WORKING

FOR
OIL
COMPARATIVE
SOCIAL HISTORIES
OF LABOR IN
THE GLOBAL OIL
INDUSTRY

Touraj Atabaki,
Elisabetta Bini
and Kaveh Ehsani
 Working for Oil

“It is astonishing how little is said currently about those millions of people who toil
for oil—the colossal industry that anchors the whole of the global political
economy. This important volume gives a new life to the field by bringing together
valuable studies from different regions of the world. It is a must-read for those who
want to understand the changing fortune of life and labor in the world’s most
strategic energy sector.”
—Asef Bayat, Professor of Sociology and Bastian Professor of Global Studies at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“Working for Oil offers a valuable compendium of social relations across the most
vital industry of the twentieth century. Stretching from Iran to Mexico and the U.S.
Gulf Coast to Norway and Siberia, these studies highlight both the integrating
discipline of the capitalist marketplace and the extraordinary diversity with which
workers and their communities have adapted to a technological imperative.”
—Leon Fink, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Illinois
in Chicago, and the editor of the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class
History of the Americas

“While the literature on the petroleum industry is vast, research about oil workers is
anything but. This collection addresses that gap, bringing together scholarship
about labor from all oil regions of the world. The global and multidisciplinary
approach is rich and complex, setting a high standard for future scholars and
inviting them to follow suit.”
—Myrna Santiago, Professor of History at the Saint Mary’s College of California

“By attending to the complex role played by workers in the fossil fuel industries,
this splendid book fills a major gap in contemporary analyses of the oil industry. The
essays included in Working for Oil examine labor at important moments in the
history of oil and at key sites around the world, while introducing us to the distinct
experiences of organized labor, women, and migrant workers. Superbly researched,
this collection promises to reshape debates and discussions in both labor studies and
energy studies for years to come. Essential.”
—Imre Szeman, Professor of English and Canada Research Chair of Cultural
Studies at University of Alberta, and co-director of the Petrocultures Research Group
“Without oil the world economy would grind to a halt. Petroleum not only fuels
cars and airplanes, it is also used to produce plastics, fertilizers, and cosmetics. We
all know about the multinational corporations dominating the oil market, but we
never hear much about the people who actually do the work, and produce the
world’s major commercial energy source. The present volume offers a completely
new perspective. It is a pioneering exploration of the oil proletariat, covering the
history of major production sites on five continents, and the daily lives and struggles
of oil workers in these places. The book is indispensable reading for all those
interested in the global history of labor.”
—Marcel van der Linden, Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social
History, Amsterdam

“There is no convincing answer to the question why historians of the oil industry
have ignored its workers nor why working class historians have ignored the oil
sector, but this collection clarifies why both kinds of histories are the worse for it.
Working for Oil is a game changer.”
—Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
 Touraj Atabaki Elisabetta Bini
•

Kaveh Ehsani
Editors

Working for Oil

Comparative Social Histories of Labor
in the Global Oil Industry
Editors
Touraj Atabaki Kaveh Ehsani
International Institute for Social DePaul University
History Chicago, IL, USA
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Elisabetta Bini
University of Naples
Federico II
Naples, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-56444-9 ISBN 978-3-319-56445-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938146

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 CONTENTS

Introduction 1
Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, and Kaveh Ehsani

Disappearing the Workers: How Labor in the Oil

Complex Has Been Made Invisible 11
Kaveh Ehsani

Part I The Political Life of Oil

The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in

Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State,
1918–1938 37
Stefano Tijerina

Fluid History: Oil Workers and the Iranian Revolution 69

Peyman Jafari

Norwegian Oil Workers: From Rebels to Parters in the

Tripartite System 99
Helge Ryggvik

The Role of Labor in Transforming Nigerian Oil Politics 131

Andrew Lawrence
v
vi CONTENTS

The End of “The Good Fight”? Organized Labor and the

Petro-nation During the Neoliberalization of the Oil Industry
in Ecuador 159
Gabriela Valdivia and Marcela Benavides

Part II The Productive Life of Oil

Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry

1908–1951 189
Touraj Atabaki

Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labor

in US Gulf Coast Oil Refining 227
Tyler Priest

White-Collar Wildcatters and Wildcat Strikes: Oil Experts,

Global Contracts, and the Transformation of Labor in
Postwar Houston 257
Betsy A. Beasley

Heroic “Black Gold”? Working for Oil and Gas in the

Western Siberian Oil and Gas Complex of the 1960–1970s 285
Dunja Krempin

Part III The Social and Urban Life of Oil

Building an Oil Empire: Labor and Gender Relations in

American Company Towns in Libya, 1950s–1970s 313
Elisabetta Bini

Tapline, Welfare Capitalism, and Mass Mobilization in

Lebanon, 1950–1964 337
Zachary Davis Cuyler
 CONTENTS vii

“Oil Is Our Wet Nurse”: Oil Production and Munayshilar

(Oil Workers) in Soviet Kazakhstan 369
Saulesh Yessenova

Doubly Invisible: Women’s Labor in the US Gulf of Mexico

Offshore Oil and Gas Industry 399
Diane E. Austin

Index 423
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fluid History: Oil Workers and the Iranian Revolution

Fig. 1 Number of workers in the Iranian oil industry. 71
Fig. 2 Oil production in million b/d, August 1978–January 1979. 75
Picture 1 Iranians queuing for fuel in Tehran. The small print Persian
text reads: “Queues that are few kilometres long emerged in
the streets for gasoline and kerosene. Bagh-e Shah gas station,
Sepah Street.” The large print states: “Shortage of kerosene,
gasoline, and diesel.” 76
The Role of Labor in Transforming Nigerian Oil Politics
Chart 1 Nigerian oil revenues as a percentage of GDP. 133
The End of “The Good Fight”? Organized Labor and the
Petro-nation During the Neoliberalization of the Oil Industry
in Ecuador
Fig. 1 “The Wedding of the Year.” 160
Fig. 2 President Correa smells “something fishy” going on in
Petroecuador. Caricature by Asdrúbal de la Torre, Diario Hoy
(2010, p. 5). 176

ix
x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry 1908–1951

Fig. 1 Oil fields and refinery 1928. 190
Fig. 2 Indian employment in the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company 1910–1950. 193
Fig. 3 Construction of the Gach-qaraguli (Gachsaran) Road, 1909. 194
Fig. 4 Power Station, Abadan Refinery, 1921. 200
Fig. 5 Map of Abadan in 1926, showing the new suburbs built in the
1920s and 1930s. 206
Fig. 6 Foundry, Abadan, 1921. 211
Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labor in US Gulf Coast
Oil Refining
Fig. 1 Catalytic Cracking Units, Standard Oil of New Jersey
Baytown Refinery, 1946. 228
Fig. 2 Cover art, Harvey O’Connor, History of Oil Workers
International Union-CIO (Denver, CO: Oil Workers
International Union, 1950). 236
Fig. 3 Cat Cracker Control Room, Shell Oil Deer Park Refinery. 242
Fig. 4 OCAW Local 4-367 Picketers, Shell Oil 1962 Strike. 247
“Oil Is Our Wet Nurse”: Oil Production and Munayshilar
(Oil Workers) in Soviet Kazakhstan
Fig. 1 1955. Masters of subsurface well repair K. Zhusupov (left) and
A. Karzhauov (right), the Kulsary oil field. Courtesy of the
Aldongar Public Foundation for Cultural Development,
Almaty. 377
Fig. 2 1943. Operator K. Begembetova, the Shubarduk oil field.
Courtesy of the Aldongar Public Foundation for Cultural
Development, Almaty. 378
Fig. 3 Bagit Kulbaev and his wife, Svetlana Kulbaeva, in 2011. All
five of their children—three daughters and two sons—work in
Kazakhstan’s oil industry. 379
Fig. 4 Sarakamis (2004). One of the last families to leave Sarakamis,
shown here with visitors from Kulsary. 382
 Introduction

Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, and Kaveh Ehsani

This book brings together the works of scholars who situate oil workers
and the social, political, economic, spatial, and cultural dimensions
of labor relations at the center of their analysis. The contributions
are cross-disciplinary, and based on historical archival investigation, or
anthropological and sociological field research. While the role of oil
workers and class and labor relations in the global oil industry was a major
focus of scholarly attention during much of the twentieth century,1 the
period since the 1980s has witnessed a marked decline of interest in the
topic, to the extent that at present the analysis of the vital role of labor in all
aspects of the global oil complex is either overlooked, or dismissed as of
little significance. The contributors to this volume aim to reopen this

T. Atabaki (&)
International Institute for Social History, Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
E. Bini
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
K. Ehsani
DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 1

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_1
2 T. ATABAKI ET AL.

important but neglected dimension of the social history of oil, by shedding

light on the historical and contemporary experiences of people working in a
wide range of jobs to produce oil and its byproducts in a number of major
petroleum-producing regions that include Latin America, the Middle East,
Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe, the United States, and Africa.
When the editors began to conceptualize this volume, they quickly
realized how little attention was being paid to the role of labor relations in
the global oil complex, despite the fact that oil and its byproducts underpin
the entire global political economy. Our invitation to a number of estab-
lished scholars in various disciplines to contribute to this volume soon
revealed the extent to which the topic had fallen out of favor. This col-
lection aims to help reignite interest in the analysis of the various
dimensions of labor in the global oil industry by adopting a number of
different approaches.
First, the essays offer a multi-scalar approach to their subject matter, by
intersecting various geographic scales of analysis—local, regional, national,
and transnational. The contributions address the study of a wide range of
those working in the global oil industry, including women, migrant
laborers, and expatriates who move constantly between various sites, as
well as the political and strategic impact that institutions and political actors
have had on labor dynamics at local production sites. The historical con-
texts of shifting international geopolitics and the variegated logics of
national governments, and national and multinational oil companies have
affected local labor relations differently. At the same time, changes in labor
relations at the local level have had important consequences on oil policies
internationally. As this collection shows, the story of oil politics in several
producing regions went hand in hand with that of labor policies in
countries such as the United States. As oil workers organized collective
forms of resistance, firms moved abroad and established their presence in
areas with less stringent labor regulations, using a range of management
tactics aimed at undermining labor activism. With the new wave of
nationalization of oil in many countries in the 1970s, it became more
difficult for the major international oil companies to move around as freely
as they had from the 1920s onwards.
As a result, the oil industries of advanced economies had to become
more aggressively competitive in search of access to reserves and market
shares. They had to focus more rigorously on balance sheets, paying divi-
dends, and control costs, while accelerating the introduction of new tech-
nologies. These technical advances both facilitated extraction from more
 INTRODUCTION 3

geographically challenging but less politically restricting fields, and allowed

the reduction of labor costs and the creation of more flexible labor markets.
New technologies and work organizations had led to the employment of
fewer workers and hiring of more temporary employees who were often
not unionized, but came with more specialized skills and a greater will-
ingness to move around between the work sites. The more flexible and
mobile workforce tended to be less embedded in local societies, and less
organized and steeped in the history of trade unions and collective bar-
gaining and strikes. Today the oil industry is characterized by a prevalence
of contractors and contingent labor. Workers often work for several
companies at a time, they are more precarious and vulnerable, and usually
find themselves in unsafe working conditions, as was clear in the Deepwater
Horizon disaster.
Second, our contributors show that while there are significant similari-
ties in the historical and specific experiences of those working in oil, there
can be no universal history of labor in oil. While the category of “oil
worker” comprised—and still comprises—a bewildering variety of skills,
expertise, and tasks that has formed a highly intricate industrial and tech-
nical division of labor, encompassing pilots, deep sea divers, roustabouts,
drillers, machinists, caterers, drivers, etc.; there have also been major dif-
ferences in working for different employers. Employers in the oil business
range from international oil companies to national oil companies, service
companies, smaller independent producers, and a wide range of subcon-
tractors that perform various technical tasks and provide vital services. They
have been historically subject to various local and international constraints,
and their relationship with workers and employees has been dependent on
highly sensitive and shifting political and legal dynamics.
Third, this volume does not limit “labor” to manual or blue-collar labor,
nor do contributors focus exclusively on work experiences within the
sphere of production (oil fields, offshore platforms, refineries, along
pipelines, etc.), or on relations with employees. It is assumed that the social
lives of those working in various domains of oil production are not limited
to their working time, but include their everyday experiences of leisure and
reproductive activities (housing and domestic life, family dynamics, urban
experiences, modes of consumption, etc.). Furthermore, it does not con-
fine the politics of labor to its moments of confrontation with employers
(strikes, labor negotiations) and political militancy. Relations of power
permeate social relations, and even the absence of formal collective modes
of labor organizing and activism are a state of political being that requires
4 T. ATABAKI ET AL.

analysis and explanation. Thus, the relative (and momentary?) decline of

collective organization and representation are as integral to the analysis of
labor relations in oil, as are the moments of spectacular militancy and
successful bargaining with employers or confrontation with national
governments.
In this collection, relations of power are not treated only in terms of
class dynamics, but concern the handling of culturally imposed differenti-
ations of gender, race, and ethnicity as well. The difficult experiences of
migrant workers, the alienating and rootless conditions facing expatriate
experts clustered in isolated enclaves, the double discriminations facing
women working in various sectors of the oil complex, and the manipulation
by employers of the tensions among workers and employees of different
skin color or national and ethnic background, have been an integral
dimension of the work experience in the oil complex, and continue to be
so. The essays aim to engage the variegated social histories and lived
experiences of labor in the global oil industry from these diverse and
intertwined perspectives.
Last, this book attempts to situate its topic—the role and experiences of
those working to produce petroleum and its byproducts—within the wider
global, social, and political history of the long twentieth century. The his-
tories of labor in oil cannot be envisaged in isolation from wider shifts and
changes—cultural, political, economic, spatial, technical, social, and envi-
ronmental—taking place worldwide. Oil underlies the contemporary civi-
lization of global industrial and consumer capitalism, and the histories and
experiences of those working to produce this commodity are embedded
within the larger histories that include the transformations of international
capitalism and finance, of colonialism, decolonization and nationalism, of
global geopolitical conflicts, the Cold War, post-communism, and the rise
and decline of the welfare state and the modes of regulation associated with
it. In brief, the histories of labor in oil are embedded within the wider global
histories of labor and the working classes.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

The essays in this book are organized around a series of interrelated
themes, and divided into three sections:
The first part, The Political Life of Labor, examines relations of power
within the workforce, or between the workforce and employers, and the
political institutions of the state. This theme embraces the organization of
 INTRODUCTION 5

various forms of collective representation, such as trade unions and asso-

ciations, as well as the involvement of the oil sector and workers and
employees in larger political changes.
Part two, The Productive Life of Labor, investigates labor relations in
oilfields, refineries, petrochemical complexes, shipping ports, pipeline
building companies, etc. The essays analyze the dynamics of various forms
of skills, practical knowledge and expertise and their implications for the
professional lives of those working within the oil complex.
Part three, The Urban and Social Life of Labor, addresses the repro-
duction of labor outside the workplace. The essays examine the dynamics
of life in company towns and urban and other communities, gender rela-
tions, cultural dynamics and tensions, and the everyday frictions and
negotiations between those working in various sectors of the oil complex
and the larger local, national and transnational societies.
In the introductory chapter of the volume, Kaveh Ehsani draws atten-
tion to the recent decline of scholarly interest in labor studies among those
who investigate the impact of oil on society. He argues that this important
and disturbing development is not so much a reflection of the actual
insignificance of labor in oil, as it is an indication of discursive and tactical
shifts within the industry, and in the framing of its internal labor relations.
What is of greater concern is the lack of interest or attention in the topic
from critical scholars whose investigations of the impact of oil on society
and nature has been increasing considerably in recent decades. Ehsani puts
forward some provisional explanations regarding this trend, and frames this
book as a fresh attempt to remedy this oversight.
The first section, on “The Political Life of Labor,” addresses a variety of
cases in which oil workers challenged and redefined national and international
oil politics. In his essay, Stefano Tijerina investigates the early history of oil
production in Colombia. By analyzing the incursions of American oil com-
panies there during the 1920s and 1930s, the author relates his specific case
study to the transformation of the global oil industry in the interwar period and
after, characterized by US’ imperial expansion in Latin America, and by
increased forms of labor activism and resistance. Through a study of the efforts
carried out by oil workers against foreign multinationals, Tijerina’s essay
argues that the Columbian government and Tropical Oil Company were
effective in using violence against Colombian citizens to protect American oil
interests, thus undermining the relationship between the state and civil society.
Focusing on a major political event of the twentieth century, Peyman
Jafari highlights the significant role the oil workers had in the Iranian
6 T. ATABAKI ET AL.

Revolution of 1977–1979. His essay opens with an examination of the

social and political transformations of the 1970s that prepared the ground
for the popular upheaval against the monarchy. These included a drastic
increase in oil production and revenues that threw the economy into dis-
array and stirred popular discontent. In the oil sector, these changes
brought about significant political and institutional transformation in
management structures, as well as in employees’ living and working con-
ditions. The author provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which oil
workers engaged in the general strike, which brought them to the forefront
of the labor movement and of anti-regime activism.
Helge Ryggvik’s essay brings the reader to a different context, by
investigating the turbulent and shifting politics of labor within the
Norwegian oil industry. Norway’s management of its oil sector is generally
held as an exception to the prevailing notion that the abundance of oil
resources leads to political corruption and poor economic performance.
Ryggvik provides a more nuanced and less rosy picture, showing that labor
relations in the Norwegian oil sector went through several phases that also
had a significant impact on wider national relations of power. Initially,
Norway’s nascent oil sector was subject to the harsh labor regimes imposed
by international oil companies whose expertise and investments were
necessary to get the country’s oil production up and running. However,
Norway’s wartime and postwar experiences of labor activism, and the
establishment of a welfare state and a tripartite accord between corpora-
tions, the state, and labor unions, had created a space for Norwegian oil
workers to press ahead with successful collective bargaining despite the
government’s reticence. As the industry became consolidated and the state
more directly involved in managing the country’s oil resources, this
arrangement has weakened and Norwegian oil workers have been
increasingly subjected to confrontational policies by a state that prioritizes
commercial interests above inclusive social policies.
Andrew Lawrence’s essay on the role played by Nigerian oil trade
unionists in influencing national politics is a welcome departure from the
prevailing trend in the literature that almost exclusively emphasizes the
violence, corruption, and conflicts surrounding oil extraction from
the country’s Niger Delta. While acknowledging the disturbing conse-
quences and the widely recognized negative aspects of Nigeria’s oil
industry, Lawrence points out that oil workers’ trade unions have played a
significant political role in shaping Nigerian politics during key moments of
national crises.
 INTRODUCTION 7

Gabriela Valdivia and Marcela Benavides, in their essay on the recent

history of the labor movement in Ecuador’s oil industry, compare and
contrast two periods in organized labor’s reaction to the government’s
neoliberalization policy. While by the turn of the century, Ecuadorian oil
workers forced the state to retreat from its intended scheme of privatizing
the oil industry; in 2015, oil workers were absent when the large
anti-neoliberal demonstrators poured into the street of Quito. Through
multiple in-depth interviews with former workers of the Ecuador oil
industry, the authors trace the roots of this more recent absence of labor
politics within the oil sector. The authors highlight the consequences of
grinding coercive policies against organized oil workers as one of the
reasons behind their declining political presence and agency.
The second section of the book, “The Productive Life of Oil,” explores
a range of labor experiences within the workplace. Touraj Atabaki’s essay
examines some of the global shifts that took place in the oil industry on the
eve of the First World War, leading to the rise of petroleum as a strategic
commodity of vital importance. His essay focuses on transnational labor
relations within the emerging Iranian oil industry, and its acute need and
dependence on importing skilled and semiskilled labor to work in oilfields
and refinery. Atabaki examines the complex relations between the nomi-
nally private Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and the various arms of the
sprawling British Empire, especially the colonial Government of India. His
essay highlights the life and time of Indian migrant workers in the Iranian
oil industry prior to the nationalization of the oil industry in 1951.
In their essays, Tyler Priest and Betsy Beasley relate the history of oil in
the US South to the wider history of post-Second World War American
corporate capitalism and labor relations. By focusing on the refining
industry in the US Gulf Coast, Priest challenges the idea that after the war
oil workers experienced a period of decline in their ability to organize, and
highlights the continued forms of activism carried out from the 1930s to
the 1970s. He argues that the Oil Workers International Union (OWIU)
and its successor, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union,
were able to obtain important concessions, until management started using
a tool that was difficult to contrast: the contracting out of jobs and the
introduction of other forms of manpower reductions, made possible by
advances in technology.
Beasley’s essay covers a similar territory, albeit more locally focused on
the ways in which oilfield service companies challenged Houston’s labor
movement in the decades following the Second World War. Hers is not
8 T. ATABAKI ET AL.

only a local case study, but has larger implications for the history of postwar
American imperialism and for an understanding of the ways in which the
US used oil to establish its global power. As labor activism increased in
postwar Houston, oilfield services’ executives outsourced oil refineries
abroad, or to subcontractors, and introduced various forms of automation.
These undermined workers’ ability to strike and redefine labor relations on
the floor, by transforming blue-collar workers into a non-politicized
white-collar workforce. At the same time, they promoted a new ideology of
American imperialism that imagined the US as a manager of integrated
global production rather than as a producer or exporter in its own right.
Both Priest’s and Beasley’s essays remind the reader that in the US, as
elsewhere, oil companies have often used race to divide oil workers and
undermine labor movements. In Gulf Coast refineries, despite the fact that
workplaces remained segregated and were characterized by racial tensions,
trade unions were able to introduce forms of racial equality that were not
present in other industries in the American South. In the case of the oilfield
services companies examined by Beasley, the effort to undermine
blue-collar workers went hand in hand with management’s opposition to
African American and Latino oil workers, and civil rights gains.
The history that emerges from this collection does not deal only with
capitalist countries or with global capitalism, but addresses the Soviet
Union as well. Drawing on newly opened archives, Dunja Krempin’s essay
contributes to our understanding of life in the late Soviet period. By
examining the Western Siberian oil and gas complex in the 1960s and the
1970s, the essay examines the forms of mobilization of workers in the late
Soviet planned economy under Brezhnev. It relates the changes taking
place in the 1970s to a longer history of modernization projects dating
back to the interwar period, and to the employment of migrant commu-
nities in the early Soviet oil industry. Krempin does not deal only with the
media campaigns carried out by the Soviet regime, but also with the
working and living conditions of the oil workers who moved to Western
Siberia. By doing so, she sheds light on some of the pitfalls of the Soviet
planned economy that led to its demise a decade later.
The third section of this book, “The Urban and Social Life of Labor,”
examines the experiences of oil workers and local communities in and around
company towns and enclaves, and highlights the importance gender has had
in the history of labor in the oil industry. Elisabetta Bini in her essay examines
the ways in which US oil companies transformed labor policies in Libya
between the mid 1950s and the late 1970s. By analyzing the labor relations
 INTRODUCTION 9

introduced by American oil companies in oil camps and company towns, Bini
argues that through expatriates US oil companies reproduced the gender,
class and racial hierarchies that characterized other American camps across
the world, based on racial and ethnic segregation, and on the elevation of
white women to symbols and agents of America’s corporate mission.
Furthermore, she points out that after the establishment of Muammar
Gaddafi’s regime, gender played a crucial part in transforming labor relations
in oil towns, as Libyans often considered American women as sexual objects.
Zachary Cuyler’s essay focuses on another aspect of American labor
policies in oil-producing countries, namely the role Lebanese workers had
in operating the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, or Tapline, between the early
1950s and the early 1960s. It argues that, despite Tapline’s effort to
contain labor activism through forms of welfare capitalism, Lebanese
workers organized trade unions and strikes that allowed them greater
control over a crucial oil infrastructure and over their own work conditions.
While workers adopted an anti-colonial nationalist discourse, Cuyler points
out their demands were in many ways also shaped by the language and
practice of Tapline’s management.
The last two essays examine more contemporary issues, and adopt par-
ticularly original approaches to the study of their subject matter. Saulesh
Yessenova highlights a little-known aspect of the history of the oil industry in
Kazakhstan in the early twenty-first century, and examines the formation of
the munayshilar (oil workers), a class formed in the local herding commu-
nities. Using an anthropological approach, she sheds light on the interactions
—and conflicts—between the local traditions and the oil industry.
Yessenova’s essay shows the deep historical roots that lie behind what became
one of the Soviet Union’s largest oil fields, Tengiz, and points to the
importance of examining the subjectivities that emerge around oil enclaves.
Finally, Diane Austin’s contribution highlights the importance the cat-
egory of gender has for the history of oil, an issue that has been long
overlooked by scholars. By focusing on the US offshore oil and gas industry
from the 1940s to the 1990s, Austin argues that men have greatly out-
numbered women, despite the introduction of equal opportunity
employment and civil rights laws from the 1970s onwards. By carrying out
a range of interviews with women working in various sectors of offshore oil
extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, the essay highlights the complexity and
variety of women’s experiences in the oil and gas industry, their back-
ground, and the challenges they face in juggling their working life with
their family lives, and their expectations.
10 T. ATABAKI ET AL.

The collection of essays in this volume is largely derived from two

international conferences, the first held in Amsterdam in June 2013 at the
International Institute of Social History on the Comparative Social
Histories of Labor in the Oil Industry, and the second held at the University
of Padua in October 2014 on Labor Politics in the Oil Industry: New
Historical Perspectives.
The editors are very grateful to all contributors to this volume as well as
to the other speakers and the audience present at the June 2013 and the
October 2014 conferences. The 2013 conference was part of a larger
project at the International Institute of Social History, on the Hundred
Years Social History of Oil in the Iranian Oil Industry. We would like to
thank the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) for its
generous support of the social history of oil grand project encompassing
the June 2013 conference. We would also like to thank the Fund for
Investment in Basic Research (FIRB) project The Engines of Growth: for a
Global History of the Conflict between Renewable, Fossil, and Fissile Energies
(1972–1992) of the Universities of Padua and Venice Ca’ Foscari for their
support in organizing the October 2014 conference.2
We hope the publication of this volume paves the way for others to
explore and contribute to the analysis of the global social histories and
experiences of labor in the oil industry.

