’t want to sit for months in a hall” are both still invalid reasons not to organize.

1 Like