NOTES
1. Peter Nore and Terisa Turner, eds., Oil and Class Struggle (New York:
Zed Books, 1980) was probably one of the last major works dedicated to
the comparative overview of the topic.
2. Fondo per gli Investimenti della Ricerca di Base (Fund for Investment in
Basic Research, FIRB) project number RBFR10JOTQ.
 Disappearing the Workers: How Labor
in the Oil Complex Has Been Made
Invisible

Kaveh Ehsani

The long twentieth century has been rightly defined as the century of oil,
and despite ongoing market upheavals and the awareness of the planetary
ecological crisis caused by the expanding consumption of hydrocarbons,
the worrying fact remains that there are no realistic alternatives to crude oil
and natural gas on the immediate horizon. They are the most valuable and
widely traded commodities in the global economy, and crude oil remains
the single largest item of international exchange. Revenues from oil exports
form a major contribution to the current budgets of at least 90 govern-
ments, while the procurement of petroleum and its numerous derivatives
are major budgetary outlays for many other countries.1 In addition to
fueling transportation and power generation, oil and gas provide the
building blocks for a bewildering array of essential consumer products that
underlie the contemporary global industrial capitalist civilization of mass
production and consumption.2
Although petroleum’s material, economic, and strategic significance is
simply staggering,3 it is all too often overlooked that the extraction and
processing of oil and its byproducts rely on the labor and expertise of men
and women working across the numerous sectors of this industry. While oil

K. Ehsani (&)
DePaul University, Chicago, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 11

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_2
12 K. EHSANI

and gas production and processing are capital intensive, labor and class
relations within the industry have always been contentious due to their
geopolitical importance, market pressure to minimize costs, and the
technically challenging, hazardous, and harsh working conditions. The size
of employment in oil and gas varies considerably depending on location
and context. In the UK, 454,000 people were employed, directly and
indirectly, in the oil and gas industry in 2014, before the collapse in oil
prices reduced their number to 330,000. In the US 180,000 people work
in “oil and gas extraction,” but once other related fields are taken into
account, the figure is significantly higher.4 However, it is puzzling that,
with a few notable exceptions, in recent decades the attention of historians
and social scientists who investigate the social, spatial, political-economic,
and environmental impact of oil has unmistakably shifted away from taking
into consideration the agency and role of labor in oil.5 As a result, much of
the present day scholarly work on the social impact of petroleum has
gravitated toward framing “oil” as a form of landed property and asset
owned by corporations or appropriated by governments, a questionable
source of revenue (or rent), a strategic resource, or a forbidding tangle of
technological infrastructures.
Two visual examples of this occlusion are the brilliant photographic
books by the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, and the edited
volume by the American photographer Ed Kashi and English Geographer
Michael Watts.6 Burtynsky offers a graphic record of the various global
landscapes created by petroleum. His book is organized in sections that
portray the visual impact of oil extraction (wells, drilling rigs, tar sands),
processing (refineries and petrochemical plants), consumption (networks of
highways, motorbike racing, shopping malls), and disposal (auto junk-
yards, ship graveyards where tankers are dismantled). What stands out in
these portrayals is that human beings only appear in the latter two sections,
as consumers, or as precarious and destitute Bangladeshi workers laboring
to dismantle decaying ships amidst devastated landscapes of pollution and
abject poverty. In these disturbing photographs, the production and pro-
cessing of oil appear as the work of vast industrial machines, without any
living human contribution.
The second book, by Kashi and Watts is subtitled “50 years of oil in the
Niger Delta,” and is a haunting record of the social and environmental
desolations caused by oil extraction among the diverse communities of this
ecologically unique region of Nigeria. Outlining the scale of extractions
and its consequences, Watts concludes that “oil has brought only misery,
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 13

violence, and a dying ecosystem” (43). While the book’s contributing

Nigerian authors highlight various aspects of the experiences of local
populations living in the shadow of oil installations and pipelines, but aside
from a few photographs with minimal caption (52–61), the identity and
roles played by those working to produce the cursed black gold remain
unexplored or irrelevant to the narrative. In a rare passage, Watts refers to
the organized kidnappings of expatriate oil workers by desperate local
vigilante groups fighting against the national state and the multinationals
(38), but otherwise the question of who works on the extraction and
export of petroleum remains unclear. The relevant subtext here is the
presence and active maintenance of systematic spatial and socio-cultural
separation between those working on the extraction side of the industry
(often offshore, and always barricaded within fortified enclaves), and the
local communities who suffer the consequences of oil extraction, and are
no longer willing to accept false promises of illusory wealth and fast
modernization. How and why this separation and alienation has been
constructed and maintained, and its relevance to the dirty politics of oil
extraction in the Delta, beg to be acknowledged and further explored.7
This silence and oversight has characterized the general trend in the more
recent analytic social science literature on oil.

WHY AND HOW HAVE LABOR STUDIES IN OIL BECOME

IRRELEVANT? SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS
This volume of essays places labor at the center of analysis of the “oil
complex”8 rather than the more conventional “oil industry” or “oil sec-
tor,” both of which tend to exclude the wider web of social, spatial, cul-
tural, and political economic relations that underline and make possible the
global system of oil provision. “Oil industry” refers to the institutions and
firms directly involved in procuring oil and its byproducts as a substance
and commodity, while “oil sector” refers to the place of oil operations
within a national economy, as a natural resource or a source of employment
and revenue. Harriet Friedmann first coined the term “food complex” as a
conceptual framework to help identify the social and political-economic
networks that underlie the provision of strategic and industrialized food
crops to the world system, such as the “wheat complex,” the “meat
complex” and the “durable food complex.” For Friedmann, each complex
has its own specific dynamics, defined by the crop and its numerous
14 K. EHSANI

physical and contextual particularities, even though all these crops are
equally integral to the functioning of the world system. But more specifi-
cally, Friedmann’s analytical framework took as self-evident that the anal-
ysis of various labor regimes (the productive work of women, households,
peasants, wage laborers working for agribusinesses, independent farmers,
etc.) is integral to understanding any of these global food complexes.
By contrast, raising concern over the impact of oil on the environment
and society has not been accompanied by a similar interest in analyzing the
labor and class relations attendant upon it. On the contrary, since the late
1970s we have witnessed a noticeable loss of interest in the topic, which
nowadays seems to be considered as of little consequence, with a few
noticeable exceptions (see footnote 5). The editors of this volume became
aware of this conspicuous omission when we encountered more difficulty
than we had anticipated in identifying and assembling historians and social
scientists who work on the topic to participate in the conferences on which
this collection of essays is based.9 In this introductory chapter, I aim to
raise a number of questions regarding this apparent lack of interest in
investigating the impact and role of labor in the oil complex.
The most conventional explanation is that the implementation of
labor-saving technologies have led to a sharp decline in the number of
people working across various sectors of the oil and gas industry. Oil and
gas production and processing have always been capital intensive. Initial
operations require heavy labor inputs for the building of extensive infras-
tructure (wells, offshore platforms, pipelines, pumping stations, work
camps and the amenities needed for permanent living facilities, ports, access
roads, airfields, refineries, etc.). Subsequent operations tend to require
fewer and more specialized employees, highly trained to work in harsh,
dangerous, and technically complex environments. Market forces and cut
throat competition can bring further pressure on reducing labor costs.
While several contributors to this volume take these technological con-
siderations into account, the fact remains that demand for oil has expanded
exponentially since the First World War, and with it the need for ever more
complex range of workers and employees with various skills and expertise.
The relative capital intensiveness of oil is not a sufficient explanation for the
lack of scholarship on labor in the oil complex.
Another, related explanation emphasizes the increasing flexibilization of
labor markets in the globalized economy, and the consequences of new
international divisions of labor.10 Relentless casualization of labor markets,
changes in stable and long-term labor contracts in favor of temporary jobs
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 15

and outsourcing, continued and ever increasing reliance on expatriate

employees or migrant laborers moving between sites and unable to
establish long-term local roots, increased pressures against collective bar-
gaining and unionization, and the unraveling of the postwar welfare pact
between corporations, states, and organized labor, have all acted as major
factors in reducing the collective solidarities and the voice of labor across
industrial sectors. While these drastic changes in labor markets have
become commonplace in the neoliberal era, the effacing of labor in the oil
industry cannot be explained by reference to these structural changes
alone. In fact, most of these tactics have always been part of the repertoire
of oil companies. After all, similar shifts have occurred in other manufac-
turing and extractive industries, but it is difficult to imagine entire scholarly
fields dedicated to analyzing the social and political relations in auto
industry, steel, or copper mining to ignore the place and role of miners or
factory workers. Yet, time and again, we witness that the significance of
labor is overlooked or even dismissed by scholars working on oil.
The spatial isolation of many oil and gas fields and installations has acted
as another justification for overlooking the role of labor. Like many other
mining operations, oil and gas fields are often located in remote areas or
offshore, turning them into enclaves that appear to be disconnected from
the rest of the national economy and society. The highly demanding and
often harsh working and living conditions tend to attract outsiders, mainly
migrants and expatriates. Maintaining this spatial isolation and encouraging
internal stratification and fomenting racial, ethnic, and class friction among
employees has long served as a strategy of labor control by oil companies.
The combination of these factors can give the impression that those
working in oil are a tiny labor aristocracy with no real attachment to
affected local communities or the national society. However, as several
chapters in this volume demonstrate, the built environment of oil and the
labor practices of oil companies within enclaves have a significant impact on
local communities and the wider national politics and social relationships,
and ought to be integral to the analysis of the oil complex.11
A notable example of the trend to overlook the role of labor and class
relations within the oil complex is Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy.12
Mitchell provides important insights into how the modern industrial
economy based on hydrocarbons has made possible the emergence of
liberal democracy and capitalist mass consumer economy, but at the same
time he dismisses the political agency of oil workers by pointing out that
technology and automation replace workers once crude production has
16 K. EHSANI

come online. He further argues that the concentration and employment of

oil workers and employees is drastically reduced once the initial building of
the physical infrastructure of extraction and transporation is completed.
This dispersal and redundancies in turn undermines the formation of lasting
collective agency and the ability of oil workers to intervene effectively in the
wider corporate, social, and political domains. By contrast, for Mitchell, the
geography of coal extraction and distribution (at least in the twentieth
century) allowed coal miners to exert an influence that is simply not mat-
ched by the spatial characteristics of the modern day oil complex.
This rather oversimplified argument could be true only if the geography
of oil is reduced to upstream extraction (mainly fields, offshore platforms,
and pipelines), to the exclusion of midstream and downstream industrial
operations (refineries, petrochemicals, ports) that do require sustained
concentrations of substantial and variegated workforces in dedicated built
environments, over extended periods of time. In fact, oil production and
refining have historically been significant sites of labor activism and agency,
as demonstrated by a few examples in chronological order: The 1905 labor
clashes in the Baku refinery and oil fields played a major role in the first
Russian Revolution; the Bayonne-NJ refinery strikes of 1915–1916 involved
thousands of workers, and forced the Standard Oil of New Jersey to develop
a nonunion employee representation plan which served as a model for cor-
porate welfare capitalist schemes of the 1920s; in 1938 the refinery workers
of Aguila Tempico played a critical role in the nationalization of Mexican oil
industry; the Venezuelan oil workers strike of 1936 set the stage for the
passage of the country’s landmark 1943 Hydrocarbon Law redefining the
relationship between host governments and foreign oil firms; the 1945 strike
in the US by 43,000 refinery workers across 20 states inspired a general wave
of strikes by workers in other industries, but also provoked the drastic
backlash of the 1947 anti union Taft-Hartley Act; the 1946 general strike of
Iranian oil workers sparked the oil nationalization movement that was
eventually crushed by the CIA led coup d’etat of 1953; in 1979 another
general strike of oil workers played a crucial role in the Iranian revolution; the
defeat of the 2002–2003 Venezuelan oil workers’ strike by the populist
government of Hugo Chavez was followed by the firing of 18,000 oil
workers, and disabled what was once a functioning oil company.
Thus, the conventional arguments about the irrelevance of labor and
class relations in oil are neither convincing, nor historically accurate. As
contributors to this volume show, the reasons behind the relative recent
decline in the collective presence of oil workers in the larger political and
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 17

social life of oil producing nations cannot be presented as only the

byproduct of the technological or logistic and geographic characteristics of
the oil sector itself. Rather, it has been equally the consequence of policies
and strategies adopted by corporate employers and national governments
concerned with maximizing revenues and minimizing the potential of labor
unrest to actively fragment, isolate, and reduce the possibilities of more
radical and collective engagements by those working in the sector. In the
next section I will use a more detailed case study of the Iranian oil industry
to demonstrate these points.

OIL WORKERS IN POST-REVOLUTION IRAN: A CASE STUDY

OF MAKING LABOR INVISIBLE
The case of developments in the Iranian oil industry after the 1979 revo-
lution is instructive in presenting a more nuanced and historically sub-
stantiated analysis of the disappearing role of labor. Iranian oil workers have
played a major role in Iran’s turbulent political history since the turn of the
twentieth century. In terms of ownership and control of oil and gas
resources, the history of oil in Iran can be divided into three distinct
periods: From 1908–1951 the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now
BP) had monopoly control over Iranian oil; after the defeat of oil na-
tionalization movement (1949–1953) a consortium of multinational oil
companies took control, with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)
acting as the intermediary between the Consortium and Iranian employees.
In 1973 Iran formally nationalized its oil industry, but international oil
companies continued to maintain a high presence and exert considerable
influence. This arrangement lasted until the 1979 revolution when a
general strike of oil workers and employees led to the expulsion of foreign
oil companies and the full nationalization of the oil industry.
As long as the oil sector was controlled by foreigners there were strong
nationalist sentiments to force the AIOC and later the Consortium to train
and employ more Iranian workers and cadres. On occasions, Iranian
political elites and the professional middle classes voiced support for
workers’ demands for improvements in wages, living conditions, training,
and workplace safety. But, throughout the twentieth century, it was the
nationalist demand for the greater Iranianization of the workforce and
especially of the management that was a recurring theme in negotiations
with foreign oil companies, and not the modification of the repressive
labor practices. In fact, whenever labor activists or political organizers
18 K. EHSANI

attempted to establish independent trade unions, foreign oil companies

and Iranian political elites united in treating them as a subversive and
communist inspired threat to national security during the Cold War.
Thus, labor issues were always part of the frictions and bargaining between
foreign oil companies and the Iranian political elites, but only in a limited and
paternalistic manner. Their aim was to make the oil industry more “Iranian,”
without making any concessions to workers’ legal and political rights. As I
will argue below, once the oil sector was completely nationalized in 1979, the
postrevolutionary Khomeinist state began to treat oil workers’ demands for
autonomous self-representation in much the same way as the previous
regime and the international oil companies had, namely as a political threat to
national security and the commercial profitability of the oil sector. The
experience of labor in the Iranian oil industry indicates that oil workers
appear as significant social actors when they engage in spectacular collective
actions (such as the labor strikes of 1929, 1946, and 1979), but they become
“invisible” to scholars, policymakers, and the general public, once these
spectacular interventions during rare moments of political openness are
passed. Without independent unions and representative associations, the
voice of labor in oil is silenced and its presence is rendered invisible.13
The impact of oil workers and employees on modern Iranian society
goes well beyond those scattered moments of labor protest. From its
inception at the turn of the twentieth century, oil and its related fields have
been one of the largest and most significant industrial sectors, with its
highly trained workers and employees coveted by other branches of the
economy, especially the booming sectors of energy, transportation, and
manufacturing. They carried with them the work habits, technical skills,
organizational experiences, and political cultures accumulated in the oil
complex. Although labor militancy in Iran predated the emergence of the
oil industry in 1908, oil workers nevertheless had moved to the forefront of
the labor movement in the interwar years, and spearheaded the attempts to
establish independent trade unions and workers’ representation.14
Oil cities and company towns, such as Abadan and Masjed Suleiman,
originally started as isolated enclaves where thousands of destitute migrants
lived and worked in abject poverty, in the vicinity of oil facilities and for-
tified living quarters of European expatriates. However, by the 1930s these
enclaves had been transformed into major urban industrial cities. These
were migrant cities, where living and working conditions were harsh, but
economic opportunities attracted all sorts of people. In these cities, oil and
refinery workers and their families intermingled with soldiers, housewives,
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 19

peasants and tribesmen, bureaucrats, expatriates, itinerant laborers, mer-

chants, students, political activists, artists, prostitutes, smugglers, and
people of various ethnic, regional, religious, and national backgrounds. As
a result, the built environment of oil created a habitus where the everyday
life of oil workers became embedded within the urban life of these
booming oil towns,15 creating a political dynamic where labor struggles
over work conditions often mingled and overlapped with urban protests
over living conditions and collective demands for what Henri Lefebvre calls
“the right to the city.”16 Thus, when in 1979 oil workers succeeded in
playing a pivotal role against the monarchy by going on a mass strike, their
eventual success relied heavily on these networks of urban solidarity.17
When internal strife in postrevolutionary Iran led to violent conflict, oil
cities such as Abadan became important nodes of resistance against the
attempts by Khomeinist forces to impose their hegemony on political rivals.
But soon, internal clashes were compounded by international sanctions and
the onset of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). The Iraqi invasion led to the
physical destruction of some of Iran’s main oil cities and undermined these
nascent forms of urban and labor politics. During the war the refinery city
of Abadan and the adjacent port city of Khoramshahr, both situated on the
border with Iraq, were destroyed and their population of half a million
were scattered as refugees. The war led to the consolidation of the
Khomeinist new regime, which relied on a combination of
nationalist-Islamist mobilization and repression. While some refinery
workers maintained a nominal level of production in Abadan throughout
the war, the forced dispersal of the urban population effectively ended the
possibility of any alternative politics emerging there.
Throughout the war, state propaganda exalted the heroic role of oil
workers and employees who had expelled the foreign multinationals, taken
over the operations of the oil and gas industry, regulated and ensured that
exports continued, and supplied the country with fuel and energy. The
prevalent discourse of the 1980s, a decade defined by revolution and war,
was to use oil (its revenues and its material possibilities) to ensure social
justice, defined as more equitable distribution of goods and services. The
oil and gas company towns built during this decade reflected this political
attitude, exemplified by the newly built gas refinery town of Kangan
designed with the explicit goal of integrating the local community into the
urban amenities and labor market.18
The end of the war and the period of reconstruction witnessed a drastic
shift in state priorities, from populist redistribution to emphasizing the
20 K. EHSANI

need for the commercial viability of all branches of the economy.19

Subsequently, since the 1990s the energy and oil and gas sectors have been
subject to creeping privatization of midstream and downstream operations
by dozens of subcontracting companies notorious for their predatory labor
practices.20 Having repressed independent trade unions, the state began to
target workers’ job security by gradually replacing permanent work con-
tracts with temporary and increasingly precarious ones.21 The Majles
(parliament) authorized significant changes in labor laws in the name of
creating a more flexible and competitive labor market that did away with
contractual protections and welfare benefits for workers and employees. As
a result, private subcontractors can now dismiss their employees at will,
avoid offering adequate wages and salaries, as well as the benefits and
protections that are no longer mandated by law.22
In 1997, there were approximately 150,000 employees in the Iranian oil
and gas sector, although the exact numbers are unclear and treated as
sensitive state secrets.23 Subsequently, the Ministry of Petroleum
announced that it had reduced the formal workforce by nearly 40%.24
However, this figure was disputed by investigative journalists, critical
scholars, and labor activists who revealed that actual employment in the
sector, especially of blue collar workers, had continued to increase,
although this new working class of oil now fell within the category of
“invisible workers.” Many were no longer formally registered so as not
to appear on the records and balance sheets of the National Iranian Oil
Company, its many subsidiaries, or the private subcontractors that had
proliferated in the sector. These invisible workers included migrants
recruited through subcontracting human resources companies, and bused
in and out from distant provinces such as Sistan or Azarbaijan to work for
long hours in extreme conditions, without any assurance of renewed
employment; unpaid military conscripts; or undocumented refugees
(mainly from Afghanistan), whose wages are well below the official mini-
mum wage. Others are experienced and skilled workers who are now
removed from the public-sector roster, hired by private subcontractors on
short-term contracts, often off the books, without paying benefits, or sel-
dom adhering to the watered down labor laws. Labor protests and strikes
against these changes have been quickly and ruthlessly quashed. As a result,
the period after the Iran–Iraq war has witnessed an effective erasure of the
visible presence of oil workers in national politics and awareness.
Another major factor contributing to the erasure of the role of oil
workers is the discursive shift that has taken place in public perceptions, and
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 21

within a number of influential academic fields. In recent years, an

increasing number of economists, journalists, policymakers, and public
intellectuals across the political spectrum have lined up to emphasize the
negative impact of oil revenues on the economy and political institutions.25
Effectively they agitate for the depoliticization of the oil sector, implying
although not explicitly advocating, its full privatization as a solution. Given
the history of oil in Iranian politics, and the symbolic significance of the
role played in it by oil workers, this attempt to reduce the understanding of
the oil complex to its purely commercial aspects is contraversial, and can be
advocated only if the presence and significance of those laboring across the
industry is overlooked, silenced, and presented as irrelevant.26
The experiences of labor in post-revolution Iran indicate that rather
than becoming insignificant, oil workers have lost the ability to make their
presence felt, because they are actively made invisible. This development is
the result of a number of interconnected maneuvers that include the
repression of independent trade unions and political parties, and the drastic
postwar shifts in state policies from populist redistribution to market
rationality. It continued with the revamping of labor laws in favor of
employers, and the implementation of structural changes within the public
petroleum and gas sectors that paved the way for creeping privatization and
the refusal by employers and the state to protect and defend workers’
rights. In a highly politicized country where, until quite recently, oil
workers had been lionized for their role during the revolution and the war,
these controversial changes would not have been acceptable without the
relentless interventions by economists, pro-market policymakers, and lib-
eral journalists who shape public perceptions and the terms of debate by
condemning oil revenues accruing to the public sector as a “resource
curse,” while systematically overlooking the agency and lived experiences
of those laboring in the oil and gas sectors.

Oil Scholarship Without The Workers

Of course, each case study has its own story to tell, but similar trends can be
detected elsewhere in how the role and agency of labor is not taken into
consideration in other oil producing countries. For example, three major
studies of Venezuelan oil demonstrate the intriguing contrasts in how
scholars variously approach the social and political impact of oil, and the
role of labor and oil workers in a major producer country.27 Fernando
Coronil’s Magical State is among the most influential and insightful studies
of the pivotal role played by oil in shaping Venezuela’s modern political
22 K. EHSANI

culture and national identity. Oddly, Coronil discusses extensively the

political impact and the cultural influence of labor relations in auto and
tractor factories during Venezuela’s oil fueled modernization, but not in
the oil industry itself. In the end, it is oil as financial wealth and the dis-
appointments of the disappearing mirage of fast modernization that
become the focus of the book. Similarly, in his Global Oil and the Nation
State, Bernard Mommer, a major figure in OPEC and Venezuela’s oil
policymaking circles, explicitly excludes the significance of the labor politics
and the larger agency of oil workers in his analysis of the interplay of
petroleum and national politics. By contrast, historian Miguel Tinker Salas’
Enduring Legacy covers similar grounds as the previous two books, ana-
lyzing the impact of oil in shaping contemporary Venezuela, its political
dynamics and the formation of its contemporary institutions and political
culture. However, in contrast to Coronil and Mommer, Tinker Salas sit-
uates the historical role and experiences of oil workers at the center of his
analysis by focusing, in part, on the built environments of oil (company
towns, camps, enclaves), and the manners in which class, race, and
cross-national tensions and interactions within the oil sector helped shape
the contemporary Venezuelan society.
These contrasting examples show that the erasure of the analysis of labor
studies in the more recent scholarship of oil studies is not so much
reflection of changing reality and the irrelevance of the topic as is a choice
made by scholars (deliberate or by default), and the prevailing trends
within the academic scholarship of oil.28 Ironically, critical scholarly
attention to the wider impact of petroleum on society, nature, culture, and
political economy has never been as intense and high as present. But, it is
noticeable that this literature predominantly treats the oil sector as a black
box that has a significant impact (often negative) on the world around it,
yet excludes its internal tensions and dynamics from the story. Michael
Watts, for example, provides an insightful analysis of “the oil complex” in
Nigeria as a fraught interaction between international oil companies, local
communities (mainly in the Niger Delta), and the federal state. It should
be noted that Watts’ reference to an “oil complex” is different from
Friedmann’s original conceptualization, which has labor relations situated
at the center of her analysis. On other occasions, Watts includes NGOs,
insurgents, and other prominent international and national actors in his
prolific and insightful investigations of the devastating violence and cor-
ruption characterizing Nigeria’s oil production. But who is actually pro-
ducing the crude that is extracted and exported from Nigeria rarely if ever
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 23

figures in the narrative.29 Likewise, the dispossession of indigenous groups

and violent territorial expropriations by national states and multinational oil
companies,30 or the politics of property and the ensuing corruption in post-
communist states,31 are among the major themes explored in some of the
most important recent literature on oil’s wider impact. But again, this
literature fails to take into consideration the internal dynamics and the
tensions and interactions between employer–employee in the production,
processing, and eventual distribution of oil as part of this analysis.
Elsewhere, there has been an upsurge of critical interest in the cultural
impact of hydrocarbons, mainly by anthropologists and cultural and literary
theorists who populate the emerging field of “energy humanities.”32 These
“petrocritics” are most concerned with how systems of energy provision
have shaped public culture and the collective imaginaries of everyday life,
yet they show surprising little interest in the people who work, or have
worked in the oil and gas industry. Stephanie LeMenager’s Living Oil, a
notable example of this literature, at one point even disdains the work of
ethnographers to reconstruct the lives of oil field workers in Lousiana as a
sorry effort “to offer an epic oil-made-by-hand, of petroleum extraction as
craft and embodied memory.” Christopher Jones’ Routes of Power, a his-
tory of early fossil fuel development in the US, only mentions workers
when discussing their muscular exertions in the service of the modern
“mineral energy regime.” Workers in his book are rendered in a way that is
little different from pack animals.33 Trying to understand the complex
experience of people working in oil and gas industry, it appears, would
undercut the moral condemnation of oil as a social and environmental evil
that is essential to petrocriticism. Critical geographers and social scien-
tists have focused on the spatial (including property relations) and material
characteristics of petroleum and hydrocarbons and the manners in which
they have reshaped social institutions, political economies, and relations to
the environment.34 Marxist scholars have challenged the depoliticized
framing of contemporary ecological crises and global warming as somehow
being the responsibility of human beings in general (the Age of
Anthropocene) rather than the consequence of the regulation of social life
by capitalism and in the service of accumulation of capital.35 They have also
explored the connections between oil and the forms of politics and cultural
production under capitalism and their consequences.36 However, even for
these Marxist scholars the class relations within the oil complex, and the
agency and experiences of labor is not a focus of investigation.
24 K. EHSANI

This tendency is present even in studies that emphasize the impact of

hydrocarbons on human labor relations. For example, a provocative book
by the journalist and environmental activist Andrew Nikiforuk titled Energy
of Slaves, argues that oil (and other fossil fuels) have had a revolutionary
impact on human society by replacing the need for coerced forms of labor
through providing unprecedented and cheap sources of energy, while
paradoxically creating new forms of servitude and widespread inequality.
Yet, Nikiforuk fails to take into consideration the labor of people who
actually produce this new labor-saving energy, or how they are affected by
the subsequent modern day forms of servitude.37
This brings us to a fourth explanation for this decline of interest in the
investigation of labor relations in oil, which is the discursive rise of various
versions of the “resource curse” theory (rentier state, Dutch Disease,
petrostate).38 These theories argue that the abundance of hydrocarbons
and mineral wealth paradoxically lead to malevolent forms of state inter-
vention in the economy, which are disruptive, corrupt, and restrict eco-
nomic growth. Various versions of this theory have proliferated since the
1970s, and indeed there seems to be enough empirical evidence of a
connection between resource abundance and political and economic dis-
tortions. However, a number of important issues should be addressed,
especially as it pertains to oil revenues as a resource curse plaguing pro-
ducer countries.
At the risk of generalizing, it must be emphasized that the primary focus
of this criticism has been on oil producing countries of the global south and
post-communist states where natural resources are nationalized and under
state control and ownership. The main objection has been directed against
the public ownership of oil resources and the revenues accruing to gov-
ernments from this ownership. When natural resources are privately owned
by corporations, and the management of oil operations are conducted along
commercial priorities alone there seems to be little appetite for similar
criticism. This indicates a major shift of attitude from the mid twentieth
century when multinational oil companies were the focus of criticism, and
fledgling national oil companies in post-colonial states were seen as cham-
pions of national independence. The emergence of these theories coincided
with a turn away from the postwar ideas of welfare states and the notion of
government obligations to enhance and support economic and social
rights. What came to be known as the neoliberal turn in mainstream dis-
ciplines of economics, international political economy, and comparative
politics tend to frame any attempt at interfering or regulating free markets
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 25

(such as lobbying, tariffs, subsidies, even taxes, as well as bribes) as under-

mining the natural functioning and self-regulation of free markets.39
The aim of this chapter has not been to offer a comprehensive literature
review. Rather, I have attempted to analyze how policies, historical cir-
cumstances, and discursive maneuvers have reshaped the understanding of
oil as a complex of social, spatial, and political relationships, and what effect
they have had on the awareness and scholarly attention to labor studies.
Without ignoring the very real problems of corruption, violence, environ-
mental, and political-economic inequalities besetting many nation states
that rely heavily on extractive industries, we must emphasize that the nature
of the state itself cannot be determined by the source of its monetary rev-
enues alone. Many oil producing states were authoritarian well before oil
revenues became part of their political economies. On the other hand,
despite the prevalence of clientelism in many oil-rich states, revenues from
hydrocarbons have allowed the development of social infrastructures that
are the material foundation for exercising citizenship. Norway has managed
to better control the effects of oil capitalism because of the social history of
labor struggles and organization, dating to anti-colonial struggles against its
Scandinavian neighbors and Nazi occupiers. On the other hand, there are
many examples of successful resource states, including the US, Canada, and
Australia. Defining states as “rentier” or “petrostates,” claiming that “oil”
and revenues accruing from its sale are a “curse” that lead to inevitable
outcomes by corrupting politics and distorting civil societies into
“petro-societies,’’ is both ahistorical and misleading if this branding is not
accompanied by situating the changing political economy of oil within a
rigorous analysis of specific social and political histories, and taking into
account the geopolitical context in which national governments operate.40
Such framing has often resulted in over-generalized accounts that ignore
the need for actual rigorous historical analysis of the complex internal and
transnational geopolitical dynamics of the oil industry, and their impact on
society, institutions, and politics.41 In this rendering, it is no longer nec-
essary to investigate the class relations at the heart of the oil complex,
because oil is presented in purely financial and economic terms, and not as
networks of extractive and industrial activities that are based on social
coordination and contested relations of power. Resource curse theories
overlook the fact that oil is a substance that becomes a commodity and
turns into money only after it has been produced through the interplay of
negotiated forms of labor, professional expertise, technical organization,
and contested institutional and spatial arrangements. Instead, they reify oil
26 K. EHSANI

by presenting it simply as money or finance that flows smoothly into the

coffers of national governments, without anyone working to produce it.
These so-called “rents” benefit parasitic states whose only claim to this
windfall is their monopoly ownership over natural resources. Subsequently,
this rent is wasted through conspicuous consumption, or distributed by
unaccountable political elites in exchange for political docility, or for
maintaining the apparatus of state repression. The aim of this collection is
to shift the focus back from this ahistorical economic determinism, onto
how relations of labor are integral to the critical analysis of the oil complex.

CONCLUSION
James Ferguson has made the astute observation that in the neoliberal
global order, extractive and industrial complexes have become disembed-
ded from their social and geographic context.42 In the aftermath of
decolonization newly independent states and their citizens viewed mines,
refineries, oilfields, company towns, and ports as nodes of social and
national development. In the era of nationalization and import substitution
industrialization, commercial priorities were not paramount and the sur-
plus produced in these enterprises tended to spill into interconnected (if
uneven) social and spatial developments, creating cities, housing projects,
industries, public educational institutions and social services. This approach
was fueled by popular expectations, and generated its own forms of built
environments and collective political cultures. By contrast, the neoliberal
era of globalization has seen a turn toward the prioratization of commercial
profitability, the free movement of capital, and the ever more unhindered
integration of these enterprises into the world economy. As a result, na-
tional oil companies (and the governments in charge of them) have
increasingly adopted the perspectives of multinational corporations, turn-
ing oil enterprises into enclaves that operate mainly according to com-
mercial priorities and profit making for their investors. In Ferguson’s
words, capital now leaps across national space and borders, linking isolated
oil enclaves to corporate headquarters of multinational corporations in
distant global cities, instead of flowing across the landscape, connecting
localities to their surrounding region and populations.
What Ferguson fails to take into account is that many of the changes
brought about by neolibralism resemble the dynamics of pre-Depression
and World War II laissez faire capitalism and colonial extractive capital-
ism.43 The brief postwar interlude to which he refers, when extractive
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 27

industries became relatively embedded in more distributive social projects,

was the outcome of popular mobilizations, including labor movements.
Oil workers across the world played a prominant role in these social
movements, as shown by the contributions in this volume.
The transformations of the neoliberal era have had a significant impact
on those working in the oil sector. On the one hand, reliance on expatriate,
migrant, temporary, and transient labor forces have increased to keep up
with the insatiable demand for oil and gas. On the other hand, represen-
tation through independent labor unions and dedicated political parties
have become more difficult due to the loss of permanent contractual
positions, increasingly precarious labor markets, stacked labor laws, and the
use of repressive measures by states and corporate employers. The dis-
cursive maneuvers that frame oil as purely a source of revenue (or dis-
paragingly as unearned “rent”) have curtailed interest in looking beyond
oil as mere finance. Under these circumstances, it is important for engaged
scholars, activists, and intellectuals investigating the social and environ-
mental impact of oil and hydrocarbons to reincorporate class and labor
relations as integral and fundamental to understand the significance and
dynamics of the global oil complex.

NOTES
1. See Dara O’Rourke and Sarah Connolly, “Just Oil? The Distribution of
Environmental and Social Impacts of Oil Production and Consumption,”
Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28, no. 1 (2003): 587–617;
International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Statistics (annual),
http://www.iea.org/bookshop/723-World_Energy_Statistics_2016.
2. Gavin Bridge and Philippe le Billon, Oil (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013),
1–35. See also Conoco Phillips, “What is Oil Used For?” http://
alaska.conocophillips.com/what-we-do/oil-production/Pages/what-is-
oil-used-for.aspx.
3. Ryan Carlyle, “What Are the Top Five Facts Everyone Should Know About
Oil Exploration?,” Forbes, April 8, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/
quora/2013/04/03/what-are-the-top-five-facts-everyone-should-know-
about-oil-exploration/#2aecf8683d50.
4. For the UK see Oil & Gas UK, Economic Report 2016, accessed April 20,
2017, http://oilandgasuk.co.uk/product/economic-report-2016/. For
the US, see Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oil and Gas Extraction
(Washington, DC, US department of Labor, Annual Reports), accessed
January 20, 2017, https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag211.htm#workforce.
28 K. EHSANI

It should be noted that many people who work in oil and gas extraction in
the US are not directly employed by oil companies, but by companies
classified under “support activities for oil and gas operations,” providing
services such as geophysical surveys, well services, drilling services, catering,
supply and transporation, etc. Employment in this segement of the industry
in January 2017 was 196,000. There were also 120,000 employed in “oil
and gas pipeline construction,” and another 63,000 who work in “mining
and oil and gas field machinery.” One could even count the 936,000 who
work in “gasoline stations.” According to one oil industry propaganda
website, the industry creates 9.8 million jobs in the US. See What is
Fracking, available at http://www.what-is-fracking.com/how-many-jobs-
has-the-oil-and-natural-gas-industry-created/, accessed January 20, 2017.
5. Peter Nore and Terisa Turner, eds., Oil and Class Struggle (New York: Zed
Books, 1980) was probably one of the last major works dedicated to the
topic in the contemporary era. After a long gap, more recent ground-
breaking studies that take into account class and labor relations in oil began
to appear, including Miguel Tinker Salas, Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture,
and Society in Venezuela (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Greg
Muttitt, Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, Revised and
Updated (London: Vintage, 2011); Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom:
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2009);
Elana Shever, Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Myrna Santiago, The
Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–
1938 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Bobby
Weaver, Oilfield Trash: Life and Labor in the Oil Patch (College Station:
Texas A&M Press, 2010). It should be noted that Shever and Muttitt’s
work focus on the contemporary period, while the other books deal with
the earlier twentieth century.
6. Edward Burtynsky, Burtynsky: Oil (Göttingen: Steidl, 2009); Ed Kashi,
Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, ed. Michael
Watts (New York: Power House, 2010).
7. For an analysis of oil production in African context that takes into con-
sideration labor relations see Andrew Lawrence in this volume, as well as
Kristin Reed, Crude Existence: Environment and the Politics of Oil in
Northern Angola (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Life in
insulated oil company towns of West Africa is the focus of Hannah Appel,
“Walls and White Elephants: Oil Extraction, Responsibility, and
Infrastructural Violence in Equatorial Guinea,” Ethnography 13, no.
4 (2012): 439–465.
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 29

8. Harriet Friedmann, “Distance and Durability: Shaky Foundations of the

World Food Economy,” Third World Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1992): 371–
383; Harriet Friedmann, “The Political Economy of Food: The Rise and
Fall of the Postwar International Food Order,” The American Journal of
Sociology 88 (1982): S248–S286.
9. This volume is based on two international conferences, the first held in
2013 in Amsterdam, at the International Institute of Social History, and
titled The Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Oil Industry; and the
second at the University of Padua in 2014, and titled Labor Politics in the
Oil Industry: New Historical Perspectives.
10. Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization
Since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kim Moody,
Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (London:
Verso, 1997); and David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
11. See Kaveh Ehsani, “Social Engineering and the Contradictions of
Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns,” International Review of
Social History 48, no. 3 (2003): 361–399; Vitalis America’s Kingdom;
Oliver Dinius and Angela Vergara, eds., Company Towns in the Americas:
Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities (Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press, 2011).
12. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
(London: Verso, 2011). For a critical review see Tyler Priest, “Crude
History,” Reviews in American History 43, no. 2 (2015): 333–339.
13. Labor practices of nationalist governments in post-colonial Africa are
instructive. For critical evaluations see Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the
Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1968); Michael Burawoy, The
Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great
Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), 19–72; Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940:
The Past of the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
and James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of
Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999).
14. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982); Kaveh Ehsani, “Oil, State, and Society in Iran in
the Aftermath of WWI,” in The First World War and Its Aftermath: The
Shaping of the Middle East, ed. Thomas Fraser (London: Gingko Library
Press, 2015), 191–212.
15. Ehsani, “Social Engineering and the Contradictions of Modernization in
Khuzestan’s Oil Company Towns.” International Review of Social History
48, no. 3 (2003): 361–399.
16. Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit à la Ville, 3rd ed. (Paris: Anthropos, 2009).
17. Nore and Turner, Oil and Class Struggle, 272–302. See also Jafari in this
volume.
30 K. EHSANI

18. Azam Khatam, “Assalouyeh dar Ayeneh Abadan: az Sherkat-Shahr ta

Ordougah-haye Karkonan-e Naft dar Iran [Assalouyeh in the mirror of
Abadan: from company town to oil workers’ camp in Iran],” Goftogu, no.
60 (2012): 65–80. On the impact of the war on Iran’s oil regions see Kaveh
Ehsani, “War and Resentment: Critical Reflections on the Legacies of the
Iran–Iraq War,” Middle East Critique 26, no. 1 (2017): 1–20.
19. Valerie Marcel, Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East
(London: Chattam House, 2006).
20. Iraj Mehrazma, “Barresi-ye Amalkard-e Vezarat-e Naft dar Omour va
Fa’aliyatha-ye Baladasti va Payin Dasti-ye San’at-e Naft va Gaz dar
Barnameh-ye Sevom-e Tose’eh va Sal-e Aval-e Barnameh-ye Chaharom”
[Assessing the Performance of Ministry of Petroleum in Upstream and
Downstream Oil and Gas Industries During the Third 5 Year Development
Plan, and in the Initial Phase of the Fourth 5 Year Development Plan]
(Tehran: Markaze Pajouhehsha-ye Majles (Parliament Research Centre),
2007); Massoud Derakhshan, “Arzyabi-e Amalkard-e Fa’aliyatha-ye
Baladasti Naft Dar Salha-ye 1379–1381 [Evaluating the Effectiveness of
Upstream Activities in the Oil Sector 2000–2002]” (Tehran: Daftar-e
Pajouheshha-ye Majles (Parliament Research Center), 2003); Sadeq
Kashani, “Tose’eh Mayadin-e Naft va Gaz: Sakhtarha va Ruykardha- ye
Ejray-e Prozheh [Expansion of oil and gas fields; Structures and dimensions
of the project],” Daftar-i Mutale’at-e Enerzhi, Sanaye’ va Ma’aden
(Tehran: Markaze Pajouhehsha-ye Majles (Parliament Research Center),
2009); Kaveh Ehsani, “Crude Power: Rethinking Oil and Politics,” paper
presented at Lecture Series: Fueling Societies: Energy Resources and Politics
from Below (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, 2014).
21. Mohammad Maljoo, “Eqtesad-e Siasi-ye Nirou-ye Kar-e San’at-e Naft dar
Iran-e Pas az Jang [The Political Economy of the Labor Force in Post-War
Iran],” Kanoun-e Modafe’an-e Hoqouq-e Kargar, September 4, 2012, http://
kanoonmodafean1.blogspot.nl/2012/09/blog-post.html; Kaveh Ehsani and
Mohammad Maljoo, “Iranian Oil Workers After the Iran-Iraq War” (Middle
East Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 2011).
22. Mohammad Maljoo, “Ta’dil-e Nirou-ye Ensani dar Doereh-ye Eslahat
[‘Adjusting’ the Labor Force during the Reformist Era],” Naqd-e Eqtesade-
e Siasi, September 2012, http://pecritique.com/2012/09/22/.
23. Even members of parliament are unable to obtain specific figures about
employees in oil and gas sectors in their own jurisdictions. Interview with
Majles deputy from Abadan, 5/12/2000. For the available official figures,
which do not break down employees by detailed categories or location, see
footnotes 19–21.
24. See previous, also for the continuation of this trend see “Nirou-ye Shaghel
dar Bakhsh-e Peymankari-ye San’at-e Naft Samandehi Mishavad [The
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 31

Employees in the Contractor Sector of the Oil Industry Will Be

Organized],” SHANA (Public Relations of the Ministry of Petroleum),
October 10, 2009, accessed October 12, 2009, http://www.shana.ir/fa/
newsagency/147482.
25. Mohammadbaqer Qalibaf and Nasser Soltani Khalifani, “Naft va Sakht-e
Qodrat-e Siasi dar Iran [Oil and the Structure of Power in Iran],” Ettela’at-
E Siasi-Eqtesadi, no. 259/260 (2009): 176–193; Masoud Nili and Mahdi
Rastad, “Addressing the Growth Failure of the Oil Economies: The Role of
Financial Development,” The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance
46, no. 5 (2007): 726–740; Jahangir Amouzegar, “Naft-e Iran: Balaa va
Barkat (Iran’s Oil: Curse and Blessing),” Iran Nameh 24 (2008), http://
www.fis-iran.org/fa/irannameh/volxxiv/iransoil; Abbas Abdi, “Nesbat-e
Naft va Democrasi [Relation of Oil and Democracy: An Interview with
Abbas Abdi],” Tarikh-e Irani, 2011, http://www.tarikhirani.ir;
“Populizm-e Nafti [Special Issue of Journal: Oil Populism],” Mehrnameh,
no. 10 (2011): 129–162; “Dolat-e Rantier/Mellat-e Rantier: Beh Bahaneh
Sad Salegi Naft dar Iran [Rentier State/Rentier Nation: On the Centenary
of Oil in Iran],” Rona, nos. 13–15 (2008).
26. For critiques of this trend see Mohammad Qaragozlu, “Gonah-e Naft
Chist? Naqdi bar Nazariyeh Neoliberali- e Dolat-e Rant [What is Oil’s
Fault? A Critique of the Neoliberal Rentier State Theory],” Akhbar-e Rooz,
March 21, 2011, accessed March 23, 2011, http://akhbar-rooz.com/
printfriendly.jsp?essayld=36786; Kaveh Ehsani, “Naft na Estebdad
Misazad, na Democrasy” (“Oil” is neither an explanation for authoritari-
anism, nor democracy) Tarikh Irani, 2012, http://www.tarikhirani.ir/
fa/files/13/bodyView/131/.
27. Bernard Mommer, Global Oil and the Nation State (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002); Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature,
Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1997); Salas, The Enduring Legacy. To these must be added the important
works of Jonathan DiJohn, From Windfall to Curse?: Oil and
Industrialization in Venezuela, 1920 to the Present (University Park: Penn
State University Press, 2009); and Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradoxes of
Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997).
28. For notable exceptions where the internal politics of the oil complex and
labor and employee relations figure prominently in the analysis, see foot-
note 5.
29. Michael Watts, “Resource Curse? Governmentality, Oil and Power in the
Niger Delta, Nigeria,” Geopolitics 9, no. 1 (2004): 50–80; Michael
Watts, “Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex, and Corporate
32 K. EHSANI

Social Responsibility,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources

30, no. 1 (2005): 373–407; Michael Watts, “Blood Oil: The Anatomy
of a Petro-Insurgency in the Niger Delta,” Focaal 52 (2008):
18–38. Ironically, there is a long established strategy by oil companies to
defuse community resistance to their incursions and appropriations by
hiring local men as security guards, and counting this as tangible benefits
and job creation for the dispossessed local populations. For example, in
2009 the Nigerian government attempted to make peace with militant
insurgents in the Delta region by granting them security contracts to
guard the pipelines they were blowing up. See Financial Times, April 10,
2017.
30. Suzana Sawyer, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil,
and Neoliberalism in Ecuador (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2004); Kristin Reed, Crude Existence: Environment and the Politics of Oil in
Northern Angola (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); and
Andrea Behrends, Stephen P. Reyna, and Gunther Schlee, eds., Crude
Domination: An Anthropology of Oil (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).
31. Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal, Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership
Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010); Marshall I. Goldman, Petrostate: Putin, Power,
and the New Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Thane
Gustafson, Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012).
32. Sarah Strauss, Stephanie Rupp, and Thomas Love, eds., Cultures of Energy:
Power, Practices, Technologies (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013);
Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden, Oil Culture (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2014); Dominic Boyer, “Special Issue: Energopower and
Biopower in Transition,” Anthropological Quarterly 87, no. 2 (2014); Imre
Szeman, “System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster,”
South Atlantic Quarterly 106, no. 4 (2007): 805–823.
33. Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American
Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 110; Christopher Jones,
Roots of Power: Energy and Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2014).
34. Gavin Bridge and Andrew Wood, “Less Is More: Spectres of Scarcity and
the Politics of Resource Access in the Upstream Oil Sector,” Geoforum 41,
no. 4 (2010): 565–576; Gavin Bridge, “Resource Geographies 1: Making
Carbon Economies, Old and New,” Progress in Human Geography 35, no.
6 (2010): 820–834; Bridge and le Billon, Oil.
35. Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of
Global Warming (London: Verso, 2016); Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in
 DISAPPEARING THE WORKERS: HOW LABOR IN THE OIL … 33

the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso,
2015).
36. Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Matthew Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and
the Forces of Capital (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013);
Imre Szeman, “How to Know about Oil: Energy Epistemologies and
Political Futures,” Journal of Canadian Studies 47, no. 3 (2013): 145–168.
37. Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude
(Vancouver: Greeystone, 2012).
38. Michael Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the
Development of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012);
Karl, The Paradox of Plenty; Naazneen Barma et al., Rents to Riches?: The
Political Economy of Natural Resource-Led Development (Washington, DC:
World Bank Publications, 2011); Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sacks, and
Joseph Stiglitz, eds., Escaping the Resource Curse (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007).
39. Anne Krueger, “The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking Society,”
American Economic Review 64, no. 3 (1974): 291–303; Susan
Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and
Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Hazem
el-Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, The Rentier State (London: Routledge,
1987). For critical analyses of the neoliberal shifts in conventional eco-
nomics as an academic discipline see Robert Wade, “Beware What You
Wish for: Lessons for International Political Economy from the
Transformation of Economics,” Review of International Political Economy
16, no. 1 (2009): 106–121; Michael A. Bernstein, A Perilous Progress:
Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001); Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, The
Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest
to Transform Latin American States (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2002).
40. For critiques of resource curse theories in Latin America see Jonathan
DiJohn, “Is There Really a Resource Curse? A Critical Survey of Theory
and Evidence,” Global Governance 17, no. 2 (2011): 167–184; Victor
Menaldo and Stephen Haber, “Natural Resources and Democracy in Latin
America: Neither Curse Nor Blessing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Latin
American Political Economy, ed. Javier Santiso (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 367–380.
41. For examples of such reductive and ahistorical views see for example Ross,
The Oil Curse; Giacomo Lucciani and Ghassan Salame, “The Oil Rent,
34 K. EHSANI

the Fiscal Crisis of the State, and Democratization,” in Democracy Without

Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World, ed. Ghassan
Salame (London: I.B.Tauris, 1995), 130–155.
42. James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal Global World
Order (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 194–210; James Ferguson,
“Seeing like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in
Neoliberal Africa,” American Anthropologist 107, no. 3 (2005): 377–382.
43. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and
Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1979).

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Tyler Priest for his generous critical

input. I would also like to thank Ervand Abrahamian, Robert Vitalis, Leon Fink,
Zachary Lockman, Asef Bayat, and Imre Szeman for their comments. Needless to
say, all remaining shortcomings are mine.
 PART I

The Political Life of Oil

 The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil
Extraction Relations in Colombia:
Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police
State, 1918–1938

Stefano Tijerina

INTRODUCTION
The history of early oil extraction operations in Colombia resonates with the
experiences of other Latin American nations that found themselves in the
middle of an imperial struggle for the control of the precious resource. In
the early twentieth century, British and US multinational oil corporations,
and to a lesser extent Canadian and Dutch companies, came face to face in
Mexico, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil,
and Chile over the control of oil extraction, export operations, and the
development of domestic markets, forcing federal governments to reevalu-
ate nationalist land use policies at the expense of local political interests.1 The
implementation and promotion of the Monroe Doctrine would ultimately
leave the future of the Western Hemisphere in the hands of the USA,
allowing their corporations to take over the control of the majority of the
supply of oil in the region by the 1920s, as the outcomes of World War I
forced British companies to abandon their interests in the Americas.
Companies such as Standard Oil of New Jersey and Canadian subsidiaries
such as the International Petroleum Corporation would reengineer the oil
extraction business across the hemisphere, in order to implement

S. Tijerina (&)
University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 37

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_3
38 S. TIJERINA

“self-contained solutions” that allowed them to circumvent the threats that

emanated from the internationalization and radicalization of labor; solutions
learned from the corporate experiences with oil labor strikes back in Canada
and the USA in the early 1910s.2 This historical research will center on the
social and political dynamics that developed between Colombia’s civil
society, workers, local politicians, national policymakers, foreign workers
and managers, and corporate leadership, as oil extraction operations were set
in motion during the early 1920s. The political life of oil workers will be at
the forefront of this analysis, and particularly how they reacted to the
“self-contained solutions” imported and implemented by Standard Oil of
New Jersey through its Canadian subsidiary, Tropical Oil, and in compliance
with the permissive and unregulated oil policy structures established by the
Colombian government.
In Colombia, the beginning of the United Fruit Company’s banana
export operations in 1899 marked the incremental growing presence of US
business interests.3 This was further advanced by the implementation of
vertical integration strategies that increased the presence of US interests,
capitalizing on the pro-business policies and foreign business incentives
designed and implemented by the administration of President Rafael Reyes
(1904–1909). Nevertheless, the outreach of the United Fruit Company’s
operation would not compare to the magnitude and impact of Standard
Oil of New Jersey’s oil operation in Colombia. The vertical integration
between Tropical Oil and Standard Oil of New Jersey’s Canadian sub-
sidiary, Andian National Corporation, allowed the US company not only to
monopolize the extraction but the transportation and final export of crude
oil throughout the first half of the twentieth century.4
Before the emergence of nationalist policies that followed the Mexican
Revolution, large oil corporations had experienced the privileges of
assuming “de facto control of national resources” overseas.5 The incidents
and policies that followed the 1910 revolution made it clear that free
market competition in Latin American markets was not an effective busi-
ness strategy, that there was a need for effective government-business
cooperation in order to guarantee the defense of business interests abroad,
that there was a need for preserving business-friendly governments in the
region, that these governments should be willing to use the power of the
state in order to control local workers and guarantee free market policies,
and that domestic refining capabilities to satisfy local demand should be
tightly regulated and controlled by the foreign business interest.
The most significant lesson of US corporations after the Mexico expe-
rience was that effective government-business cooperation had to be
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 39

constructed around the idea of national security. The policies implemented

in the 1920s for the management of national reserves were instrumental in
keeping prices high back home while keeping them low abroad. In the
name of national security, US oil corporations agreed to control the pro-
duction of their local supply in accordance with federal policies, compen-
sating it with aggressive “investments in overseas areas.”6 By 1929, US
direct investment in oil production zones across the Western Hemisphere
had increased 250%, thanks to the government-business partnerships that
set the tone in places like Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.7 These part-
nerships would set the foundations for the further expansion of the defi-
nition of national security. In efforts to protect their investments in South
America, and in order to avoid the mistakes made in Mexico, US oil
corporations were able to define their investments and foreign capital as
part of the idea of national security. From that point forward, any
nationalist movement overseas or any physical threat to US foreign inter-
ests became a matter of national security. In the case of oil, labor upheaval
became the biggest concern, emphasizing even more the importance of
strong government-business partnerships across the region.
Founded in 1918, the National Association for the Protection of
American Rights in Mexico (NAPARM) would become the institutional
pillar for future government-business partnerships.8 The lobby organiza-
tion funded exclusively by US oil companies initially pressured the US
government to “take whatever steps were necessary” in order to protect
US interests, and although they failed to stop the nationalization of the oil
industry in Mexico, they did set the tone in South America. There was
resonant support “for vigorous protection of American property rights
against ‘radical’ policies” across the Washington circles, and the idea that
any nationalist initiative represented an attack against US interests became
the norm.9 The challenge was convincing foreign government to share the
same vision.
The effectiveness of the initiative would be tested after the 1920s when
US oil companies made their way into the region in order to implement
their business strategy. This included transplanting Fordist ideas, capital-
izing on the deregulated nature of labor and land use policies, drafting and
designing petroleum policies to their liking, securing pro-business nor-
mative systems that benefited them as well as the political elites in power,
and convincing the local government to favor foreign corporate interests
over local worker’s rights. Government needed to buy in on the Fordist
principles that breaking oil work into small deskilled tasks was good policy,
40 S. TIJERINA

and that the minimization of labor costs at the expense of constructing a

blue collar middle class while maximizing profits for the foreign company
was good for nation building and long-term economic development.
Labor uprising remained the biggest threat to corporate interests in
South America. The Bayonne strike that had taken place in New Jersey in
July 1915 against Standard Oil of New Jersey had prepared management
for similar events in South America.10 In efforts to solve the problems of
labor dispute and mitigate the threats, dangers, and destruction experi-
enced that summer, executives from the oil corporation opted to “devise a
self-contained solution” that would not only distance workers from
unionizing but also allow management to deal directly with workers’ issues,
isolating them from the national and international debates that challenged
capitalism.11 These self-contained solutions would then be exported to
South American oil fields in the 1920s as part of their business strategy.
Standard Oil of New Jersey and its Canadian subsidiaries transplanted
the legislative, judicial, and extralegal means that they enjoyed back in the
USA and instituted those same privileges in South America. The same
autocratic management strategies that prevailed during the pre-Bayonne
era would be replicated across the region, where they found the same
“political will” among the local elites.
The frontier-type settlement characteristic of oil operations back in the
USA would be replicated. Company towns were constructed with the same
intentions of isolating workers from middle and upper management, and
exposing them to the same miserable conditions to which American
workers were once exposed. With the sweat and hard work of local grunt
workers, oil company towns in South America would be constructed in
order to create an artificial space between foreigners and locals, a distinctive
separation that would also be evident in the worker-management relations
that would evolve in places like Barrancabermeja, Colombia.12
In 1920, while Standard Oil of New Jersey was instituting an unprece-
dented labor contract that included no discrimination, collective bargaining
via the management-worker internal dispute system, grievance resolution,
increased wages, and an Eight-hour work day among other benefits, in
Colombia they were working out a deal with the local government in order
to replicate the inhumane labor conditions that had led to violent con-
frontations in places like New Jersey, Colorado, and Oklahoma.13 The
effectiveness of the government-business partnership in Colombia would set
the tone for further capitalist expansionists efforts across the region.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 41

THE COLOMBIAN EXPERIMENT

By 1905, it was evident that there was crude oil beneath Colombian territory.
Colombian policymakers had heard the rumors, Caudillos in the Santander
region had seen the crude bubble effortlessly from beneath the earth, and local
entrepreneurs were beginning to piece together the lucrative business
opportunity behind this new industrial endeavor. British, American, and
Canadian investors were also well aware of some of the deposits, but they held
the right end of the stick; they had the capital, technology, market, and the
“know how” behind the extraction, transportation, refining, and commer-
cialization of oil. This advantage manifested itself during the initial oil con-
cession negotiations. The De Mares concession would be awarded to Tropical
Oil Company.14 Negotiations between the Canadian subsidiary and the
Colombian government would unfold in the absence of a petroleum code, a
modern land use policy, and labor regulation. The foreign corporation would
eventually become instrumental in the definition and design of the Petroleum
Code of 1919, the same legislation that would set the parameters for future oil
policy in Colombia. By the early 1920s, an initial energy policy would begin its
implementation stage, revealing the social and labor implications behind its
biases. Opposition to the 1919 Code and the unfavorable labor conditions
established by Tropical Oil would find an initial voice in labor organizing and
soon after in the nationalist left. Conflict would unfold between Tropical Oil
and the nationalist-labor coalition throughout the interwar years, forcing the
national government to take a position on the issue. Government’s use of
police force against civilians during the 1924, 1927, 1935, and 1938 labor
strikes sent a clear message to the international community that Colombia was
a defender of classic liberal ideals. As in the case of gold, petroleum business
development and policy eventually favored the interests of foreign investors,
limiting the capacity of Colombian nationals to capitalize on the commer-
cialization of their national resources. Labor and populist leader Jorge Eliécer
Gaitán would mount a strong opposition against the corporatist initiative, but
this would come to an end with his assassination in 1948. From that moment
onward Colombian oil workers were left politically defenseless against the
transnational petroleum forces.
Tropical Oil encountered a force to reckon with, as Colombian
nationalists mounted opposition against foreign interventionism that could
result in greater loss of sovereignty. There was a strong anti-American
sentiment in the air as a result of Washington’s previous participation in
aiding Panamanians gain independence from Colombia in 1903, and more
42 S. TIJERINA

particularly as the revenues from the Panamá Canal began to flow north-
ward. Nationalists gained even greater ground as they found in urban labor
groups an ally to oppose the internationalization of Colombia’s economy,
an issue that threatened the interests of native artisans and producers, and
that allowed the left-leaning liberals to challenge the conservatives politi-
cally.15 The government’s efforts to establish closer relations with the
international system eventually resulted in the outbreak of labor strikes
throughout 1918 and the violent incidents of March 1919, which resulted
in the death of twenty protesters shot by Colombian soldiers, marking the
beginning of the government’s reprisal against workers.16 Liberal activist,
Enrique Olaya Herrera, joined the voices of the numerous labor groups
that criticized the government for its brutal use of force and the open door
policy, calling for social revolution and government accountability.17
Petroleum policy, part of president Marco Fidel Suárez’s vision of the
internationalization and modernization of Colombia’s economy, was
negotiated under ideological pressure from the left.18 Activists, leftist liberals,
and labor organizers had joined a global socialist movement against this new
international political economy initiative that left power and control of
national resources in the hands of private corporations.19 In February of
1919, Barcelona’s industry was interrupted by labor strikes that targeted
Canadian owned Riegos y Fuerzas del Ebro from which an eight-hour
working day was gained.20 In Canada, the Winnipeg General Strike of March
1919 had paved the way for labor reforms and in the USA numerous strikes
unfolded from coast to coast, including the Great Steel Strike of September
1919 that followed the oil uprisings in Bayonne and Oklahoma.21
Colombian society had reached an ideological quagmire that tran-
scended the traditional debates of Liberal and Conservative politics. The
working class was beginning to carve out its own political space, together
with the Socialist and Communist intellectuals that found an ally in the
working class and the socially disenfranchised.22 Sectors of the
Conservative Party had branched out into radical isolationists that opposed
the internationalization of the national economy. Meanwhile, the Liberals
had polarized into mainstream and radical factions.
The internationalization of Colombia’s economy, favored by the political
status quo, found opposition from both the Left and the radical Right. It was
under these social and political realities that the design and development of
oil policy unfolded. Such was the juxtaposition of these contradictory reali-
ties that the consolidation of the two largest labor unions was finalized while
oil concession negotiations between Standard Oil of New Jersey and Marco
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 43

Fidel Suárez’s administration unfolded. In 1919, the Colombian govern-

ment would lead the nation into a new era of economic liberalism, awarding
the subsidiary Tropical Oil control of subsoil resources in Colombia, and the
response would come from below through the consolidation of the Sindicato
Central de Obreros (Central Worker’s Syndicate) and the Confederación de
Acción Social (Social Action Confederation).23
As part of the united voice, the Asamblea Obrera (Workers’ Assembly)
“announced their commitment to social, moral, and economic unity and
their inclusion in the international workers’ movement,” as well as their
rejection of traditional partisan politics.24 This did not detract the
Colombian government from awarding the De Mares concession to
Tropical Oil. The stage was set, Colombian labor unions would play the
role of checks and balances against the foreign corporation in the absence
of government institutions or laws that forced the oil company to comply
with issues of national sovereignty.
Marco Fidel Suárez’s administration was forced to deal with the social
and nationalist demands emanating from the left-leaning Liberals and the
leftist syndicates, and an inherited nationalist comprehensive oil policy,
while at the same time moving forward with the modernization of the
state.25 Moreover, it was forced to negotiate a totally different oil deal than
the ones previously negotiated in Mexico, knowing well that the impact of
the Mexican Revolution had resonated across the Western Hemisphere.
The 1917 Mexican Constitution had become a model to emulate, some-
thing that did not favor the interests of Tropical Oil.26
This pressure would be reflected in the Petroleum Law of 1919, which
was regarded by foreign oil executives as “restrictive.”27 Contrary to the
deals obtained by foreign oil companies in México prior to the Revolution,
the De Mares deal was taxed at a higher rate and royalties were less gen-
erous.28 Foreign corporations interested in exploiting oil in Colombia were
now forced to give up some of their autonomy and face legislative limi-
tations that forced them to be more strategic and efficient in their opera-
tion. Perhaps, the most problematic of the constrains imposed by the
Marco Fidel Suárez administration was limiting concessions to twenty
years, “and providing for state takeover at the end of the term…an inno-
vation favorable to the national government and one that oilmen had not
yet encountered on entry into a Latin American country.”29
It was evident that Colombian nationalists had learned from the lessons
of the Mexican Revolution. In essence, the “free exploitation of oil lands”
to which transnational corporations were accustomed ceased to exist, at
44 S. TIJERINA

least on paper. The 1919 policy challenged the status quo of international
petroleum businesses.
Nationalists and the working class responded positively to executive decree
No. 1255 of June 20, 1919. The decree limited subsoil ownership exclusively
to Colombian nationals, and directed newly created government institutions
such as the Bureau of Statistics for Petroleum Mines and the Ministry of
Public Works to regulate and manage oil exploration across the country.30
Properly implemented, this decree could subject foreign corporations to
Colombian laws, and would regulate their power and influence. The oil boom
was hyped by the local media, and the increasing presence of foreign engineers
and oil company executives led policymakers and Colombians in general to
believe that oil was their ticket to growth, prosperity, and economic devel-
opment. Colombian media echoed the reports of Canadian and American
press reports that the high-grade oil found under the De Mares concession
was, according to “trade men,” an industrial and extractive field of great
promise waiting to be developed since “great quantities” of oil had been
identified across the national territory.31 Oil was the gateway to modernity.
In December 1919, a watered-down deal from the one initially inherited
from the Vicente Concha administration was signed between the
Colombian government and Standard Oil of New Jersey, just a month after
Congress had approved legislation that awarded Colombian workers the
right to strike. The nationalist character of the initial decree, inspired by
the Mexican Revolution, was declared unconstitutional by sectors of the
Colombian Supreme Court, reversing the nationalization of the subsoil, and
awarding Tropical Oil greater power. The Supreme Court would issue a
statement that backed the corporatist idea that the development of an oil
industry in the hands of foreign interests was healthy for the national
economy and that it did not go against the interests of Colombian society.32
The Supreme Court’s decision and its pro-foreign business statement
represented a direct attack on the nationalists, socialists, and the working
class. This legal decision set forth the confrontation between labor and
foreign capital in Colombia.

Labor Realities at Barrancabermeja

The initiation of Tropical Oil’s operations in Colombia sheds light on the
internal social conflict between agrarian and industrial societies, capitalist
business leaders and traditional elites, federal and regional governments,
modernization and tradition, secularism and the Catholic Church,
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 45

nationalism and internationalism, socialism and capitalism, and conserva-

tive paternalist structures that opposed the forces that wanted to break
away from cultural, economic, political, economic and social isolationism.
Colombian entrepreneurs, professionals, investors, pro laissez-faire politi-
cians, and even sectors of the merchant class favored the internationaliza-
tion of the economy and welcomed the establishment of foreign-controlled
oil extraction operations in the name of modernity. Sectors of the industrial
labor force also welcomed the presence of Tropical Oil because it repre-
sented jobs and possibly higher incomes. Even rural laborers from the
Magdalena Medio region welcomed the new extractive operation because
it represented job opportunities and indirect economic development for a
region that had always been abandoned by the state.
Conservatives with nationalist and isolationist inclinations rejected the
presence of Tropical Oil, paralleling the protectionist argument of
Socialists, left-leaning Liberals, and labor unions across the country.
Clearly, the country was divided over the issue, however that did not stop
the Company from moving forward with their operation since they had the
support of the government.
The voice of opposition had no resonance on the final decision to move
forward with oil extraction and was silenced by the pressure mounted by oil
executives and Colombian advocates interested in capitalizing from this
new business initiative. The aftermath of the concession negotiations
would reveal that there was enormous pressure from Colombia’s business
class to finalize negotiations in favor of Tropical Oil.33
Foreign investors and engineers were not the only ones interested in the
development of an oil industry. Domestic investors were also committed to
the development of a business-friendly oil policy that would allow them to
take risks on a proven lucrative business. Colombian entrepreneurs were
well aware of the wealth-generating machine behind oil drilling in the USA
and Mexico, and more recently in Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, and
Venezuela.34 Colombian investors had tried to develop the industry earlier
but they lacked the capital and the will to establish joint ventures, plus they
did not possess the “know how,” industrial capacity, infrastructure, and
technology to develop an industry from scratch. Instead, they opted to
make money by buying and selling land concessions to foreign investors as
in the case of Roberto de Mares and Virgilio de Barco, and in other
instances large land owners and regional Caudillos opted to sell or rent
their land or partnered with foreign investors.35
46 S. TIJERINA

An emerging professional and educated class was also in favor of the

presence of the foreign company. In addition to the other contractual
requisites previously mentioned, Tropical Oil was obliged to secure at least
a quarter of the supervisory jobs for Colombian natives.36 However, the
educated professionals did not have the skill set demanded by the oil
industry. Engineers, business, and personnel managers had to be imported
from the USA and Canada. Some management jobs did favor native born
such as Francisco Escobar, one of the three officers for Tropical Oil chosen
by Standard Oil New Jersey in 1916.37
Initially, Tropical Oil made an executive decision to import all skilled
labor from the USA and Canada. Drillers, tool men, and other trained
personnel were hired under very favorable 1-year contract that surpassed
any of the labor benefits seen by workers in Colombia or even back in
North America.38 They were paid in dollars at the American pay scale of
the time that averaged US$1407 per year.39 In addition, the foreign labor
force received free health care, the comforts of the company towns con-
structed for foreigners, “plus transportation to and from the country under
at least a one-year contract.”40
Colombian workers were not protected by legislation, although they did
have the legal right to strike under very strict parameters established under
Law 21 of 1920.41 On paper, workers were also protected by contractual
agreements within the concession that demanded that Tropical Oil offer
hospital care and medical treatment to all workers.42 Clause six of the
agreement obligated the company to implement oil extractive methods and
other scientific and technical procedures that assured the efficiency of the
operation and the protection of all workers against explosions and other
industrial accidents.43
Oil executives, with the help of local authorities, took advantage of
workers’ lack of organization and awareness of their legal rights, and
refused to provide the technical training, benefits, and wage scales to which
workers were entitled according to prevailing industry standards. These
executives grasped the power and influence of paternalistic social relations
in the Barrancabermeja region, and took full advantage of it. The majority
of the workers in the region were not unionized and lacked industrial skills,
as a result of the nation’s low levels of industrialization and the natural
geographical dispersion.44
Local workers were indispensable because they could deal with the harsh
conditions of the Barrancabermeja region, something that could be intol-
erable for imported unskilled workers.45 The concession was located
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 47

560 km up the Magdalena River, and it lied in an area covered by “dense

tropical growth” that lacked housing and transportation amenities.46 Its
riverbank location lacked infrastructure, limiting its access to dirt roads,
ferry services, and the sporadic small engine airplane. The region was iso-
lated and distant from urban centers, and constantly bombarded by
oppressive heat, humidity, and an unending cloud of mosquitoes.
Nevertheless, it would become the epicenter of oil production in Colombia.
Once work got started, it became evident that it was impossible to rely
solely on local workers. By 1920, Colombia’s unskilled labor force was
therefore in high demand, as the company began to clear the land and
construct the infrastructure for subsequent drilling, management, and
transportation of the final product.47
Colombians were hired as “packers, canoe men, machete and ax men for
cutting trails and building roads,” and other semi-skilled workers were hired
as carpenters, blacksmiths, and later on as pipe layers and welders.48 As in the
case of Mexico, Venezuela and Peru, oil executives systematically demerited
the local worker, just like they had done in Canada and the USA.49 The locals
were “uncivilized” and needed to be tamed; as indicated by company man-
agement, Colombian semi-skilled workers were “slow and required a great
deal of supervision.”50 The worker, as part of the untamed wilderness, nee-
ded to be civilized by the modern pioneer, the American civil engineer.51
Tropical Oil executives decided early on that unskilled workers would
not be hired on an annual contract like their imported counterparts, but
instead contracted on a piecework basis, since this was culturally acceptable
under common labor agreements to compensate for the harsh local con-
ditions.52 Nevertheless, salaries needed to be higher than the Colombian
standards in order to attract workers to the harsh and inhospitable
Barrancabermeja region. Higher than average national salaries for unskilled
workers, recruitment of labor from multiple national regions, and the
ability to market the myth of hope and prosperity behind the black gold,
allowed the company to recruit plenty of labor and develop a disjointed
workforce that would find it culturally difficult to organize collectively.53
Moreover, the company took advantage of the “absence of laws and a
judicial apparatus to resolve labor conflict” and the Conservative’s desire to
please foreign investors.54 The government’s permissiveness would become
the foundation for the replication of the government-business partnerships
that at one point had been established in the USA. Although less intimate
then back home, the partnership would allow the company to abuse the
Colombian worker at their discretion with no accountability whatsoever.
48 S. TIJERINA

Medellín, the closest urban center, became one of the best options for
the supply of unskilled and semi-skilled labor. The Colombian Caribbean
coast was also a good recruiting center, particularly since the black popu-
lation, according to the company, was resilient to the tropical conditions of
Barrancabermeja.55 Together with workers from the Santander region,
they joined the local workforce that had settled in the area after the
Thousand Days’ War (1898–1902), attracted by the “availability of public
or unclaimed arable land.”56
The threat posed by the independent and radical colonos who had
cleared, worked, and claimed the unsettled territory and who “viewed the
encroachment by foreign or absentee investors with suspicion,” was
watered down by the regionalization of the workforce, thus resolving any
other threats to the interests of Tropical Oil.57 But the key to the problem
of labor organizing and anti-American sentiment relied on higher salaries.
In 1920, the company calculated that a common laborer should be paid
an average of US$0.60 per day, cargo handlers and other semi-skilled work
was set at an average of US$1.20 per day, and carpenters, blacksmiths,
masons, and similar workmen were contracted at an average of US$2.5 per
day.58 Initially, the company planned to offer a food allowance and
housing, and in some instances transportation and lodging, as additional
benefits added to the labor agreement in efforts to maintain a steady
workforce and avoid turnovers among temporary workers.59
These high wages that guaranteed worker’s willingness “to go into the
jungles of the interior and stay on the job for any length of time” while
constantly exposed to malaria, were no match to the US$3.85 to US$4.00
per day being earned by the American and Canadian labor force which
would eventually enjoy the comforts of a company town inside the
Barrancabermeja complex, erected by the sweat and labor of the native
worker.60 Initial benefit plans were revised downwards once the ground
was broken and a vast pool of workers was imported, as the managers
quickly accommodated to the idiosyncrasy of the local worker.61
Tropical Oil’s policies marked a clear-cut line between Colombian and
foreign workers. Their interpretations of the social, cultural, and intellec-
tual characteristics of local workers justified their labor policies, and the
Colombian authorities stood behind these misconceptions. The govern-
ment did explicitly demand middle management jobs for Colombians
under oil legislation, but never any benefits or protections for unskilled or
semi-skilled workers. The passiveness of the local and federal government
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 49

in matters of labor relations was a clear indication that the government

favored corporate interests.
A 1921 report from the United States Department of Commerce
indicated that even though it would be difficult “to collect a fairly efficient
crew of natives for all classes of work necessary,” their “exacting” character
generated a more manageable labor environment for Tropical Oil.62
Colombian workers, assumed the Department of Commerce, were passive
and conformist. They did not demand livable wages, accommodations,
meal plans, or any other type of benefits.63 The company had entered the
Colombian market with the idea of replicating the Fordist model of welfare
capitalist strategies introduced by Clarence J. Hicks and William Mackenzie
King, but they quickly moved away from the self-contained solutions,
switching to an autocratic management model tainted by racism and social
Darwinism.64
It was assumed that feeding arrangements and accommodations only
had to be provided to “foreign drill crews” since local workers were usually
followed by their women who cooked for them; in fact, the peons, as they
were referred to by the foreign personnel, were expected “to put up their
own shelters, made of the ever-present bamboo poles and palm that-
ches.”65 Why provide them with housing and food, if with a machete they
could build their own dwelling in a couple of hours, and with cow hooves,
corn, yucca, and plantain their wife could fix a meal.66
Drilling camps and even the company town in Barrancabermeja would
be segregated between foreigners and locals.67 In South America, it was
the corporative way of establishing a barrier between the civilized and
uncivilized. By the mid 1920s, foreign drill crews lived together with
managers and engineers, where some of the Colombian supervisory per-
sonnel also lived. Next to them, separated by a gated community, were the
laborers and semi-skilled workers living in their bamboo and palm-thatched
homes.
In the absence of labor legislation, Tropical Oil managers centered their
efforts on the construction of infrastructure and facilities that suited the
needs of foreign workers unaccustomed to the demands and hardships of
tropical climates.68 In addition to electrification, the construction of
housing, entertainment facilities, food stores, and other amenities to which
the foreign worker was used to, Tropical Oil established health facilities
including the supply of a medical outfit and special equipment to combat
malaria fevers, dysentery, and other tropical diseases in each of the camp
sites.69
50 S. TIJERINA

There were, however, no preventive policies or safety measures imple-

mented by the company in order to protect local workers from dangerous
tasks and accidental risks. Some of the risky jobs included cleaning up the
navigational routes of the Magdalena River in order to facilitate the
transportation of heavy machinery and the mobilization of personnel,
where the worker was exposed to malaria, the occasional venomous snake
or deadly alligator.70 The construction of roads and trails that connected
the different oil wells was also dangerous, particularly since these connec-
tors depended on the construction of bridges and embankments across
steep mountainous terrain, with no protection or safety measures.71
Tearing down the jungle with ax and machete in order to facilitate the
construction of camps and roads, and the actual exploration and
exploitation oil, combined with the exposure to tropical diseases and typ-
ical explosions and other accidents of the time made it an unsafe and
life-threatening environment.72
There was no need for sanitation or safety policies because foreign
workers were not exposed to these elements. Geologists, engineers, and
managers were, for the most part, protected from the elements and
unexposed to dangers, and the same could be said about foreign workers
who were limited to exploration, drilling, wildcatting, and the construction
of wooden towers.73 Malaria prevention and treatment was also geared
toward foreign personnel, while local workers were left to their own device.
The discrimination against the Colombian worker was evident; they were
denied sanitary services and facilities, protection against the elements, and
safe labor conditions. Colombian workers were defenseless, carrying out
their daily work in a region that initially lacked federal or regional state
presence, completely at the mercy of the foreign employer.
Tropical Oil’s unscrupulous labor policies even generated conflict
between local labor and Caribbean and Antillean immigrant labor, because
even these black workers were given better benefits and more advanta-
geous labor packages.74 Yumecas, as they were called, were considered
reliant workers due to their experience in similar labor conditions, working
with banana, sugar, and other commodities in the Caribbean.75 They were
hired full-time, and were offered housing, health, and other benefits that
were denied to the Colombian worker.76 In the majority of cases, they
carried out the same tasks assigned to local workers but in some instances,
based on their previous experience, they landed skilled jobs in carpentry
and welding. They were part of the labor elite and they had the advantage
of speaking English, thus allowing them to “easily and directly
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 51

communicate with foremen, manager, and engineers.”77 In response to the

labor problems generated from the workers’ complaints, managers even
contemplated the idea of resolving the issue by replacing the thousands of
Colombian workers with Yumecas but the initiative was rejected by
Colombian authorities that wanted to avoid a greater inflow of blacks into
the country.78
Their segregationist policies included importing a Protestant minister
from Johnston, Pennsylvania, to tailor to the spiritual needs of the foreign
oil workers. Marking a clear-cut line between the company and the local
Catholic culture, company executives recruited Reverend A.R. Sweet and
his wife, offering him a lucrative deal that paralleled the salary of the “most
skilled workmen in the outfit.”79 Asked by local Pennsylvania media if he
considered the new task “intriguing” and “unique,” Reverend Sweet
responded that not only was the position a novelty but also the financial
reward as well.80 He explained that he would be working exclusively for
the close to 500 Canadian and American workers established in
Barrancabermeja.81 Reverend Sweet would receive for his spiritual services
“an increase in salary of about 100% over his Johnston position,” in
addition to “a fine home furnished free together with all the up-to-date
equipment,” as well all paid relocation costs and “three months leave of
absence with all expenses paid to the States after two years on the job.”82
Managers and middle management enjoyed the comforts and luxuries,
including access to top of the line amenities, all imported into the
Barrancabermeja complex to fill the needs of American and Canadian
workers. Reverend Sweet’s labor package was common among the foreign
workers but uncommon for those residing in North America. Many
incentives were offered by Tropical Oil to lure foreign workers. Electrical
engineer Roy J. Jones benefited from all paid relocation costs and was able
to bring his wife and three sons with him.83 The company also covered the
costs of relocation of the wife of superintendent of drilling Vern C. Petty; it
seemed to be a common labor incentive among North American work-
ers.84 Professionals also received a completely furnished home located
within the company town that included a club “and all the unusual
amusements, a tennis court, an orchestra, and bungalows with the wealth
of fruits and flowers that surpassed northern understanding.”85
It was a privilege to be part of a foreign operation like the one managed
by Tropical Oil as long as one was foreign. Locals could see the disparities
and injustice with their own eyes, watching from their candle-lit somber
52 S. TIJERINA

homes the electric lit homes of the foreigners resting and entertaining
themselves inside their gated community.
While local workers were exposed to drinking untreated drinking water
from the Magdalena River that was more like drinking “cyanide, from all the
garbage, sewage, and corpses” dumped in it, foreigners enjoyed the benefits
of a top of the line filtering plant that provided 16,000 gallons of pure water
per day.86 The thousands of “rough-necks” imported to work in oil camps
faced chronic malnutrition, relentless heat and humidity, and “air so foul
that it would rot metal and poison food,” while foreigners were nurtured
with “fresh refrigerated vegetables and live cattle” regularly shipped to the
company town by boat and twin-motored airplanes.87 Outside the company
town prostitution and alcoholism flourished while inside, Fordist discipline
prevailed. No foreigner was allowed to “venture outside after dark without
his mosquito netting,” all were to “lie down for half an hour before meals
and sip hot tea,” all had to consume salt tablets, “alcohol was prohibited,”
and so was “fraternizing with anyone outside camp.”88
Foreigners had electricity, sanitation, hospitals, and good salaries, while
the locals had no amenities; it was night and day, light and darkness. But
even under these inhuman conditions, it was hard for workers to react
because they were recruited from numerous geographical areas, they were
not integrated to the local community, and had no leadership to rely on for
guidance except for the Catholic church that interceded on behalf of
Conservative interests, favoring the patriarchal system to social control.
The rural labor force targeted by Tropical Oil recruiters were initially not in
tune with their urban counterparts, they were marginalized, and for the
most part disconnected from the ideas of labor organizing and social
revolution.
This would slowly change throughout the 1920s as organized labor
began to indoctrinate the Barrancabermeja workers on the virtues of
Socialism and the rights to organize and demand workers’ rights. After
1921, when the Municipality of Barrancabermeja was created, thus legit-
imizing the presence of regional and federal authorities, local Tropical Oil
workers also petitioned local authorities and the Catholic prefecture of
Zapatoca, demanding the fulfillment of concessional labor clauses that
required the company to provide all workers with hospital services, drugs,
and medical treatment.89
A year after breaking ground at Barrancabermeja, Colombian workers
were already vociferous about their mistreatment. A 1921 press release
spoke on behalf of the workers, indicating that they were dying because of
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 53

the company’s carelessness, the abandonment of the Colombian worker,

and the unlivable conditions to which they were exposed, including
housing and sanitation.90 The report indicated that close to 100 workers
had died within a period of 3 months, that many others were suffering
from tropical diseases, and that they were being denied medical attention
and hospital space.91
The sick, and those suffering from work-related injuries were fired after
the petition was issued. The hiring process of unskilled and semi-skilled
labor became a rotating door. Tropical Oil’s reliance on a private hiring
agency to carry out labor recruitment removed accountability away from the
company.92 Within the first five years of operation (1920–1925), more than
2000 workers passed through the Barrancabermeja complex and by 1928
that number had reached close to 5000 workers.93 Tensions between local
workers and the Tropical Oil executives escalated throughout the 1920s, as
the workers’ petitions and demands for greater government intervention
failed to change the attitude of their employer. These outcomes inevitably
led to the clandestine organization of La Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) in
February 1923 and the first labor strike in October 1924.94

The Reaction of Workers

For foreigners, Barrancabermeja was a dangerous and untamed jungle but
for locals it was home and a place to make a living. Colombian workers saw
a very different world than the foreigners; one of injustice, discrimination,
and social marginalization. The oil strike of 1924 was focused on demands
for improved housing, sanitation, health, safety, and to a lesser degree on
increase in wages. It marked the beginning of a history of confrontations
between labor and capital that continues to this day.95 Government’s use
of force to oppress the Colombian workers revealed that for the state,
foreign interests represented the national interest. This incident set the
tone for the ongoing confrontation between the radical left and the capi-
talist government-business partnership in Barrancabermeja.
The marginalized workers found in Raúl Eduardo Mahecha the lead-
ership and cohesion necessary to confront La Troco (Tropical Oil).
Mahecha became the heart of the October 7, 1924 strike, however, his
objective went beyond the advancement of worker’s grievances, he was
pushing for a greater cause, social revolution.96 Mahecha was a revolu-
tionary communist activist who had moved to the Barrancabermeja region
to help organize the first industrial workers in Colombia. Through his
54 S. TIJERINA

newspaper Vanguardia Obrera that he began to shed light on the abusive

practices and injustices of La Troco. Soon after his arrival, he became the
workers’ lawyer and it was through him that oil workers initially reached a
labor agreement with the company in January of that year.
Raúl Eduardo Mahecha had called the strike early in September after the
company refused to fulfill any of the terms of the agreement. The Minister
of Industry, General Diógenes A. Reyes, accepted the terms of the strike
after workers had fully complied with the parameters stipulated by Law 21,
1920 regarding conciliation and arbitration.97 The government requested
the workers to extend the deadline of the strike while they negotiated with
La Troco, but the company refused to negotiate. Minister Reyes reported
on October 9 that the company did not comply with the agreement that
included increase in salaries, improvement of meals and living conditions at
camps, removal of abusive personnel, and more humane treatment of
employees.98 The government was forced to accept the peaceful strike in
the hope that the company would fulfill its promises.
According to the company, the strike that began on October 7 when
300 rail and oil workers refused to work was illegal because it did not
comply with the laws regarding labor strikes.99 The company also indicated
that oil workers were paid higher than the average Colombian wages
($1.50 for 8.5 hours work per day) and their well being was being looked
after by the company that was generous to the local workers; that the pact
established between Minister Reyes and the labor union was merely a
proposal that had never been accepted by the company, which dismissed it
as political posturing and propaganda.100 Since there was no pact and the
labor union did not officially represent company workers, the foreman had
no other choice but to fire them on the spot.
What followed later that afternoon was a demonstration lead by a
Venezuelan organizer known as Villeta.101 About 150 men proceeded to
the Infanta camp where they tampered with the water and electrical plants
throughout the night.102 According to company executives, many of the
workers were forced to join the strike the next morning including some
who were physically abused by labor organizers, nevertheless more than six
hundred men gathered in Barrancabermeja.103
On October 10, at the request of the company, Minister Reyes called in
troops from Medellín to preserve the peace.104 Meanwhile, the company
argued that the strike was illegal because it violated Law 21. Workers had
violated the self-contained solutions imported by Standard Oil of New
Jersey and implemented by the Conservative administration of Marco Fidel
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 55

Suárez, which allowed for arbitration but not strikes. Although the workers
did approach the company with their notification of the strike through a
three-member delegation as requested by the law, the company did not
accept the legitimacy of the strike or the petition of the workers.105
Moreover, the company denied that they had ever signed any type of
agreement with the workers earlier that year and that the claims were all
part of Minister Reyes’ efforts to gain popularity and advance his political
career.106
By the time the military arrived, the workers had seized
Barrancabermeja, organizing themselves in military fashion. Luckily for the
foreigners in the company town, the police force, under the command of
Coronel Evaristo Aldana, had established a perimeter between the strikers
and the company town.107 On October 11, the conflict escalated further.
As the number of demonstrators increased to 3000, the police reported
that they could no longer contain the situation. This prompted local offi-
cials to urge the company to accept a settlement.108
The following morning the strikers impeded other workers from
returning to work, blocking the streets and the entrance to the com-
pany.109 Meanwhile, Geo C. Schweickert, representative of the company,
pressured the authorities to buy some time while a tank and an additional
100 men arrived.110 That evening government representative Bernardo de
J. Caicedo, working on behalf of Minister Reyes, told Schweickert that the
strikers were willing to stop all violence if Mr. Schlesinger and Mr. Meek
were fired; with no other choice La Troco accepted their resignation.111
Nevertheless, the company refused to legitimize the strike by not meeting
with the workers’ representatives, escalating the conflict one more time.
Minister Reyes, on his way to Barrancabermeja, demanded that the com-
pany negotiate but company executives refused, claiming this would set a
bad precedent by depriving the company of resorting to forced arbitration,
and trigger future uprisings.
Minister Reyes arrived in Barrancabermeja accompanied by Isidoro
Molina, a representative of the Federación Laboral Central (Central Labor
Federation), something that irritated the company executives. However, an
agreement was reached between Mr. Lehan, manager of the company, and
Minister Reyes.112 The agreement included all the petitions that had been
discussed earlier that year; better quantity and quality of food supplied to
workers as supervised by a Colombian employee, the replacement of old
housing camps, hospital beds and care for the lowest paid workers, the
right to annual paid vacation, English and Spanish classes offered to
56 S. TIJERINA

workers, and overtime paid at 60% higher than the normal wage.113 The
company, on the other hand, did not accept an increase in wages until
headquarters back in Canada reviewed the issue.114 They also demanded
that all workers pass through the hiring company before returning to work
and that all would be allowed to return to work unless there was legal
evidence against them for disrupting the company’s operation.115 The
government complied with this petition, emphasizing that agitators and
promoters of revolution and violence should be punished by the strictest
laws because they represented the worse enemies of the workers, and if
allowed to continue with the initiatives in Barrancabermeja, social chaos
and clamor for social revolution could easily spread across the nation.116
Workers were not pleased with this outcome as hundreds had been
dismissed as a result of its implementation. On October 17 they went back
on strike, once again under the leadership of Raúl Eduardo Mahecha and
two Venezuelan organizers, Reyes and Villate. Strikers confiscated supply
trucks that were getting ready to distribute provisions to the different
camps, forcing an emergency meeting between Caicedo, Cornel Evaristo
Aldana, chief of the National Policy, and Captain García, chief of the Army
Brigade that arrived from Medellín.117 The security officials decided that
the use of force was necessary and made plans to arrest the agitators.
Mahecha announced that if the government refused to protect the
Colombian workers he and other leaders could be assassinated. Soon after
he and six other workers were arrested, along with the Venezuelan left-
ists.118 Armed with guns, machetes, and sticks, workers confronted the
authorities to impede the arrests but these were no match for the military
and police authorities. The blood of civilians and workers was shed under
the pretext that Mahecha and the 3000 men were marching toward a social
revolution, threatening to damage company property, an act that could
lead to dire consequences and that threatened national interests.119 The
safeguard of Tropical Oil’s interests was an issue of national security as
indicated by Minister Reyes, and therefore more military equipment and
personnel were sent to the region.120
The company had finally convinced the authorities to escalate the mil-
itary presence to contain the “criminal acts,” accusing the police of being
“inefficient” and the Mayor of being “useless.”121 Meanwhile, the gov-
ernment took advantage of the opportunity to declare a propaganda war
against socialist and other leftist movements. According to the national
newspaper El Tiempo, 1924 had seen an escalating fervor for working class
uprisings, signs of an alarming situation that needed to be dealt with before
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 57

it was too late.122 Company executives claimed that leaders like Mahecha
who were using labor strikes to spark a social revolution needed to remain
behind bars insisted the company executives.123 Minister Reyes went as far
as saying that the protection of Colombian workers was a humanitarian
duty but “the defense of property and security of nationals and foreigners
was a patriotic duty.”124
Calm returned to Barrancabermeja on October 29 after the company
agreed to revise their hiring policy and fulfill the other previously agreed
demands. Ignacio Molina, delegate from the recently created Federación
Obrera Colombiana, an anarcho-syndicalist organization, arrived in
Barrancabermeja to make sure that the company complied with the
agreements and to pressure for the release of Mahecha, “the tireless dis-
ciple, father of the workers.”125 With the approval of the workers and the
company, Molina established a Federación Obrera claims office in
Barrancabermeja that would serve as an intermediary between workers and
La Troco.126 Mahecha and the others would remain behind bars in
Medellín for the next six months, while close to 1200 would be fired and
deported from the Barrancabermeja region.127
Operations at Tropical Oil were back to normal by November 1,
however, the clash between workers and foreign management would
continue until the end of the concession in 1948.128 More violent strikes
would follow in 1927, 1935, 1938, and 1948, replicating the incidents and
dynamics of October 1924. Tropical Oil continued to capitalize on the
partnership they had established with Colombia’s political elites, convert-
ing their extractive operation into an issue of national security that
demanded the protection of the State. The use of force and intimidation by
Colombian authorities continued as well, while the radicalization of labor
escalated in response to the inhumane treatment.
Contrary to the self-contained solutions implemented by Standard Oil
of New Jersey after the Bayonne strike of 1915 and their desire to negotiate
with workers in order to avoid further violence, in Colombia they con-
tinued to rely on the government’s use of force and the criminalization of
labor movements. In Colombia as well as in other parts of South America,
Standard Oil of New Jersey’s labor practices remained exploitative, inhu-
mane, and tainted with racism and social Darwinism that was fueled by the
shared values of the local political and economic elites that ruled these
countries. In Barrancabermeja as in Bayonne, the “flagrant alliance of
government officials and business interests that promoted profits at all costs
58 S. TIJERINA

and used force to silence dissent,” eventually radicalized the worker who
saw in violent confrontations the only way out from systemic oppression
and marginalization.129
This struggle continues today, but against Canadian and other transna-
tional oil companies that have followed the footsteps of Standard Oil of New
Jersey. Similar clashes between labor and foreign corporations have emerged
over the years as the nation further opens its border for the extraction of gold,
coal, precious metals, oil, and natural gas. The conflict escalated even more
with the implementation of neoliberal policies that intensified the
government-business partnership after the 1980s. Now, under the pressures
of globalization, policies such as Plan Colombia, have completely legitimized
this partnership while delegitimizing the voice of workers. Organized labor
continues to be a threat for those in government today as they were almost
one hundred years ago, but the struggle continues.

NOTES
1. For more on oil business expansion in South America see Mira Wilkins,
“Multinational Oil Companies in South America in the 1920s: Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru,” The Business History
Review 48, no. 3 (1974): 415.
2. The idea of “self-contained solution” comes from a 1946 labor relations
report published by Standard Oil Company of New Jersey; for more detail
on the report, see Stuart Chase, A Generation of Industrial Peace: Thirty
Years of Labor Relations at Standard Oil Company (N.J.) (New Jersey:
Standard Oil Company, 1947), 14.
3. Marcelo Bucheli, Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in
Colombia, 1899–2000 (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 14.
4. Tropical Oil, in charged of the extraction part of the operation, was a
subsidiary of Canada’s International Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary
of Standard Oil of New Jersey; Andian National Corporation, in charged of
pipeline construction, was another subsidiary of International Petroleum
Corporation. For more information on the operation of the Standard Oil
of New Jersey subsidiaries in Colombia, see Stefano Tijerina, “A ‘Clear Cut
Line’: Canada and Colombia, 1892–1979” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Maine, 2011).
5. Jonathan C. Brown, “Why Foreign Oil Companies Shifted Their
Production from Mexico to Venezuela During the 1920s,” The American
Historical Review 90, no. 2 (1985): 362.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 59

6. Stephen Kane, “Corporate Power and Foreign Policy: Efforts of American

Oil Companies to Influence United States Relations With Mexico, 1921–
1928,” in Antitrust and Regulation During World War I and the
Republican Era, 1917–1932, ed. Robert F. Himmelberg (New York &
London: Garland Publishing, 1994), 288; for more on the expansionist
efforts of US oil companies, see John A. Denovo, “The Movement for an
Aggressive American Oil Policy Abroad, 1918–1920,” American
Historical Review 61, no. 4 (1956): 854–876.
7. US foreign direct investment in places like Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela
had increased “from approximately $400,000,000 to $1,400,000,000
between 1919 and 1929.” Kane, “Corporate Power and Foreign Policy,”
288.
8. Ibid., 291.
9. Ibid., 292.
10. For more detail on the oil worker’s strike, see “5000 Standard Men May
Join in Strike,” New York Times, July 20, 1915, 5.
11. Chase, A Generation of Industrial Peace, 14.
12. Described by American media in the 1920s as the uncivilized and
jungle-like, Barrancabermeja is a city in Colombia, located on the shore of
the Magdalena River, 114 km west of Bucaramanga in the department of
Santander. Back in the 1920s, it was a village surrounded by dense tropical
jungle with all its native fauna and flora; oil explores described it as “weird
and wild,” infested with alligators, snakes, monkeys, and insects. “The Oil
Jungles of Colombia, South America,” Titusville Herald, May 19, 1920, 4;
see also “Lima Man in World Wide War for Oil,” The Lima Sunday News,
June 21, 1925, 1.
13. Chase, A Generation of Industrial Peace, 20.
14. In order not to “antagonize” the anti-American sentiment in Colombia,
Standard Oil of New Jersey strategically entered Colombia with a Canadian
flag, taking advantage of that nation’s “goodwill” in the international
system. John D. Wirth, ed., The Oil Business in Latin America: The Early
Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 28.
15. David Sowell, The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisan and Politics
in Bogotá, 1832–1919 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 149.
16. Colombian artisans and tailor guilds protested on front of the presidential
palace, arguing against a procurement decision carried out by Marco Fidel
Suárez’s administration. In essence, the government had opted to purchase
new military uniforms from United States’ manufacturers as part of the
100th Independence Day anniversary, and Colombian workers demanded
that these were made domestically. For more detail, see Sowell, The Early
Colombian Labor Movement, 149.
17. The incidents left 20 dead, 18 injured, and approximately 300 people
arrested. Nullvalue, “Sastres iniciaron huelga,” El Tiempo, November 13,
2010, Bogotá Section.
60 S. TIJERINA

18. Marco Fidel Suárez was one of the first Conservative Party leaders to move
away from regionalism and toward a more holistic and federalist approach
to nation building. His administration was hostile toward labor unions and
welcoming of the classic liberal agenda.
19. Colombia’s socialist movements were more in tune with the ideas of the
Industrial Workers of the World and very distant from the Wilsonian ideas
of the International Labor Organization that emerged after World War I.
20. Joel Sans, “La huelga de La Canadenca: un ejemplo de lucha y
Sindacalismo,” En Lucha: Anticapitalismo y Revolución, June/July 2009,
accessed May 1, 2013, http://www.enlucha.org/site/?q=node/1438.
21. For more on these strikes, see Nigel Anthony Sellars, Oil, Wheat, and
Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma, 1905–1930
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Stuart Chase, A
Generation of Industrial Peace; Steven L. Danver, ed., Revolts, Protests,
Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia
(Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2011); and Jonathan H. Rees,
Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company, 1914–1942 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado,
2010).
22. For more information on Colombia’s early labor movements, see Sowell,
The Early Colombian Labor Movement.
23. Ibid., 150.
24. Ibid., 146.
25. In 1918, the José Vicente Concha administration had taken advantage of
the De Mares concession negotiations to develop a comprehensive oil
policy that included higher than normal tariffs, royalties, time limits on
concessions, and that declared “the subsoil the property of the state for
both public and private lands;” Marcelo Bucheli, “Canadian Multinational
Corporations and Economic Nationalism: The Case of Imperial Oil
Limited in Alberta (Canada) and Colombia, 1899–1938,” Enterprises et
Histoire 54, no. 1 (2009): 76; see also Sowell, The Early Colombian Labor
Movement, 150.
26. Labor groups were also inspired by the 1917 Soviet Revolution, the 1918
Córdoba student manifest in Argentina, the penetration of Marxist
thought through local and foreign fiction, nationalist and anti imperialist
movements. Jorge Enrique Elías Caro, “Influencias de la Revolución
Mexicana en los Movimientos Obreros y Sindicales en Colombia (III
Parte),” Los Nuestramericanos: Su Historia, November 2004, accessed
May 9, 2013, http://www.centrocultural.coop/blogs/nuestramericanos/
etiquetas/movimientos-obreros/.
27. Wirth, The Oil Business in Latin America: The Early Years, 28.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 61

28. For more information on the De Mares concession, see; United States,
Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce,
Special Agents Series No. 206: Colombia, a Commercial and Industrial
Handbook, comp. P.L Bell, Trade Commissioner (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1921), 135.
29. Wirth, The Oil Business in Latin America: The Early Years, 28.
30. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 134.
31. “Tropical Oil’s sale to Standard Oil is closed: Details of deal not fully
disclosed, but consideration is placed at $40,000,000,” Titusville Herald,
January 22, 1920, 8.
32. Caro, Los Nuestramericanos, http://www.centrocultural.coop/blogs/
nuestramericanos/etiquetas/movimientos-obreros/. For more informa-
tion on the modification of decree No. 1255 of 1919, see Jorge Villegas,
Petróleo, Oligarquía e Imperio (Bogotá: Editorial Iris, 1975); Petróleo
Colombiano, Ganancia Gringa (Bogotá: Ediciones Peñaloza, 1976).
33. For more information on the De Mares concession, see Marcelo Bucheli,
“Negotiating under the Monroe Doctrine: Weetman Pearson and the
Origins of U.S. Control of Colombian Oil,” Business History Review 82,
no. 3 (2008): 529–553.
34. For more on the lucrative South American oil operations, see Wilkins,
“Multinational Oil Companies,” 422–426.
35. Although centered on the Venezuelan experience, T.S. Stribling’s novel
Strange Moon describes the intricacies of local land owners, peasant
farmers, and the representatives of the foreign oil corporations as they dealt
with the corrupt legal system, land use policies, and the local bureaucracy.
The fictional story speaks to the realities in other South American coun-
tries, including Colombia; for more information, see T.S. Stribling, Strange
Moon (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929).
36. Wirth, The Oil Business in Latin America: The Early Years, 28.
37. The other officers were M.C. Treat, F.W. Crawford, M.L. Benedam, and J.
S. Weller. Mr. C. Trees was president, George W. Crawford was vice
president, and H.C. Reeser was the treasurer. “Tropical Oil Co. has taken
big territory,” The Titusville Herald, June 10, 1916, 7.
38. A few Colombians were hired as skilled labor, particularly “donkey-boiler
men” that had already been trained in the river steamer service that
operated along the Magdalena River by British and American interests.
Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
39. Ibid., 136. In 1915, the average oil worker was earning between $2.50 and
$4.00 dollars per day’s work which was less than the money offered for
working in places like Colombia; for more detail, see Sellars, Oil, Wheat,
62 S. TIJERINA

and Wobblies, 73. For more information on US wages in the 1920s, see The
Value of a Dollar (New York: Grey House Publishing, 2009), 150.
40. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
41. The legislation on conciliation and arbitration required the submission of
an official memorandum to the Ministry of Industry, indicating the grie-
vances of petitions, the worker’s intentions, and the official date of the
planned strike. Such policies eliminated the element of surprise from the
strike, one of the few strengths held by the workers. “Huelga de
Barrancabermeja: Situación de Anoche,” El Tiempo, October 9, 1924, 3.
42. Jairo E. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores y la Tropical Oil
Company: Barrancabermeja, 1916–1940,” Revista Salud Pública 12, no.
1 (2010): 147.
43. Ibid., 148.
44. For more on the theory of Colombia’s economic development and the
impact of geography and dispersion, see Frank Safford and Marco Palacios,
Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
45. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
46. Wirth, The Oil Business in Latin America: The Early Years, 29.
47. Ibid., 29.
48. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
49. Myrna Santiago’s The Ecology of Oil describes this same reality in the
establishment of the oil extractive industry in Huasteca, Mexico; for more
information, see Myrna Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor,
and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006). A similar case of social Darwinism is described by
B.S. McBeth’s research on the early development of oil extraction opera-
tions in Venezuela, including the abuse of local workers; for more infor-
mation, see B.S. McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil Companies in
Venezuela, 1908–1935 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
50. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136. Another
example of the racism ingrained in the minds of American and Canadian
managers is evident in the article “Our New Pioneers in the Wilderness”
that talks about the civilizing mission of American civil engineers across the
world; for more detail, see C.P.P., “Our New Pioneers in the Wilderness:
As Their Ancestor Tames this Continent, so American Engineers Today
are Conquering Strange Lands,” New York Times, December 11, 1927, 7.
Santiago in The Ecology of Oil also points out this same reality in Mexico,
where locals were seen as “less-developed” and “weaker;” see Santiago,
The Ecology of Oil, 164.
51. Santiago, 7.
52. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 63

53. Nigel Sellars describes how the marketing of high wages and new
opportunities attracted a pool of imported oil labor force during the oil
boom in Oklahoma during the early 1900s, Myrna Santiago describes
how migration of labor became “essential to the enterprise,” and B.S.
McBeth also illustrates how high wages attracted black workers from
the West Indies and local immigrant workers that abandoned rural work
in exchange for higher wages; for more detail, see Sellars, Oil, Wheat,
and Wobblies, 57–77; Santiago, The Ecology of Oil, 148–205; and
McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela,
131–143.
54. Frank Safford and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided
Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 280.
55. Renán Vega Cantor, “90 años después, 10 de febrero de 1923: Fundación
de la Unión Sindical Obrera (USO),” in Petróleo y protesta obrera. La USO
y los trabajadores petroleros en Colombia, ed. Renán Vega, Angela Núñez,
and Alexander Pereira (Bogotá: Ediciones Aury Sará, 2009), 4.
56. Luis van Isschot, “The Social Origins of Human Rights: Popular
Responses to Political Violence in a Colombian Oil Refinery Town, 1919–
1993” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 2010), 44.
57. Ibid., 45.
58. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 136.
59. Ibid.
60. All wages referred to 1920 US dollars; Ibid.
61. The higher than average wage strategy implemented by oil corporations
followed the same pattern from Canada all the way to Argentina. For more
on the impact of oil wages, see Sellars, Oil, Wheat, and Wobblies, 57–77;
Santiago, The Ecology of Oil, 148–205; and McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez
and the Oil Companies in Venezuela, 131–143.
62. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 137.
63. Ibid.
64. William Mackenzie King, who would later become Prime Minister of
Canada (1935–1948), was hired by John D. Rockefeller as a labor export
responsible for the investigation of the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado. King
and Clarence J. Hicks would develop the Colorado Industrial Plan based
on King’s Industry and Humanity, for more information, see Danver, ed.
Revolt, Protests, Demonstrations and Rebellions in American History, 710.
65. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 137.
66. Ibid.
67. The development of company towns became a common management
strategy among oil corporations around the world, for more on the
dynamics of company towns, see Sellars, Oil, Wheat, and Wobblies,
64 S. TIJERINA

Santiago, The Ecology of Oil, and McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil
Companies in Venezuela.
68. Construction included port infrastructure and roads, as well as the trans-
formation of the landscape, removing the jungle in order to facilitate the
edification of camps, shops, warehouses, pipeline, railway lines, and
infrastructure facilities. Jairo E. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores
y la Tropical Oil Company: Barrancabermeja, 1916–1940,” Revista Salud
Pública 12, no. 1 (2010): 147.
69. Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 206, 137.
70. An article describes the region as infested with snakes, tigers, and alligators,
where the 8-year-old son of an American worker in Barrancabermeja had
been “swallowed by an alligator,” while playing next to the Magdalena
River. “The Oil Jungles of Colombia,” 4.
71. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores y la Tropical Oil Company,”
147.
72. Santiago describes in The Ecology of Oil similar situations as
Barrancabermeja, where workers were not only victims of racial segregation
but also victims of an unsafe environment, where “workers and their
families lived in toxic neighborhoods, exposed not only to fire but also to
dangerous emissions and effluents from the petroleum plants next door.”
Santiago, The Ecology of Oil, 6–7. B.S. McBeth also makes reference to the
constant fires at Lake Maracaibo caused by oil spill overs, the contamina-
tion of fresh water that lead to the spread of diseases among the local
communities, and the foreign company’s constant refusal to pay damages
to workers “maimed in industrial accidents or to dependents of those killed
in similar circumstances.” McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil
Companies in Venezuela, 141–143.
73. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores y la Tropical Oil Company,”
147.
74. Cantor, “90 años después, 10 de febrero de 1923,” 2.
75. Ibid., 2.
76. Ibid., 3.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Special to Tribune, “Johnstown Pastor to be Chaplain of Tropical Oil
Firm,” The Tribune Republican, January 13, 1920, 2.
80. Ibid., 2.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 65

83. “Roy Jones Plans to go to South American Job,” Joplin Globe, July 24,
1923, 3.
84. “Leaves for New Home,” The Daily Ardmoreite, April 5, 1923, 5.
85. “Railroad through Colombian Jungle to Obtain Oil,” The Bradford Era,
November 15, 1923, 7.
86. “Battling the Jungles for Oil,” Popular Mechanics Magazine, May
1941, 734.
87. Ibid., 732–734.
88. Ibid., 735. B.S. McBeth in Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil Companies in
Venezuela mentions a different scenario at the oil towns where social
conflicts developed as locals and foreigners clashed over disorderly and
drunken behavior. McBeth, Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil Companies in
Venezuela, 141.
89. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores y la Tropical Oil
Company” 147.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid. While hundreds of local lives were lost in the early stages of the
pipeline construction, only one foreign life was sacrificed, considering that
each foreign worker represented an investment of $700 to the company.
“Battling the Jungles for Oil,” 121A.
92. Workers at Tropical Oil were hired through an in-house contractor,
removing all accountability from the oil company. The use of hiring
agencies continues to be an effective management strategy today.
93. Luna-García, “La salud de los trabajadores y la Tropical Oil
Company” 149.
94. Cantor, “90 años después, 10 de febrero de 1923,” 13.
95. In April 2014, USO lead yet another strike against ECOPETROL, the
national oil company that took over the operations of Tropical Oil after
1948 as agreed in the DeMares concession agreement.
96. “La Grave Situación en Barrancabermeja,” El Tiempo, October 17,
1924, 1.
97. The law limited worker’s ability to spontaneously strike, forcing them to
procedures of arbitration that assigned the state as the mediator between
workers and private interests. It was a legal way to remove the power from
the worker while at the same time providing them the space to negotiate
with the private actor.
98. “Huelga de Barrancabermeja: Situación de Anoche,” El Tiempo, October
9, 1924, 2.
99. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. “Informe de un Funcionario
Norteamericano Sobre la Huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924,” Bdigital
66 S. TIJERINA

Portal de Revista UN, 2014, accessed April 10, 2015, http://www.

revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/achsc/article/view/36156.
100. Ibid.
101. “Huelga de Barrancabermeja,” 2.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. “Ejercito para Barranca,” El Tiempo, October 11, 1924, 3.
105. Law 21 demanded mandatory arbitration for corporations in the areas of
transportation (railway and maritime), public aqueducts, public energy,
public trash collection, and mining. The company claimed that they were
covered under mining and therefore any strike was illegal; for more
information, see Universidad Nacional de Colombia. “Informe de un
Funcionario Norteamericano Sobre la Huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924,”
Bdigital Portal de Revista UN, 2014, accessed April 10, 2015, http://
www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/achsc/article/view/36156.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. “La Situación en Barrancabermeja,” El Tiempo, October 15, 1924, 8.
109. Mauricio Archila Neira and Margarita González, “Informe de un fun-
cionario norteamericano sobre la huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924,”
Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, no. 13–14 (1986):
319–333.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
113. “La Situación en Barrancabermeja,” 3.
114. Archila Neira and González, “Informe de un funcionario norteamericano
sobre la huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924.”
115. Ibid.
116. “La Situación en Barrancabermeja,” 3.
117. “La Grave Situación en Barrancabermeja,” El Tiempo, October 17, 1924, 1.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Archila Neira and González, “Informe de un funcionario norteamericano
sobre la huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924.”
122. “Liberalismo y Socialismo,” El Tiempo, October 24, 1924, 1.
123. Archila Neira and González, “Informe de un funcionario norteamericano
sobre la huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924.”
124. “Liberalismo y Socialismo,” 1.
125. “Se Excita a los Obreros de Barranca a Continuar la Huelga,” El Tiempo,
October 26, 1924, 3.
126. Ibid.
 THE ZERO-SUM GAME OF EARLY OIL EXTRACTION RELATIONS … 67

127. Archila Neira and González, “Informe de un funcionario norteamericano

sobre la huelga de Barrancabermeja 1924.”
128. Another strike would be set in motion by the workers at La Troco in order
to pressure both government and the foreign corporation to comply with
the contract. From that point forward, the concession was nationalized, yet
the conflict remained intact, this time between workers and government.
129. Sellars, Oil, Wheat, and Wobblies, 8–9.
 Fluid History: Oil Workers
and the Iranian Revolution

Peyman Jafari

INTRODUCTION
“We are melting away,” laments the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) on
December 26, 1978 in a phone tap of a conversation with his adviser and
former Prime Minister Ali Amini.1 Although mass demonstrations were
causing havoc at the time, his desperation was caused by the strikes in the
oil industry. Less than 7 weeks later, the monarchy was gone. Although
there are other historical examples of mass mobilizations among oil
workers, the oil strikes from September 1978 to February 1979 in Iran are,
to my knowledge, the only case that heavily determined the outcome of a
revolution. Therefore, this episode provides a particularly interesting
opportunity to explore the politics of labor in the oil industry in two moves.
One puts politics back into the study of labor in general and into the study
of labor in the oil industry in particular, as it has been often left out after
the “cultural turn” in labor studies. The second refers to the importance of
putting labor back into politics, as most political science studies have

P. Jafari (&)
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
P. Jafari
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

© The Author(s) 2018 69

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_4
70 P. JAFARI

tended to attribute the mediation between oil and national politics solely to
the nexus between finance and elites, ignoring the agency of labor.
The first part of the chapter provides a brief summary of the develop-
ment of the oil strikes and demonstrates their paralyzing impact on the
state apparatus. The second part argues that the oil strikes were a key link in
the developments that created or authorized revolutionary centers of
power that emerged in parallel to the existing state in early 1979, a situ-
ation known as “dual power.” A detailed history of this episode is provided
in order to explain the mechanisms through which the forces around
Ayatollah Khomeini took control of the oil strikes, a strategic move that
allowed them to steer the revolutionary movement and determine its
outcome. This latter aspect has received much less attention in the histo-
riography of the Iranian revolution, which has focused more on its causes
than its dynamics. Moreover, the outcome of the revolution is often dis-
cussed in mere ideological terms—the resonance of Khomeini’s discourse
through Shi‘a symbolism2—and focuses on the “consolidation” period
following the fall of the monarchy in February 1979. Arguing that the
political strategies of the preceding months and the role of the oil strikes in
the emergence of dual power were crucial, this chapter makes a novel
contribution to the historiography of the Iranian revolution.

OIL STRIKES: FUELING THE REVOLUTION

On the eve of the revolution, the oil industry was organized around the
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and its subsidiaries, the Oil
Services Company of Iran (OSCO) owned by foreign companies, and a
number of private subcontractors. The oil industry employed relatively few
workers compared to its production of five-to-six million barrels a day, but
their numbers were still considerable according to Iran’s Statistical Centre.
Having dropped to about 40,000 by 1970, the number of employees
increased to 67,000 in early 1978 as Iran expanded its oil facilities and
increased production. This number rose to almost 80,000 when we added
the roughly 12,000 employees of the distribution organization of the oil
industry and the few hundred employees of its Cooperative Consumptive
Organization of the oil industry.3 Moreover, the oil industry had dozens of
subcontractors that employed at least the same number. Its distribution
organization alone employed about 50,000 people.4 Thus, around 2.3% of
the 3.54 million Iranian workers—4.5% when those working for subcon-
tractors are included—worked for the oil industry.5 A final point to
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 71

Fig. 1 Number of workers in the Iranian oil industry. Source Statistical Centre of
Iran (SCI), Statistical Yearbook 1969–1982 (Tehran: SCI). Online version,
retrievable from http://www.amar.org.ir/‫ ﺁﻣﺎﺭﯼ‬-‫ﺳﺎﻟﻨﺎﻣﻪ‬. Note the total number
includes foreign white-collar workers. The number of white-collar and blue-collar
workers in 1978 and 1979 includes contract workers.

consider is that most of the oil workers were concentrated in the south-
western part of Iran, and in a number of refineries in the rest of the country
(Kermanshah, Tehran, Shiraz, and Tabriz) (Fig. 1).
When the first oil strikes took place in September 1978, a revolutionary
movement had already developed since January, mainly in the form of mass
demonstrations. By June, however, the demonstrations had receded, and
when they resurfaced in late August during the holy month of Ramadan, they
were violently repressed on Bloody Friday (September 8, 1978). By then, it
looked as if the regime would survive the political crisis, as it had on other
occasions. As late as September 28, the prognosis of the American Defence
Intelligence Agency was that the Shah “is expected to remain actively in
power over the next ten years.”6 In the next 2 months, however, the revo-
lutionary movement acquired a qualitatively different character as protests
spread to workplaces and mass strikes erupted in the major economic sectors.
In the oil industry, the strikes developed in four phases. The first strikes
started on September 8 in the Tehran Refinery and spread to other
refineries and the oil fields of Ahwaz, Gachsaran, and Aqajari. This
prompted the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, to report that the oil strikes
“have no precedent in recent years; the strikes must have developed among
72 P. JAFARI

workers in the national oil company very quickly.”7 By early October 1978,
however, the oil strikes had subsided after officials made concessions.
However, a second wave started when oil workers in Abadan staged a sit-in
on October 16. Two days later, the white-collar workers (karmands) in the
oil company offices of Ahwaz started a strike that lasted for 33 days. At the
same time, the blue-collar workers (kargars) in the oil fields near Ahwaz
went on strike as well. These strikes, which were mainly over economic
issues like housing and wages, faded in the last 2 weeks of November, but
in the meantime, oil workers had become better organized.
At Abadan Refinery, the blue-collar workers formed a 13-member strike
committee (komiteh-ye hamahangi va nezarat) in late October and the
demands politicized.8 They were in contact with the strike committee of
the white-collar workers in Ahwaz, the Association of Oil Industry Staff
Employees that consisted of 60 representatives elected from the different
offices of the oil company in Ahwaz. A founding member explained the
process: “The representatives were not elected by secret ballot. The vote
took place in front of everyone. We put up a list on the wall. People came
and signed their names next to the name of their preferred candidate.
There were usually five or six candidates per position. The first duty of
these representatives was to organize the association of professional and
office workers. Therefore, we called this body the Organizing Committee
of Oil Industry Employees.”9 The Association was further formalized in
the last week of November with the election of a Coordinating Committee.
In the Tehran Refinery, a secret strike committee of blue-collar workers
had been active since September, but a new committee including
white-collar workers was established in the second week of November. Its
12 representatives were elected from the various refinery departments.10 In
late November, the Common Syndicate of the Employees of the Iranian
Oil Industry was established to represent the blue-collar and white-collar
workers in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, but despite its name,
it mainly operated in Tehran.
The composition of the strike committees differed from place to place,
but often, the leading members belonged to or sympathized with the
organizations of the secular left, including the Fada‘iyan and, to a lesser
degree, the Tudeh party, or the Islamist leftist Mojahedin. Others were
independent, or they followed Khomeini. It is notable, however, that when
the strikes erupted, the presence of the organized left was very weak among
the oil workers as state repression had diminished the space for open political
activities, which was reinforced and exacerbated by the guerrilla strategy of
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 73

the main current of the left. During the strikes, however, the left recruited
new members and increased its influence. In Ahwaz, 35% of the delegates of
the strike committee that oil workers had elected in November 1978 were
“Marxists.” However, after the fall of the monarchy, the supporters of
Khomeini, in coalition with liberal Islamic figures like Mehdi Bazargan who
headed the Provisional Government, maneuvered to marginalize the left
and organized new elections, in which the left gained 15%. According to the
same report, only five of the 40 members of the Abadan refinery strike
committee were leftists at this stage.11 It is important to note, however, that
most of the Islamist members of the strike committees and, later, the Islamic
shoras (councils) belonged to the “leftist” faction that supported workers’
self-management. Soon after the revolution in 1979–1981, these strike
committees clashed with the newly state-appointed managers, a conflict that
led to the repression and dissolution of the shoras.
Having established a stronger organizational structure, the oil workers
resumed their strike in early December 1978, this time with explicitly
political demands that focused on the departure of the Shah. Following
Khomeini’s call for a general strike on December 2—to coincide with the
beginning of the holy month Moharram—the Common Syndicate issued a
call for a general strike in the oil industry. The Abadan Refinery took the
lead once again, but the strikes spread to the offshore oil platforms and the
Ahwaz and Marun oil fields in the following days.12 Gachsaran and
Aghajari workers were forced to work at bayonet point, but they went on
strike at the end of the second week of December. The government’s
increased repression in December backfired, as over 6000 oil workers quit
their jobs when officials threatened to dismiss striking workers.13
The fourth and final phase of the oil strikes that started in the last days of
1978 was not marked by an interlude, but by a qualitative change. While
the strike committees of the oil workers had taken control of oil production
at the local level, Khomeini set up a committee that took over the national
coordination of the oil strikes. I will return to discuss in detail this phase,
which lasted until the strikes officially ended on February 17, 1979, but let
us first turn to the oil workers’ demands during the strike.
The oil strikes, like any other class-based protest, involved an uneven
and complex process of social mobilization and articulation of demands
that depended on various factors such as one’s position within the labor
process, traditions of activism, as well as political, ethnic, and religious
affinities. The willingness to support the strike varied among different
segments of oil workers, but disagreements were generally overcome
74 P. JAFARI

through persuasion or social pressure.14 As far as violence was involved, the

targets were foreign and Iranian managers, and the perpetrators were
political activists.15
Oil workers had different demands, which shifted from economic to
political ones in the context of the revolution and due to the fact that the
state was both their employer, as well as the target of the revolutionary
upheaval. The claim that oil workers in Iran, as in the rest of the developing
world, constituted a “labor aristocracy” ignored the great differences among
white-collar and blue-collar workers, the permanent and contract workers,
their harsh working conditions, and their connections to the wider
working-class communities. As I have explained elsewhere, oil workers did
not have any acute socioeconomic grievances except for the rising housing
costs. What all workers shared was an intense resentment against the rigid
and humiliating hierarchies and structured workplace discriminations that
set blue-collar workers beneath the Iranian employees beneath the foreign
staff, whose share in the total white-collar staff had increased from 4% in
1968 to 13% in 1977. Opposition against political repression in the work-
place and in the wider society, as well as against the foreign domination of
Iran, motivated oil workers as well.16 By late October 1978, oil workers
were demanding among other things an end to martial law, the release of all
political prisoners, Iranianization of the oil industry, an end to discrimina-
tion against female employees, and the dissolution of SAVAK.17
As the oil strikes politicized and intensified, they became a force to be
reckoned with. As a journalist predicted at the time, “the survival of the
government may well depend on the Shah’s ability to put an end to the oil
strike before the loss of export oil revenue combines with the effect of other
labor disruption to put Iran’s economy in total disarray.”18 Figure 2 shows
oil production dropping considerably after the strikes became solid in
December 1978, reducing Iran’s income by 65–68 million dollars per
day.19 As the strikes continued, military vehicles and ministries were
increasingly confronted with fuel shortages.
As the oil strikes severely undermined the state’s administrative, finan-
cial, and repressive capacity, they had the opposite impact on the revolu-
tionary movement. While the media were strictly censored until November
1978 and did not report on the demonstrations, the oil strikes created fuel
shortages that could not remain unnoticed. Most importantly, after the
national radio announced the strike of workers in the oil depots near
Tehran on October 21, 1978, thousands rushed to the gas stations. “The
shortage of fuel creates havoc in Tehran traffic,” printed the widely read
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 75

Fig. 2 Oil production in million b/d, August 1978–January 1979. Source

collected from various issues of Persian and English newspapers.

daily Ettela‘at on its front page the next day. For the first time, the official
media gave a broad coverage to the oil strikes, which helped them to take a
center stage in the revolutionary discourse and increased the
self-confidence of the oil workers.
The fuel shortages intensified in the last weeks of 1978 and in early
1979, creating an acute awareness of the gravity of the crisis that engulfed
the state. Ordinary people began to directly experience the impact of the
oil strike and the resulting shortages as they queued for fuel (see Picture 1).
Thus, by targeting a commodity that everyone in Iran considered to be the
lifeblood of the monarchy and something they depended on in their own
everyday life, the oil workers helped to create the sense of what Charles
Kurzman has called a “viable” movement, a movement that was perceived
as a viable challenger of the status quo in the consciousness of a broad layer
of the population.20 Given its impact on the everyday material life of
ordinary people, oil became a key transmitter of revolutionary conscious-
ness, which flowed from the sites of production and refining into the
households.
76 P. JAFARI

Picture 1 Iranians queuing for fuel in Tehran. The small print Persian text reads:
“Queues that are few kilometres long emerged in the streets for gasoline and
kerosene. Bagh-e Shah gas station, Sepah Street.” The large print states: “Shortage
of kerosene, gasoline, and diesel.” Source Ettela’at, January 6, 1979.

OIL STRIKES AND DUAL POWER

As we saw earlier, the oil strikes had become more organized and effective
by December 1978, causing a massive shortage of fuel by early January
1979. “Tehran and most of the provinces are confronted with a shortage of
petroleum, gasoline and diesel. More than half of the cars are not used,
most houses can’t be warmed while the weather is cold, and there are long
queues for petrol and gasoline in the streets,” Ettela’at reported on January
6, 1979, adding that domestic consumption of fuel in the winter was
estimated to be around 960,000 barrels per day—almost four times higher
than oil production at that time.21 At this crucial stage of the revolution,
the oil strikes became a launching pad for the establishment of revolu-
tionary institutions: the Oil Strikes Coordinating Committee (OSCC), the
neighborhood committees (later the Committees of the Islamic
Revolution), and the secret Council of the Islamic Revolution. All three, I
argue, are closely linked to the dynamic of the oil strikes—a connection
that has received little attention in the historiography of the Iranian rev-
olution.22 The nucleus of an alternative political pole had already emerged
in September 1978 when Khomeini appointed a small number of clerical
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 77

leaders to act on his behalf in Tehran. Khomeini then asked Mehdi

Bazargan, leader of the religious-liberal Freedom Movement of Iran
(FMI), to propose the inclusion of new members who could lead the
transition of power in the post-Shah era. This group of 18 people regularly
met to discuss strategies and advised Khomeini, forming the core of the
future Council of the Islamic Revolution that was established in January
1979.23 The transfer of power into the hands of the Council of the Islamic
Revolution went through the establishment of the Oil Strikes
Coordinating Committee, which was created to prevent the autonomy of
the strike committees in the oil industry.

THE OIL STRIKES COORDINATING COMMITTEE

As the oil strikes were becoming more organized and effective in December
1978, the idea of establishing a committee for their supervision was floated
in the group of 18 discussed above. Bazargan then asked Ebrahim Yazdi,
another prominent FMI member, to propose the creation of this com-
mittee to Khomeini, as both were in Paris at the time.24 On December 29,
1978, Khomeini wrote a letter to Bazargan, the text of which was mainly
written by Bazargan himself, requesting him to lead a committee, to which
I will refer as the Oil Strikes Coordinating Committee (OSCC).25 As the
letter made clear, Khomeini was worried that the Shah would use the fuel
shortage to legitimize the crackdown on the revolutionary movement, and
at the same time, he tried to win the oil workers’ support by demanding
that the military leave the oil fields and installations.26
In the letter, Khomeini asked Bazargan to lead a committee of five
people, which should include Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
and the engineer Mostafa Katira‘i. The remaining two members were to be
selected by Bazargan in consultation with the other two members, who then
appointed the engineer Kazem Hasibi, a veteran of the oil nationalization
movement and a leading figure in the National Front and the FMI, and the
engineer Hashem Sabaghian, another prominent member of the FMI. Two
other engineers, Abolfazl Hakimi and Hossein Bani-Assadi, played an
important role in organizing the practical activities of the committee,
highlighting the critical role that the university-trained religious members of
the new middle class would come to play in building the postrevolutionary
institutions. After praising the oil workers in his letter, Khomeini tasks the
OSCC to visit oil fields and installations and convince the workers to resume
at least partial production for domestic consumption. This was not
78 P. JAFARI

an easy task, as oil workers blamed the fuel shortages on the military gov-
ernment. The Common Syndicate, for instance, issued a statement on
December 31, 1978: “Compatriots, there is a variety of fuel present in
depots to serve domestic consumption for a year, but the regime, which is
installed by foreigners, is not distributing it in order to change the direction
of the holy struggle of the people and to sow discord in the rows of the
militants.”27 In other statements, the strike leaders also blamed the fuel
shortage on the continuation of oil exports to Israel and South Africa.
Bazargan started his activities as head of the OSCC on December 29,
1978, meeting with the new director of NIOC, ‘Abdollah Entezam, who
agreed to the following measures: (1) the departure of the military from all
oil fields and installations; (2) the departure of all military personnel who
had been assigned to work in the oil industry; (3) the restatement of the
strikers who had been sacked and the right of return for those workers who
had been thrown out of their company houses; (4) the release of all
arrested oil workers; and (5) the payment to oil employees of wages and
salaries not received since November 22, 1978. Having won these con-
cessions, Bazargan and Rafsanjani traveled to the oil workers in the south,
calling on them to resume work.28 Khomeini and more than 200 clerics
threw in their weight, urging oil workers to negotiate with Bazargan and
NIOC head Entezam.29 In the following weeks, OSCC issued a number of
internal reports, public communiqués, and decrees that provide an over-
view of its activities and decisions, establishing its authority as an admin-
istrative organ. These documents illustrate how OSCC was gradually
taking over the organization of the oil strikes and related activities. Its first
decree on January 5, 1979, for instance, called on the security guards to
guarantee the safety of the oil installation,30 followed by a second decree
calling on the pipeline workers to resume work and conduct the necessary
maintenance work in order to enable the transport of oil (products) from
the Abadan Refinery to Tehran.31 Further statements called on the workers
in the refineries of Tabriz, Shiraz, Kermanshah, and Tehran to resume
production.32
Following the negotiations with Bazargan during the first week of
January, the “striking employees of the oil industry in the south” issued
their first communiqué, stating their “willingness to implement the edict of
Imam Khomeini,” because it served “the welfare of the defiant nation of
Iran and the consolidation of his [Khomeini’s] holy struggle for the
overthrow of the illegal government.” They also announced the following
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 79

decisions: (1) the distribution of gas to the entire city of Ahwaz from
production unit number 2 from January 4, 1979; (2) the selection of a
group of blue-collar and white-collar workers for unit number 2 (in
Ahwaz), so that crude oil could be delivered to the refineries in Abadan and
Tehran; (3) the appointment of a number of workers to continue work in
the telecommunication office in order to guarantee communication
between oil fields and other places in case of an emergency; (4) the
establishment of a number of committees for the practical and technical
implementations of the production of oil and gas; (5) the return of the
security personnel of the oil industry to their positions, which had been
taken over by the military; and (6) contact between the oil representatives
of the oil workers in the south with those in other places, e.g., the
refineries, was to run through the Committee for the Coordination of the
Oil Strikes.
The final point, of course, seriously limited the oil workers’ ability to
collectively and independently coordinate, take decisions, and implement
them. The communiqué also stated that “It is necessary to bring to the
attention of the defiant nation of Iran that the blue-collar and white-collar
workers who are responsible for effecting the Imam’s directive, are pious
strikers who are working in the production units and the refineries for the
welfare of the defiant nation and have no intention to gain anything for
themselves.” Hence, the statement continued, the workers will stop pro-
duction whenever the government violates the points mentioned in the
Imam’s directive.33 On January 18, Bazargan’s committee issued its 14th
decree, calling on the Abadan Refinery employees to return to work in
order to increase production from 240,000 to 360,000 b/d.34 By late
January, the committee was overseeing almost the entire activities of the oil
industry, including issuing permits for exports.35
As these developments illustrate, the establishment of OSCC signified a
crucial turning point in the revolution, as it involved two power struggles.
First, it represented the attempt by the Islamist forces—both the radicals
around Khomeini and the liberals around Bazargan—to take control of the
oil strikes at the expense of the autonomy of oil workers. Bazargan was very
clear that his objective was to take “control of the oil strikes.” In order to
do this, the OSCC realized that it had to bypass and marginalize the leftist
oil workers, who, despite their small numbers, played a leading role in the
oil strikes. As Hakimi explained:
80 P. JAFARI

The main issue confronting us was that we had to deal with different groups
of oil workers… We treated them well but we also tried to find out the level
of their influence and popularity among the oil workers and in discussions we
tried to understand whether they were committed and Islamic or leftist…
The labor troubles in Tehran were mostly in the pipelines and depots of
Rey…, but the Tehran Refinery was in our total control, especially [because]
there was a very faithful and intelligent brother among the refinery workers,
called [Assadollah] Amininian, who was enormously popular and influen-
tial… The committee of the Tehran Refinery travelled for a number of times
to Abadan, Tabriz and Shiraz and had various talks with them… through the
workers of the Tehran Refinery we could discipline them as well.36

The methods by which the pro-Khomeini forces became hegemonic in the

oil strikes need more scrutiny, but an important factor was the lack of a
strong independent national organization among oil workers. Every
workplace had one or more strike committees, but there was no single
organization capable of representing all strikers and coordinating their
activities at the national level. The Common Syndicate of the Employees of
the Oil Industry was established in the third week of November 1978, but
it was mainly rooted among the workers of the Tehran Refinery.
The material and social conditions of the oil industry certainly did not
pose an obstacle to national coordination. The specific history of the oil
industry’s expansion, the spatial construction of urban networks, and social
relations based on kinship and ethnicity potentially provided the basis for
establishing solidarities and organizations.37 The internal telephone net-
work of the oil industry enabled communication between different loca-
tions and oil workers’ delegates could also travel to these locations. There
were also social networks among oil workers that created an esprit to
corp. Some oil workers, particularly the more experienced, had come to
know each other through official trade union activities before the revolu-
tion, and more importantly through the overhaul procedures in the
refineries and the training schools. However, there were a number of
obstacles too. First, political events unfolded very rapidly, leaving little time
for oil workers to strategize and react to the new situation. Second, the
militant oil workers were not politically prepared for this situation. Some
experienced oil workers had a background in the Tudeh party, which
steered them away from any move that could challenge the leadership of
Khomeini within the revolutionary movement. The younger generation of
leftist oil workers, who often sympathized with the more militant guerrilla
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 81

organizations, lacked the network, experience, and the strategic perspective

that could help them to unite the struggles in the working-class commu-
nities around the strikes in the oil industry. Third, generational and
regional divisions among oil workers exacerbated their political and ideo-
logical differences. In the Tehran Refinery, for instance, there was an active
group around the leftist trade unionist Yadollah Khosroshahi. These were
mostly from Abadan, but they lacked organic links to the younger workers
who had been recruited from the small workshops of Tehran and had
stronger religious dispositions. None of these obstacles, however, were
insurmountable if the required political and organizational steps had been
taken prior to and during the revolution in order to increase the coordi-
nation among oil workers.
More concretely, the existence of a leadership among oil workers was
indispensable for the independent coordination of the oil strikes.38
Surveillance and repression in large workplaces made this task daunting,
but not impossible. If it was possible to print banned leftist publications in
the Tehran Refinery and smuggle them out, for instance, or to distribute
pro-guerrilla pamphlets in the Abadan refinery before the revolution,39
then it also must have been possible to organize a network of militants
around industrial issues. The strikes in the 1970s in the oil industry pro-
vided an opportunity to do this, but at that time, the new organizations of
the left, with which some oil workers were sympathizing, had committed
themselves to clandestine armed struggle, rather than workplace and
community activism.
The establishment of the OSCC did not only involve an internal power
struggle within the oil strikes and by extension within the overall revolu-
tionary movement; it was also a precondition for the external struggle
waged against the monarchy. The oil strikes and the establishment of
OSCC facilitated the creation of two other institutions: the Council of the
Islamic Revolution and the neighborhood committees.

Council of the Islamic Revolution

On January 12, 1979, 2 weeks after the OSCC started its activities,
Khomeini ordered the establishment of the Council of the Islamic
Revolution, which reconstituted the existing group of 18 people with some
changes. Khomeini declared that the Council of the Islamic Revolution
“included competent and committed Muslims” who had to “study and
explore the conditions for a transitional government and take the first
82 P. JAFARI

preparations for its establishment form a constitutive assembly and hold

elections.”40 Without the OSCC taking over one of the state’s key func-
tions—oil production—the Council of the Islamic Revolution would have
lacked the authority to function as an alternative pole of power. This was
made quite explicit by Bazargan, when he advised Khomeini to call on the
management of the oil company to cooperate with the OSCC so that
Khomeini, “despite the Shah and his government would seize control over
the state apparatus and order state employees.”41

Neighborhood Committees
The management of the oil strikes played a much more organic role in the
emergence of the third institution of revolutionary power, i.e., the neigh-
borhood committees that were later transformed into the Committees of
the Islamic Revolution. Given a shortage of kerosene, which was widely
used for heating and cooking, the need to organize the distribution of fuel
among the population was an urgent task that gave rise to the neighbor-
hood committees. While Tehran’s domestic consumption had been 9–10.5
million liters per day in the winter of 1977–1978, the capital was only
receiving 5–5.5 million liters per day in late December 1978 and early
January 1979.
Following a week of intense negotiations between the OSCC and the
strikers, oil started to flow from the depots of Abadan Refinery to Tehran
on January 6, 1979. Two weeks later, the refinery’s production increased
from 240,000 to 360,000 b/d, and crude oil production in Khuzestan
stood at 500,000 b/d.42 The shortages continued, however, and the
engineer Abolfazl Hakimi was sent to the distribution organization of
NIOC to take care of fuel distribution. In mid-January, the “employees of
the distribution organization of NIOC” called on “clerics” and “patriotic
groups” to help organize “fuel distribution committees.”43 This was
another missed opportunity to establish—through the existing infrastruc-
ture of the oil industry—a national organization that could have linked the
oil strikes and the working-class communities. At the time of the revolu-
tion, the oil industry had 2358 fuel outlets in the cities and more than
10,000 in the rural areas. These were strategic points, around which the
distribution of fuel and other activities in particularly Tehran could have
been organized by the workers of NIOC’s distribution organization.
However, in the absence of an independent national organization and
strategy, the distribution organization played a subordinated role, taking
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 83

their orders from the OSCC. Hakimi asked the local clerics to come up
with a list of “active and trustworthy young people,” who were subse-
quently gathered in a mosque and received instructions. Within 2 weeks,
almost all neighborhoods in Tehran had established their “distribution
committees,” which distributed the available fuel through coupons or
waiting lists. Hakimi also helped to organize a group of volunteers who
managed the distribution of fuel at gas stations from 9 am to 10 pm.44
The creation of the fuel distribution committees was not always initiated
by the OSCC. In some locations, it facilitated their creation, but in other
places, it merely connected the local initiatives that were already emerging.
During the winter, the distribution of oil became the central point around
which everyday forms of solidarity were formed, as locals helped the needy
and the youth queued for the elderly. Others took the initiative to coor-
dinate the oil distribution, but quickly gravitated toward the mosques as
there were no alternative centers of coordination. A SAVAK telegraph on
January 3, 1979, for instance, reported that the head of NIOC in
Hamedan was refusing to provide oil to the SAVAK.45 Confirming this
report, Ayandegan wrote that the distribution of oil coupons in Hamedan
was in the hands of a committee led by Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Ahmad
Madani and Hojjatoleslam Mohammad-Taqi ‘Alami.46 However, as
Farhad Khosrokhavar wrote at the time, the Hamedan committee was from
its inception directed by clerics, while in Tehran and most other places, the
committees expressed “a popular will” and were not initially dominated by
clerics.47 “From the day that the fuel shortages started,” a young man told
a Kayhan reporter in Tehran, “we, the youth of the neighbourhood got
together to do something about it so this problem wouldn’t be added to
those we already had. We made some carts and went to the houses and
asked for their containers and we also convinced the fuel seller that it was
better to delegate the distribution to us rather than have long queues.”48
On 4 January, a stunned SAVAK agent in Tehran telephoned the fol-
lowing report to his commander: “A number of Khomeini supporters have
taken initiatives to distribute fuel among needy people of the neighbour-
hood. A number of these distribution [teams] have been observed and they
claim that the distribution of fuel has been ordered by Khomeini.”49
Similar reports poured in other cities. In Isfahan, a SAVAK agent reported
that ordinary people were protecting the gas stations and distributing
fuel.50 In his memoirs, ‘Emadaldin Baqi provides another example when
describing his reaction to the tensions that arose among people queuing for
fuel: “I went to the mosque, thought a bit and concluded that we should
84 P. JAFARI

gather the kids in the mosque and create an organization to take the
distribution of fuel in our own hands.” After their plan to distribute cou-
pons failed, they decided to form couples to bring the fuel to the houses.51
By 14 January, the queues for fuel had almost disappeared, as the neigh-
borhood youth had organized, with the guidance of the local clerics, the
door-to-door distribution of fuel, giving it away for free to those who had
been identified as low-income families. As an offshoot of fuel distribution,
some local youth developed other activities, such as the control of prices,
the provision of urgent health care, and armed defense in a neighborhood
committee.52
Another report explicitly mentions the Islamic neighborhood commit-
tees and “cooperatives” that started distributing fuel in eight poor neigh-
borhoods, from where they spread to other places.53 The youth in Narmak,
for instance, divided the neighborhood into districts with a radius of 300 m
around a fuel distribution center. Each district issued to every household a
coupon that had the stamp of the district, and mentioned the number of
times and the dates on which they could collect their share. In other places,
the fuel was taken door-to-door.54
For many Islamist activists, the neighborhood committees that were
organized around fuel distribution had an explicit aim: to counter the leftist
influence in the oil industry. Saeed Jalili, now a leading politician among
Iran’s Islamist hardliners, recalls that “At the height of the revolution and
also afterwards, the neighbourhood committees played an important role in
serving the people’s needs… Revolutionaries gathered in mosques and
created coupons…. At that time, Marxism had many followers and, just as
liberalism is defined by civil society, the slogan of Marxism was based on the
shoras [councils]. This slogan was everywhere; there were students shoras,
workers’ shoras, etc.… In this situation, the neighbourhood committee,
with at its centre the mosque, was a ‘slap in the face’ [tudahani] and a harsh
reply to them [the Marxists].”55 The Committees of the Islamic Revolution
that were established after February 1979 drew their members from the
pool of volunteers who coalesced around the fuel distributing neighbor-
hood committees.56 Bringing together Islamist activists at neighborhood
level, these Committees of the Islamic Revolution were an essential step in
consolidating the political power of the supporters of Khomeini.
As political control over the production and distribution of oil was
increasingly taken over by Khomeini and his allies, practical control over oil
production was still in the hands of the oil workers. Confronted with the
attempts of Khomeini and Bazargan to take control of the strikes, the oil
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 85

strike leaders continued publishing statements and tried to gain a stronger

position. On January 16, they announced, “Oil workers are a part of
Iranian working class and the greatest ally of progressive, anti-despotic, and
anti-imperialistic strata,” and added, “Considering the decisive role of
workers, especially workers in the oil industry, throughout the
anti-despotic struggles, the future government is obligated to consider the
interests of the working class.” Less than 2 weeks before the fall of the
regime, a group of oil workers declared that a workers’ representative
should be included on the Council of the Islamic Revolution, whose
membership had not yet been disclosed by Khomeini. They stated:

Just as workers have played a crucial role in the current revolutionary situa-
tion, they should participate the day after the revolution when it is time for
the genuine construction; this is only possible by workers’ participation in the
political affairs of the country. The first step would be taken by participation
of a workers’ representative in the revolutionary council.57

Without an independent national organization, however, oil workers

lacked the political weight to put pressure on their demand. As the pro-
Khomeini forces gradually took over the oil strikes, the tensions with the
left increased. In Ahwaz, a number of clerics intervened to restrict the
independence of the strike committee and the role of secular oil workers’
representatives, prompting the resignation of Mohammad Javad Khatami,
the leading representative of the production units. In an open letter
(January 21, 1979), he accused “reactionary” clerics of making death
threats against him and other representatives who didn’t agree with their
“reactionary ideology.” He also criticized the OSCC for acting beyond its
duties of “inspection and supervision” of the oil strikes and sidelining the
strike committee, leaving local affairs to a number of “not progressive”
clerics instead of appointing a group to mediate between the oil strikers and
the OSCC, as was originally called for.58
The fact that, despite increasing repression after February 1979, the
committees in the oil industry continued to operate is testimony to the
organization and class consciousness that oil workers had developed during
their strikes. A few months after the fall of the Shah, the journalist and
future Pulitzer Prize winner Kai Bird, who interviewed oil workers wrote,
“The oil industry is virtually controlled by dozens of independent worker
komitehs which, though loyal to the central Government, are nevertheless
participating in all the decisions related to the production and marketing of
86 P. JAFARI

Iranian oil to the Western industrial world. Perhaps even more significant,
the worker komitehs have unquestionably demonstrated that they can run
the oil fields and refineries without their top-rank Iranian managers and
without the expertise of some 800 foreign technicians…”59 This situation
was not tolerated by the postrevolutionary leaders as they consolidated
their power. The committees in the oil industry and elsewhere were
repressed and weakened after Iraq invaded southwestern Iran in August
1980, and were officially banned early in 1982.

POPULISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

The fate of the oil strikes poses an important question: why oil workers did
not create a national network with political autonomy and the organiza-
tional capacity to project their power beyond the workplace, but instead
accepted a subordinate role to that of Khomeini and the OSCC? This
question can best be answered by looking at the development of class
consciousness within the triangular relationship between the oil workers,
the wider labor struggles, and the revolutionary movement.
To begin with labor struggles in general, it should be noted that these
were significantly hindered by the predominance of small-sized enterprises.
In 1976, Iran had an employed workforce of 8.8 million, of whom 3.5
million were classified as working class. Another 1 million were unpaid
family workers. Some 719,000 worked in manufacturing, as wage earners
and unpaid family workers. Of these, some 43% were mostly unskilled
workers, employed in small establishments (1–9 employees).60 While tak-
ing part in demonstrations, most of these workers did not participate in the
revolution as a distinct collective. However, “at the same time there was a
significant portion of the working class that was skilled and concentrated in
large enterprises of the private sector and particularly the state sector,”
which did have a greater capacity for collective action.61 In 1976, 793 of
the private manufacturing units (11%) were larger enterprises that
employed more than 100 workers. Moreover, the majority of the 566,000
workers employed by the state were concentrated in a few major cities and
in a number of large enterprises. Thus, as in many other developing
countries, on one end of the working class, there were a large number of
workers merging into the petty bourgeoisie who were mainly active in retail
and petty production, while at the other end, there was a concentration of
industrial workers.
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 87

Oil workers, in particular, exhibited a significant capacity for collective

action, as we saw above, and hence, they took a leading position within the
strike movement that developed in the fall of 1978.62 While initially no
significant solidarity networks existed among the workers of the oil
industry and other sectors, these started to develop during the strikes. In
Ahwaz and Abadan, oil workers organized in solidarity with striking
teachers.63 The solidarity actions were reciprocal as teachers in Abadan and
Khoramshahr joined workers’ demonstrations a few weeks later. The
Society of the Employees of the Planning and Budget Organization issued
solidarity statements thanking oil workers for “blocking the extraction of
the nation’s wealth towards imperialism and for achieving freedom for
us.”64 Particularly in Tehran, striking workers in other industries looked to
oil workers for leadership, shouting “our oil worker, our determined lea-
der” at various demonstrations. However, it was not until a week before
the fall of the monarchy that striking workers started to meet in order to
“strengthen their organization, increase solidarity, and promote workers’
consciousness in order to serve their class interests.” More than one
hundred workers representing auto, oil, and electrical unions gathered on
February 3, 1979 in Ghand Riz Syndicate in Tehran, denouncing the
dismissal of factory workers, demanding the inclusion of a workers’ rep-
resentative in the Council of the Islamic Revolution, and discussing the
formation of a workers’ solidarity council.65
Thus, oil workers were well positioned to play a more independent—
and leading—role within the labor struggles and the wider revolutionary
movement, but the question is why this possibility did not materialize.
Pointing to “objective” conditions is not sufficient, as both the oil workers’
position within the class structure and the physical characteristics of the oil
industry enabled them to launch mass strikes and develop organizations of
their own. The real issue was the lack of political independence, which leads
us to look at the oil workers’ subjectivity. As E.P. Thompson argued, “class
consciousness” is shaped by “class experience,” a process that is culturally
mediated. Moreover, working-class formation is an “active process, which
owes as much to agency as to conditioning.”66
From this perspective, there is no teleological development from
working-class experience to a specific form of working-class consciousness,
which is contingent on the mediating role of culture and human agency.
For the same reason, the expectation that oil workers should have devel-
oped a (secular or socialist) class consciousness leading them to challenge
the monarchy while maintaining their independence from the clerical and
88 P. JAFARI

bazaari opposition is based on a flawed premise. What I argue instead is the

possibility of this trajectory. My strategy for developing this argument is a
critical dialogue with Asef Bayat’s “Historiography, Class and Iranian
Workers,” which provides the most sophisticated account of the develop-
ment of class consciousness in Iran before and during the Iranian
revolution.
Bayat argues that “we must start not from the structure and ‘objective
interests’ to arrive at class consciousness, but from the language of the class to
characterize its political movement.”67 From this perspective, he analyzes the
Iranian revolution: “Islam serves as a central element in articulating
working-class consciousness in Iran” by spreading a “populist ideology…
that works against the development of class consciousness and the idea of class
division in society.” This could happen, because “the ruling clergy shared an
Islamic language with the workers, albeit with a populist content.”68
Although this is a welcome corrective to the Eurocentric and struc-
turalist analyses of class, it bends too much toward the reified notion of
language advocated by Gareth Stedman Jones and other critics of E.
P. Thompson, and privileges too much the Islamic discourse in the Iranian
revolution. Acknowledging the importance of language, Marc Steinberg
argues that class consciousness is not a discourse but emerges “through the
friction of discourses produced in struggle.”69 From this perspective, the
populist discourse in the Iranian revolution was not simply present in
Islamic culture or texts, but was crafted within the context of concrete
struggles, and in competition with other discourses. These discourses do
not simply reflect different “class experiences”—they are constitutive to the
formation of class consciousness. “Working class formation is,” as Zachary
Lockman summarizes, “as much a discursive as a material process.”70
Applying this approach, and focusing on the process of representation and
recognition in class formation, Touraj Atabaki has shown how a distinct
class identity took form among oil workers in the aftermath of the WWI,
expressed in the use of “kargar” instead of “amaleh” by both workers, and
company and state officials.71 The formation of a working class (con-
sciousness), with the oil workers at its core, matured during the 1940s. In
the following two decades, however, shifts in the economy, politics, and
culture led to a significant class reformation. As Bayat argues, the massive
rural–urban migration of the 1960s created a new generation of workers
who lacked industrial and urban experience, “Yet from the 1970s things
started to change. By this time, the new workers of the 1960s had acquired
a fair amount of experience in industrial work and urbanism… The result
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 89

was the development of an ‘industrial consciousness’ that derived its ele-

ments from an industrial setting, an urban lifestyle, and industrial work.
This industrial consciousness manifested itself in a series of demands and
covert strikes in the mid-1970s… Beyond industrial awareness, the workers
also developed a more general form of class consciousness in terms of the
expression of identity and differentiation.”72 A few pages later, however,
Bayat argues that the diversity of workers did not lead to “common
non-work experiences among them.” However, “whatever their differ-
ences,” he continues, they “do share a common religion: Islam.” Even if
we discard the fact that the experience of religious practices varied among
Iranian workers, it remains a fact that both their industrial and urban
experiences and the Islamic culture shaped workers’ consciousness. The
dominance of the populist Islamic discourse, however, must be explained
through an approach that sees language both as a constitutive element as
well as an outcome of class struggle inside and outside the workplace.
“Islam,” Bayat correctly argues, “was reinterpreted by the industrial
workers to express their own immediate and class interests.” However, this
statement underestimates the importance of the distinction between indi-
viduals’ immediate awareness of action and their more general worldviews, or
in Bakhtinian terms, the distinction between primary and secondary speech
genres that create a tension between unmediated communication and
mediated ideology.73 The role of ideology, its intellectual producers, and
organizational expression are, therefore, essential in the formation of class
consciousness. Islamic populism was crafted by figures, such as Ali Shariati,
who articulated grievances against social inequality, repressive domestic
politics, and foreign domination through a language that mixed Islamic and
Marxist vocabulary. Many of the oil workers I have interviewed referred to
the influence of his ideas, which they knew through publications or the talks
he gave at the Abadan Technical Institute in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While Shariati was anticlerical, Khomeini formulated a populist version of
Islam that assigned a revolutionary role to the clerics. Both men formulated
their populist discourse in reaction and competition with leftist discourses.
While anticapitalist and anti-imperialist, the dominant leftist discourse of
this period, however, was not geared toward the articulation and political
translation of “class experience,” but rather focused on notions of individual
sacrifice and courage connected to guerrilla warfare. This discourse, there-
fore, did not help workers to articulate a worldview and a practice that linked
their day-to-day conditions and struggles with those in society at large. In
reaction to repression and surveillance the radical left had adopted guerrilla
90 P. JAFARI

warfare and armed struggle, but this had been a strategic decision, rather than
an unavoidable choice. This is illustrated, for instance, by the alternative path
taken by the Revolutionary Workers’ Organization of Iran, which managed
to organize a few hundred members and sympathizers and create a few
chapters in a number of important workplaces in the late 1960s, until it was
rounded up by SAVAK after the Fada‘iyan attack on the Siyahkal police
station in 1971.74
Once oil strikes erupted in 1978, all these different discourses could be
detected among the oil workers. Interviewing Abadan oil workers, one
journalist observed, “Most of the oil workers are devout, practising
Moslems but of the anti-clerical kind that believe that a religious move-
ment which began with the uncompromising demand for the removal of
the Shah will not end until the religion itself undergoes radical change.”
“We give Khomeini due respect for so stubbornly refusing to compromise
with the Shah,” said a boilermaker in the Abadan refinery. “But after all,
Dr. Shariati wrote this revolution. Khomeini only led it”… “We are not
going to be slaves to these machines,” says a young welder. “…in an
Islamic Republic, the community and not consumption is the goal.”75
Most oil workers who supported Khomeini were not so much attracted to
his theology but to his uncompromising political strategy. Khomeini’s
establishment of the OSCC gave him even more credit in this respect.
Thus, for many oil workers who sympathized with Shariati’s or
Khomeini’s Islamic populism, political independence did not seem neces-
sary at first, although some clashed with the postrevolutionary state when it
started to attack the workers’ committees. Along these groups, “a minority
of workers who embraced some form of socialism emerged in the final
stage of the revolutionary struggles and played a leading role.”76 This was
particularly the case in the oil industry, where more than a third of the
members of the elected Ahwaz strike committee were leftists, and nine of
the 14 members of the council of the Common Syndicate of the
Employees of the Oil Industry were secular leftists (four others were
Islamic leftists). However, even among them, the idea of independent
organization and strategy was not a priority for ideological reasons.
Oil workers’ political sympathies covered a wide spectrum, from Islamist
populists to those who saw themselves as part of an industrial proletariat that
should base its politics on working-class solidarity. Adherence to rival ideo-
logical and political outlooks kept shifting with circumstances, but increas-
ingly the populist Islamist trend took the upper hand. The dialectics between
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 91

the struggles outside and inside the workplace was decisive here. Before and
during the strikes, many oil workers participated or were influenced by the
street demonstrations dominated by the slogans of Islamic populism. In
Tehran, for instance, oil workers started to march to the Behesht Zahra
cemetery, where the martyrs of the revolution were taken to be buried.
During these charged and politicized rituals, the oil workers’ slogans began
to merge with those of Islamists. However, the influence of Islamic populism
did not come only from the outside. In the Tehran refinery, many of the
workers had been recruited from the nearby maintenance and petty pro-
duction shops. These were recent migrants from rural areas and had worked
and lived in the neighborhoods around the grand bazaar of Tehran and its
mosques. However, it is important to note that the mosque–bazaar network
was not an organizational resource in the hands of Khomeini and his sup-
porters from the outset. As Kurzman has argued, the pro-Khomeini forces
fought a political battle for hegemony within this network, and only after
they had achieved it, could they use it as a lever to mobilize the mass
demonstrations?77
To use the same analogy, the oil industry provided a potentially valuable
resource for mass mobilizations that could have given direction to the
whole revolutionary movement as the establishment of the OSCC
demonstrated. If before the revolution, the left had developed a discourse
that articulated workers’ experiences in terms of class, and if it had created a
stronger organizational presence that could have steered the oil strikes
toward political autonomy, the oil workers might have influenced the
outcome of the Iranian revolution. Despite a weak organization, the sec-
ular left had a reasonably strong potential for playing a much bigger role in
the coordination of the oil strikes. This was rooted in the left’s historical
ties to oil workers (especially the Tudeh party), the guerrilla movement
resurrecting the left’s popularity and prestige, and the left-leaning univer-
sity graduates joining the ranks of white-collar workers. However, mainly
for ideological reasons, this potential failed to be realized.
Far from speculative, such an approach acknowledges the “inadequacy
of confining our inquiry to the immediate and present world of the people
interacting… Otherwise, we would be bound to deterministic explanations
of interaction relying on initial resources and game-theoretic algorithms
that rob interaction of its specific content. If, however, we accept that
interactions are contingent, that how they turn out is not the only way they
could have turned out, or that their effects might spill over the boundaries
of people obviously interacting, we need a way to understand the real
potential of interactions. Further, the space of interactions is itself shaped
92 P. JAFARI

by larger, historical institutional developments, which cannot, in turn, be

understood without reference to political projects and attempts to form
hegemonic coherence.”78

CONCLUSION
The salient role of oil workers in the Iranian revolution invites us to revise a
number of dominant interpretations of the relationship between oil and
politics, and of the outcome of the Iranian revolution. Our understanding
of the former was enormously advanced with the publication of Timothy
Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy, which focuses on the mediating role of labor
between oil and politics and argues that the oil industry’s material char-
acteristics deprive oil workers of the potential for large-scale mobilizations
that can successfully challenge authoritarian rule. The general applicability
of this claim, I believe, should be nuanced in light of the experience of the
Iranian revolution.79
A second revision concerns the influential reading of the Iranian revo-
lution itself, which stressed the role of Shi‘a Islam among the subaltern
classes as an important factor explaining the ability of Khomeini and his
supporters to become hegemonic within the revolutionary movement.
Without ignoring the role of religion, my account of this process
demonstrates the role of political strategizing and organizing as a key
factor. The creation of the OSCC had little to do with religion; rather, it
was a political and strategic intervention in the oil strikes that enabled
Khomeini and his allies to get hold of a key link in the chain of events,
through which they could steer the entire revolutionary movement into
their desired direction. In contrast to Khomeini’s bold initiative, the oil
workers failed to create a strong national organization that could coordi-
nate the local strikes and represent them effectively in negotiations.
As a result, the Khomeinists along with their liberal religious allies
succeeded in taking advantage of this vacuum and effectively took control
of the direction of oil strikes by launching the OSCC. In turn, this helped
them establish the Council of the Islamic Revolution as an authoritative
alternative to the old state. Without a national organization through which
they could coordinate with other strikers, the oil workers did not have the
leverage to demand a bigger role in the emerging political structures,
let alone vie for political power. Finally, the popular committees that
emerged in the neighborhoods were not linked to the workplace struggles,
but instead became incorporated by the mosques and clerics. Here,
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 93

again, oil workers were well positioned to initiate, guide, or influence the
neighborhood committees because of the role of fuel in everyday life. But
once again, as we saw, Khomeinists proved more successful in taking
control of these grassroots organizations of local self-rule.” The physical
structures of oil production, distribution, and consumption could function
as the veins and capillaries that reached deep into society, allowing the oil
workers to exert organizational and ideological influence well beyond their
numbers.
Thus, the history of the relationship between oil and politics, and its role
in the Iranian revolution appears to be more contingent or fluid than we
might expect. The Islamist forces around Khomeini might have failed to
take full control of the oil strikes if their ideological discourse and political
organization had been challenged more effectively by alternative discourses
and organizations that stressed the autonomy of workers’ organizations. As
Eric Selbin observes, “what was so revolutionary about the Iranian revo-
lution… was the palpable sense of possibility, the opportunity to create a
new world or perhaps a return to a (g)old(en) one, regardless of whether
there had ever been just such an age before.”80 He rightly stresses, “rev-
olutions, as with history, are made by people, notwithstanding, as Karl
Marx suggests, not necessarily under the circumstances of their own
choosing.” The Iranian revolution was made by what its protagonists
deemed possible, but also by the choices they did not make.

NOTES
1. Published on the Tarikh-e Irani website on 5 Dey 1394/26 December
2014, accessed August 11, 2015, http://tarikhirani.ir/fa/news/
4/bodyView/4877. I am grateful to Kaveh Ehsani for drawing my
attention to this document, and to Touraj Atabaki and Maziar Behrooz for
commenting on an earlier version of this chapter.
2. Mansoor Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 206.
3. Statistical Centre of Iran (SCI), Statistical Yearbook 1982 (Tehran: SCI).
Online version, retrievable from http://www.amar.org.ir/‫ﺁﻣﺎﺭﯼ‬-‫ﺳﺎﻟﻨﺎﻣﻪ‬.
4. Prime Minister’s Office, “Report about fuel shortage, 16 December 1978,”
16-299-7‫ﻡ‬, Iranian Institute for Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS)
archives, Tehran.
5. Calculated from the figures in: Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad, Class
and Labor in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter?, 1st ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 2006), 89.
94 P. JAFARI

6. Quoted in Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and
Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 677.
7. SAVAK, “Report on workers’ strikes,” 3562-‫ﭖ‬, IICHS archives, Tehran.
8. “Az Kargaran-e ‘Etesabi-ye San‘at-e Naft Che Miyamuzim? Gozareshi az
‘Etesab-e ‘Azim va Yekparcheh-ye Kargaran-e Palayeshgah-e Abadan
[What Can We Learn from the Striking Oil Workers? A Report of the Big
and United Strikes of the Workers of the Abadan Refinery]” (n.p.:
Mobarezan-e Rah-e Ijad-e Tabaqeh-ye Kargar-e Iran, Dey
1357/December 1978–January 1979).
9. Iranian Oil Worker, “How We Organized Strike That Paralyzed Shah’s
Regime. Firsthand Account by Iranian Oil Worker,” in Oil and Class
Struggle, ed. Petter Nore and Terisa Turner (London: Zed Press, 1980),
293.
10. Hazhir Pelaschi, “Dar Khoruskhan-e Khun Tabaram Mikhanam—Goftogu
ba Ali Pichgah [Interview with Ali Pichgah],” Manjaniq, no. 2 (Dey
1390/December 2011–January 2012).
11. Jonathan Randal, “Khomeini Followers Struggle for Control in Oil Fields,”
The Washington Post, February 26, 1979.
12. “Spreading Protest. Strike Cuts Output of Iranian Oil,” The Washington
Post, December 4, 1978.
13. Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, Studies in Political
Economy (New Brunswick; London: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 160.
14. For a number of examples, see Yadollah Khosrowshahi, “Bar Ma Cheh
Gozasht? [What happened to us?],” in Goriz-e Nagozir. Si Ravayat-e Goriz
az Jomhuri-ye Islami, ed. Mihan Roosta, et al. (Germany: Noqteh,
1387/2008).
15. On 23 December 1979, for instance, three gunmen from the Islamist
guerrilla organization Movahedin ambushed and killed the American
director of OSCO in Ahwaz. Malek Borujerdi, an Iranian oil official was
assassinated on the same day by Mansurun, another Islamist guerrilla
organization.
16. Peyman Jafari, “Reasons to Revolt: Iranian Oil Workers in the 1970s,”
International Labor and Working-Class History 84, no. 3 (2013): 195–217.
17. Asef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of
Workers’ Control (London: Zed Books, 1987), 80–81.
18. William Claibourne, “Ending of Oil Strike Viewed as Pivotal in Iranian
Crisis,” The Washington Post, November 3, 1978.
19. “Artesh Ta‘sisat-e Nafti ra Eshgal Kard [The Army Occupied the Oil
Installations],” Ettela’at, 10 Aban 1357/1 November 1978.
20. Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 95

21. “Qahti-ye Naft, Benzin va Gazo‘il [Shortage of Petroleum, Gasoline and

Diesel],” Ettela’at, 16 Dey 1357/6 January 1979.
22. “Although Misagh Parsa notes that “these classes” [blue- and white-collar
workers] brought about a situation of dual power,” he doesn’t explain its
concrete mechanisms and manifestations. See Parsa, Social Origins of the
Iranian Revolution, 166.
23. Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London: I.B. Tauris, 1985),
51.
24. Manuchehr Razmahang, “Goftogu ba Mostafa Katira‘i [Interview with
Mostafa Katira‘i],” Iran-e Farda, 18.
25. In its own communication, the committee called itself the Hey‘at-e E‘zami-
ye Imam (Delegation Appointed by the Imam). Ayatollah Khomeini took a
similar initiative to gain control over the strikes in the transport and the
customs sector appointing a committee headed by Ezzatollah Sahabi.
26. Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, “Ta‘in-e Hey‘at-e Panj Nafareh dar
Manateq-e Nafti [Appointment of the Five Person Committee in the Oil
Regions],” in Sahifeh-ye Imam (8 Dey 1358/29 December 1978).
27. Markaz-e Barresi-ye Asnad-e Tarikhi-ye Vezarat-e Ettela‘at, Enqelab-e
Islami be Ravayat-e Asnad-e SAVAK [the Islamic Revolution Based on
SAVAK Documents], vol. 22 (Ministry of Information, 1385/2006), 519.
28. “E’lamiyeh-ye Bazargan [Bazargan’s Communique],” Ettela’at, 16 Dey
1357/6 January 1979.
29. Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, 161.
30. Hey‘at-e E’zami-ye Imam Khomeini, “Statement no. 2,” 14331007 (11
Dey 1357/1 January 1978), Islamic Revolution Document Centre
(IRDC) archives, Tehran.
31. Hey‘at-e E’zami-ye Imam Khomeini, “Statement no. 4,” 14331001 (no
date), IRDC archives, Tehran.
32. “Dastur-e Aghaz-e Kar-e Palayeshgah-ha Dadeh Shod [Refineries Have
Been Ordered to Resume Production],” Ettela‘at, 18 Dey 1357/8 January
1979.
33. “E’lamiyeh-ye Shomareh Yek-e E‘tesabi-ye San‘at-e Naft [Communique
no. 1 of the Strikers in the Oil Industry],” Ettela‘at, 17 Dey 1357/7
January 1978.
34. “Tolid-e Naft-e Palayeshgah-e Abadan be 360 Hezar Boshkeh dar Ruz
Khahad Resid [the Oil Production of the Abadan Refinery Will Increase to
360,000 B/D],” Ettela’at, 28 Dey 1357/18 January 1979.
35. “Minutes of the 41th Session of the Committee for the Coordination of the
Oil Strikes (30 January 1979),” Asnad-e Nehzat-e Azadi [Documents of the
Freedom Movement], vol. 9, part 3, accessed November 20, 2014, http://
www.mizankhabar.net/asnad/archive/archive.htm.
96 P. JAFARI

36. “Mosahebeh ba Aghaye Mohandes Abolfazl Hakimi [Interview with

Engineer Abolfazl Hakimi],” Asnad-e Nehzat-e Azadi, vol. 9, part 3,
accessed November 20, 2014, http://www.mizankhabar.net/asnad/
archive/archive.htm.
37. Kaveh Ehsani, “The Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry:
The Built Environment and the Making of the Insustrial Working Class
(1908–1941)” (Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2014).
38. For a discussion of the role of leadership in social movements see Michael
Lavalette, Colin Barker, and Alan Johnson, Leadership and Social
Movements (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
39. Interview with a leftist former oil worker in Abadan Refinery, Delft, 25 July
2013.
40. “Imam Khomeini: Shora-ye Enqelab-e Islami Tashkil Shod [Imam
Khomeini: Council of the Islamic Revolution Has Been Formed],”
Ettela‘at 23 Dey 1357/13 January 1979.
41. “Matn-e Mosahebe ba Jenab-e Aqaye Mohandes Mehdi Bazargan
(Ordibehesht 1361) [Transcript of Interview with Mehdi Bazargan
(April–May 1982)],” Asnad-e Nehzat-e Azadi, vol. 9, part 3 accessed
November 20, 2014, http://www.mizankhabar.net/asnad/archive/
archive.htm.
42. The Islamic Revolution Based on SAVAK Documents, vol. 24, 304; “Decree
no. 14 (28 Dey 1357/18 January 1979) of the Committee for the
Coordination of the Oil Strikes,” Ershad-e Islami-ye Khuzestan, Khuzestan
Hamgam ba Enqelab [Khuzestan During the Revolution], vol. 1 (Vezarat-e
Ershad-e Islami, Bahman 1362/January–February 1984), 80–81. “Tolid-e
Palayeshgah-ha Afzayesh Yaft [Production of Refineries Increases],”
Ettela‘at, 1 Bahman 1357/21 January 1978.
43. “Da‘vat be Tashkil-e Komiteh-ha-ye “Towzi‘Naft” [Invitation to Form
“Fuel Distribution” Committees],” Ayandegan, 28 Day 1357/18 January
1979.
44. “Mosahebeh ba Aghaye Mohandes Abolfazl Hakimi [Interview with
Engineer Abolfazl Hakimi].”
45. The Islamic Revolution According to SAVAK Documents, vol. 23, 122.
46. Quoted in Roozshomar-e enqelab-e Islami [Chronology of the Islamic
Revolution], vol. 13 (Tehran: Sazman-e Tabliqat-e Islami, 1393/2014),
183.
47. Farhad Khosrokhavar, “Le Comité Dans La Révolution Iranienne: Le
Cas D’une Ville Moyenne, Hamadan,” Peuples Méditerranéens, no.
9 (1979): 89.
48. “Mardom Saburaneh dar Saf-eh Naft Pishmiravand” [People Wait Patiently
in the Fuel Queues], Kayhan, 21 Dey 1357/11 January 1979.
49. The Islamic Revolution According to Savak Documents, vol. 23, 200.
 FLUID HISTORY: OIL WORKERS AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION 97

50. Ibid., vol. 24, 146.

51. ‘Emadaldin Baqi, Faradastan Va Foroodastan: Khaterat-e Shafahi-ye
Enqelab [Rulers and the Subaltern: Oral History of the Revolution] (Tehran:
Jame’e Iranian, 1379/2000), 7.
52. “Shoraha-ye Mahali, Gami Digar Baraye Piruzi [Local Committees,
Another Step Towards Victory],” Ayandegan 24 Dey 1357/14 January
1979, 3.
53. “Islamic cooperatives” were set up, often by bazaaris, shop owners, office
workers and students, to provide low-priced necessary products to the
poor.
54. “Gostaresh-e Shorahaye Mahali Va Ta‘avoniha-ye Islami [Expansion of
Neighbourhood Committees and Islamic Cooperatives],” Ayandegan, 25
Dey 1357/15 January 1979.
55. “Goftogu ba Saeed Jalili: Mardom Khedmatresan-e Vaqe‘ira be Zur
Kandida Mikardand [Interview with Saeed Jalili: People Would Nominate
Those Who Served Them by Force],” Mehrnews (1 Shahrivar 1392/23
August 2013), http://www.mehrnews.com/news/2036830/-‫ﺧﺪﻣﺖ‬-‫ﻣﺮﺩﻡ‬
‫ﮐﺮﺩﻧﺪ‬-‫ﻣﯽ‬-‫ﮐﺎﻧﺪﯾﺪﺍ‬-‫ﺯﻭﺭ‬-‫ﺑﻪ‬-‫ﺭﺍ‬-‫ﻭﺍﻗﻌﯽ‬-‫ﺭﺳﺎﻥ‬.
56. “Mosahebeh ba aghaye Mohandes Abolfazl Hakimi [Interview with
Engineer Abolfazl Hakimi].”
57. Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, 161–162.
58. Mohammad Javad Khatami, “Be Karkonan-e Mobarez-e San‘at-e Naft va
be Hame Mobarezan-e Rah-e Azadi [To the Militant Employees of the Oil
Industry and to All Who Struggle for Freedom],” Ayandegan, 12 Bahman
1357/1 February 1979.
59. Kai Bird, “Iranian Oil Workers and Revolution,” in America’s Energy.
Reports from the Nation on 100 Years of Struggle for the Democratic Control
of Our Resources, ed. Robert Engler (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980),
235.
60. Nomani and Behdad, Class and Labor in Iran, 218.
61. Ibid., 101.
62. A discussion of the reasons for the oil workers’ capacity to strike requires
another article, but useful insights can be found in Ashraf, “Anatomy of the
Revolution”; Jafari, “Reasons to Revolt.”
63. “E‘tesab dar San’at-e Naft [Strike in the Oil Industry],” Ettela’at, 30 Mehr
1357/22 October 1978.
64. Society of the Employees of the Planning and Budget Organization, “Hail
to the Dear Workers and Employees of the Oil Industry,” 26780045 (15
Azar 1357/6 December 1978), IRDC archives, Tehran.
65. Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, 163.
66. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London:
Gollancz, 1980), 8.
98 P. JAFARI

67. Asef Bayat, “Historiography, Class and Iranian Workers,” in Workers and
Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies, ed.
Zachary Lockman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 186.
68. Ibid., 202–203.
69. Marc W. Steinberg, Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective
Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1999), 230.
70. Zachary Lockman, “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism,
and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899–1914,” Poetics Today 15, no.
2 (1994): 158.
71. Touraj Atabaki, “From ‘Amaleh (Labor) to Kargar (Worker): Recruitment,
Work Discipline and Making of the Working Class in the Persian/Iranian
Oil Industry,” International Labor and Working-Class History 84, no. 3
(2013): 159–175.
72. Bayat, “Historiography, Class and Iranian Workers,” 198–199.
73. Paul Blackledge, “Thinking About (New) Social Movements. Some
Insights from the British Marxist Historians,” in Marxism and Social
Movements, ed. Colin Barker et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 265.
74. Peyman Vahabzadeh, “Saka: Iran’s Grassroots Revolutionary Workers’
Organisation,” Revolutionary History 10, no. 3 (2011): 348–359.
75. Bird, “Iranian Oil Workers and Revolution,” 235–238.
76. Misagh Parsa, States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions: A Comparative
Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 172.
77. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran, 44–49.
78. John Krinsky, “Marxism and the Politics of Possibility: Beyond Academic
Boundaries,” in Marxism and Social Movements, ed. Barker et al., 120.
79. For a more elaborate discussion of this point see Peyman Jafari, “Linkages
of Oil and Politics. Oil Strikes and Dual Power in the Iranian Revolution,”
in Labor History (forthcoming).
80. Eric Selbin, “What Was Revolutionary About the Iranian Revolution? The
Power of Possibility,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 29, no. 1 (2009): 36.
 Norwegian Oil Workers: From Rebels
to Parters in the Tripartite System

Helge Ryggvik

In June 1966, the American drilling company Odeco placed a small adver-
tisement in a local Stavanger newspaper. Stavanger, which faces the North
Sea in south-western Norway, was then mostly known for its sardine industry
and a couple of rich shipping firms. Odeco was looking for Norwegian oil
workers, and the response was overwhelming. About 2000 people applied
for the 36 advertised posts.1 A few weeks later, a small group of Norwegian
oil workers found themselves at the bottom of the job hierarchy when the
floating oil rig Ocean Traveler began the first exploration for oil on the
Norwegian continental shelf in the North Sea in the autumn the same year.
At the time, drilling for oil in the harsh conditions of the North Sea stood at
the very edge of what was technologically possible. However, the first
Norwegian oil workers faced the double challenge of difficult work along
with the unfamiliar approach to labor relations adopted by American oil
companies with a background of operating in the US South.
Over the years, Norway has often been held as a model of how a country
can successfully manage the potential dangers of an economy, where rev-
enues from oil and gas play a dominant role.2 The perception of what in the
Norwegian oil experience is viewed as a model varies from the creation of the

H. Ryggvik (&)
Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK),
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

© The Author(s) 2018 99

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_5
100 H. RYGGVIK

Oil Fund as a preventive mechanism against the “oil curse” and the “Dutch
Disease” to the fact that after decades of oil extraction, Norway can still be
considered as a relatively egalitarian society. Norway appears to have avoided
being riddled by corruption and the kind of excessive rent-seeking that is
often associated with oil-rich countries. The country’s apparent success in
mastering the considerable safety and environmental challenges of operating
offshore oil installations under harsh conditions is another indication of its
relative achievements in dealing with the dangers of oil extraction. Not least,
whenever Norwegian politicians tout the accomplishments of the country’s
oil experience, the claim of tight and cozy relationships between workers, oil
companies, and the state (the tripartite system), is often an integral part of
their narrative. The tripartite system is not unique to Norway, but is part of
what is referred to as the Scandinavian Nordic model.3 Its historical roots go
back to the Great Depression of the 1930s when a compromise was struck
between the growing labor movement and industrial employers, who came
to accept collective bargaining with elected shop stewards and established
trade unions. The unions, for their part, had to accept certain restrictions on
how and when they could strike. The role of the state in this compromise
varied from country to country. In Norway, it played a mediating role by
implementing an egalitarian policy aimed at ensuring industrial competi-
tiveness and improving workers’ share of income.
The tripartite system has been integral to the development of Norway’s
oil industry since the 1960s. However, this was in no way a harmonious
process. First, Norwegian oil workers had to struggle hard to establish
themselves as a collective and thereafter to force the major international oil
companies to accept them as negotiation counterparts. Ironically, with the
ascendency of Norwegian oil companies as major operators and employers,
a majority of oil workers came to consider the tripartite system as the main
obstacle to obtaining the improved working conditions they had struggled
for. Finally, after a period of relatively harmonious relations within this
corporatist model, the internationalization of the Norwegian oil industry
challenged this system of cooperation, by adopting management policies
that undermined the very base of the tripartite arrangement.

WORKING OFFSHORE
In contrast to other countries, where the term “oil worker” can be used for
anyone whose work relates to the oil industry, including refinery workers;
in Norwegian, “oil worker” has always been synonymous with offshore
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 101

work. From the late 1960s through the early 1990s, Norwegian offshore
exploration and extraction was almost exclusively carried out in the North
Sea. Thereafter, operations expanded to rigs further north in the
Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Barents Sea. In 2012, an estimated 24,000
people worked offshore on the Norwegian Continental shelf.4 One third of
these were directly employed by oil companies and the rest by different
types of supply and service companies. In addition, offshore operations are
supported and maintained by a wide range of staff onshore, and there is the
extensive large industry that is somehow related to oil activities. Once all
the supply, service, processing, and export-related activities are included,
the total number of petroleum-related employees in 2014 was estimated to
be around 240,000.5 Given its size, this onshore based group of employees
has been crucial in shaping labor relations in Norway. Nevertheless, the
role and activities of offshore workers are of particular interest, because it
was offshore that the contrast between the international oil industry and
the traditional local labor relations was most striking.
Technically and organizationally, North Sea oil activities were an out-
growth and continuation of activities that had begun earlier off the coast of
southern US states, such as Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas—where off-
shore drilling had started in the interwar years, but had really taken off in
the 1950s. When drilling started on the Norwegian continental shelf in the
late 1960s, the American company Odeco, which was drilling for several of
the major oil companies, was the largest employer. The initial drilling and
explorations involved a number of diving companies and outfits specializ-
ing in other support activities. Newly hired Norwegian workers met a
well-established work organization that included unfamiliar specialized
roles, such as roustabouts, roughnecks, derickmen, drillers, and tool
pushers. In this new and unfamiliar work environment, Norwegians had to
start at the bottom of the working hierarchy. It was in these firms that
Norwegian workers first experienced the prevailing working culture of the
oil industry. However, what in hindsight is now considered to have been
important pioneering work, at the time was minuscule in scale, and was a
marginal economic activity, employing no more than 300 workers.
The discovery of the Ekofisk field in December 1969 was the start of a
phase of explosive development, accompanied by a substantial increase in
drilling. Within a few years, production facilities at Ekofisk led to the
construction of a small town 300 km offshore in the southwestern part of
the Norwegian sector. Most of the installations on the Ekofisk field were
built abroad. When operations began, there were still a large number of
102 H. RYGGVIK

foreigners in managerial positions, but the new production platforms were

to a large degree staffed with Norwegian workers. The responsible oper-
ative oil company Phillips would employ workers in key functions, such as
process operators. Other groups, such as production drillers, divers, and
special services staff would be employed by contractors.
In the following years, a series of major new fields were discovered. The
large gas field Frigg, on the border of the British sector, was developed
partly in parallel with the Ekofisk field. From the end of the 1970s, the
giant platforms that would produce oil from the major Statfjord field were
installed at sea. The Statfjord field differed insofar as the newly established
Norwegian state oil company Statoil held a controlling ownership position.
However, the working organization was still American, with the oil com-
pany Mobil as operator and, therefore, the major employer. From the
mid-1970s on, a significant proportion of the construction work onshore
was carried out in Norway. Nevertheless, up to the mid-1980s, in the
Norwegian oil sectors’ decisive pioneering years, foreign companies
remained the dominating employers. An exception here was floating semi
submersible drilling rigs, where Norwegian shipowners dominated the
market from the early 1970s. However, without the necessary techno-
logical expertise, it was American drilling firms that carried out the actual
drilling on these platforms.
The striking dominance of foreign employers in the Norwegian offshore
oil sector up until the mid-1980s stands out in contrast to the political
perception of the time, which tended to laud Norway for its ability to
secure national governance and control over its oil activities.
A thoroughgoing Norwegianization of the industry was formulated as a
political objective by both parliament and different governments when the
size of the new oil finds was known.6 However, even with open protec-
tionist measures, this took time to achieve. As long as foreign oil companies
dominated operations, regulation was the main way of securing national
governance and control over activities in the oil sector. As early as in 1966,
before the first well had been drilled, the parliament boosted that Norway
had the best safety regulation in the world.7 A few months later, a safety
framework for prospecting drilling was established.8 Large portions of this
framework, though, were proposals from the companies themselves. The
regulations had little effect on their existing practices. Furthermore, it
would take many years, even after oil was discovered, before Norwegian
authorities had a regulatory system in place which could actually enforce
the regulations. After a thorough debate, in 1974, Norwegian
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 103

parliamentarians agreed that the best way to enforce a “Norwegianization”

of the oil sector and avoid potential negative aspects of the related activities
was to undertake a “moderate” rate of extraction.9 However, what on
paper looked like strict regulations and a moderate pace of development of
the oil sector appeared very different to the first Norwegian oil workers in
the North Sea. When it came to the actual work process, this national
control was limited.

HIGH RISKS AND FATALITIES

The work regime in these early years was dangerous, as safety was often
sacrificed to get the job done within tight deadlines. The activities during
the construction phase of Ekofisk, Frigg, and Statfjord were so intensive
that all the personnel involved and resources were pushed to the limit. The
pressure on oil workers did not only come from foreign companies, but
also come from the Norwegian state and other private Norwegian interests
with an economic stake in the new sector. While other Western countries
were struggling with high unemployment and tightening public expendi-
ture, Norway was continuing to enlarge its welfare state. The oil money
had been spent in advance. Furthermore, as the main owner of the
Statfjord field, the state had to bear large construction costs, which could
not be recovered until the oil was in full production. As a result, both the
Norwegian trade balance and the state budget were running record
deficits.
The oil workers had to pay a high price for the relentless work pressure
to bring oil revenue flows as quickly as possible. Between 1965 and 1978,
82 workers were killed in connection with activities in the Norwegian
sector. In proportion to the number of hours worked, this was a very high
fatality rate. During the development of Ekofisk alone (between 1971 and
1977), 45 workers died, 16 of whom were killed in helicopter crashes.
Some accidents made headlines, such as the wreck of the Deep Sea Driller
platform on March 1, 1976 when six workers died and a fire on the Alpha
platform on Ekofisk the same year when three workers lost their lives. The
high fatalities were not caused by major catastrophes, but caused by
numerous smaller work accidents. In the close-knit communities of the oil
installations, all accidents were felt personally.
In Easter 1977, Phillips lost control during drilling from the Bravo
platform on Ekofisk. The oil spill lasted 8 days before control could be
restored, although luckily, there was no explosion. This could have set
104 H. RYGGVIK

similar events in motion to the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon in

2010 in the US, where the platform melted as a result of the fire and the
underwater well had to be sealed with great difficulty.
On March 27, 1980, the most traumatic episode in Norwegian oil
history occurred, also on Ekofisk. One of the support pillars of the
semi-submersible accommodation rig Alexander L. Kielland broke in
stormy weather. The platform immediately lurched. The crew desperately
tried to evacuate the platform, but only a handful managed to reach their
life vests. Three lifeboats were crushed against the platform, which then
capsized after 20 minutes, taking many people with it. Others struggled in
the ice-cold water, surrounded by wreckage, to get onto the two lifeboats
that had made it onto the water undamaged. A few managed to swim to a
neighboring platform. Eighty-one people were rescued in all, but 123 lost
their lives.
These fatal accidents changed the public image of the North Sea oil
industry, and tarnished the dream of a Norway awash with oil money. The
Alexander Kielland accident added fuel to the fire of oil workers’ dissatis-
faction. They were no longer willing to be guinea pigs in hazardous
working environments, which appeared to be out of control. When the
Norwegian oil workers finally revolted, the rebellion was not only against
foreign oil companies, but also against the Norwegian state, which was
responsible for the basic framework and acquired most of the revenues.

BACKLASH, THE FIRST TRADE UNION INITIATIVES

Norwegian oil workers eventually established strong and independent
collective institutions; the shape these took must be seen as a response to
the rather dramatic circumstances in which they were formed. The complex
forms of opposition that developed were also influenced by the social
backgrounds of different oil workers, who were a melting pot of different
groups with their own traditions and relationship to work.
The city of Stavanger, which was both the starting point for recruiting
the first oil workers and later became Norway’s oil capital, had like other
coastal towns a shipyard. The shipyard workers were organized in the
Metalworkers Union, the strongest body in the main Norwegian trade
union federation Landsorganisasjonen (LO). However, Stavanger had
never been a particular stronghold for the trade union movement or for
Norwegian social democracy. A significant proportion of the oil workers
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 105

came from the rural districts surrounding Stavanger.10 These were rural
communities of individualistic farmers, often with a strong evangelical
religious orientation. The social background and cultural attitude of these
early Norwegian oil workers were not so different from those of the
American oil drillers who were just above them in the job hierarchy. Others
had previously been construction workers, and many of them had worked
on building major dams and had a trade union background. This con-
tributed to the fact that a group of Norwegian oil workers managed to
establish a collective wage agreement with Odeco as early as 1967. The
workers joined the construction workers’ traditional organization,
Arbeidsmandsforbundet, a union affiliated with LO.11 Despite this early
agreement, the oil workers on the first rigs never managed to forge a strong
collective stance vis-à-vis their employers.
After the discovery of the Ekofisk the question of how to organize oil
workers suddenly acquired greater political significance. As expected, many
of the foreign companies that came in did their best to resist union orga-
nization. Norwegian oil workers could be fired immediately, for being
disliked by the management or opposing their decision. Workers active at
the time recall that they sometimes had the feeling of being a subordinate
group in the way they imagined the companies treated people when they
operated in the Third World.12 However, the greater challenge facing the
first unionized Norwegian oil workers came from Norwegian shipowners,
who had been a bastion of economic liberalism in Norwegian society since
the eighteenth century and had entered the market for floating drilling rigs.
They remained steadfast during the decades after the Second World War;
long after planning and regulations had been widely accepted as a fact of
life by most of Norway’s business elite. In the 1960s, Norway was the
world’s third largest seafaring nation by tonnage.
The shipowners were not opposed to union organizating as such, but
worked to ensure that the moderate Sjømannsforbundet (Norwegian
Seafarers’ Union), rather than more militant unions, would get the respon-
sibility for organizing the oil workers. Both the Arbeidsmandsforbundet and
the Sjømannsforbundet were members of LO. However, while the former
was reckoned a radical organization (with Communists among the leader-
ship), the Seafarers’ Union was comparatively moderate. A public inquiry in
the 1990s discovered that the Norwegian secret police, together with
shipowners and some key officials in the Labor Party, had carried out a
thorough purge of radical shop stewards in the Norwegian fleet.13 Norway
106 H. RYGGVIK

was a member of NATO, and during the Cold War, great strategic and
military importance was ascribed to its large fleet.
The first Norwegian oil workers knew nothing about the activities of the
secret police, but the Seafarers’ Union was unpopular. When in 1973, LO’s
leadership decided that organizing responsibility should be transferred to
the Seafarers’ Union, many left in protest. This was the case, among others,
of the workers on the first floating rig that had been turned into a pro-
duction rig, and where the workers formed the core of the oil company
Phillips’ operational organization on Ekofisk. LO had made itself unpop-
ular at a key moment. When Phillips on the Ekofisk field, Mobil on the
Statfjord field, and Elf on the Frigg gas field in the following years hired
their first production workers, they managed to keep out LO affiliates by
setting up their own company unions. All the three fields contained a large
number of platforms. Understandably, LO was unhappy with this.
However, LO did not get very much support from the predominantly
Social Democratic state authorities of the time. The most important
authority, the Ministry of Industry, was unwilling to offend foreign com-
panies by setting conditions that could delay the construction phase.
In the years that followed, the Seafarers’ Union did not manage to
secure members and agreements outside the floating rigs, where the
shipowners could give direct assistance. When a new rig was to be manned,
shipowners could set up a trade union office on the vessel and strike an
agreement with the Seafarers’ Union ahead of recruitment. Nevertheless,
the Seafarers’ Union and LO continued to find it difficult to recruit
members among drilling personnel and other workers on production
platforms. As a result, in 1977, the LO decided to set up a dedicated oil
workers’ union (NOPEF),14 with the aim of recruiting operators and other
contractor employees who were working on the platforms. Meanwhile,
what had initially started as a pure “company union” by Phillips began to
behave more autonomously. Leaders in the company union could mobilize
a large number of workers to create pressure in connection with negotia-
tions. This led to them to be ejected from the office, which Phillips had
provided for them. In 1977, workers on the three largest Norwegian oil
fields formed the operators employees association (OFS).
Despite these initiatives, most of the 1970s’ oil workers remained in a
weak position vis-à-vis the oil companies and their management. When
union activists engaged with serious issues over working conditions, they
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 107

often resorted to anonymously contacting investigative journalists to get

them to cover the conditions in the newspapers. Many feared that any
public criticism of the industry would mean being fired. Media exposes had
some impact in highlighting many accidents and fatalities in the industry,
and contributed to an impression that the major technological activities in
the North Sea were out of control. The ensuing disquiet helped to ensure
that when the newly passed radical Norwegian Working Environment Act
came into force in 1977, it was also applied to the oil installations.15
Norwegian shipowners were initially successful in preventing the new law
from being applied to floating rigs. However, foreign companies, which
were the main employers on fixed platforms, were obligated to implement
the new Act. It was still hard for workers to criticize management without
reprisals, nevertheless the law gradually began to have some effect.

THE REVOLT
By the late 1970s, tensions between workers and employers and man-
agement over working conditions had reached a boiling point. On May 20,
1978, the workers on the Eldfisk platform on Ekofisk went on a wildcat
strike, after a British foreman struck a Norwegian.16 Land-based man-
agement immediately flew in a representative by helicopter to calm the
situation. Instead, the action backfired as 400 workers mostly from Spain,
partly from Portugal and Latin America, joined the protest in solidarity.
They slowed work and refused to carry out the work of the striking
Norwegians. The guilty foreman was eventually transferred, but the inci-
dent was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In August of the same year, a similar strike broke out among con-
struction workers on Mobil’s Statfjord A platform. The construction
workers previously worked at shipyards and had a solid experience of trade
union activism. In the wake of the 1973–1974 crises in the international
shipping industry, former seamen had become one of the most important
groups from which oil workers were recruited. By the late 1970s, workers
from the shipyards and onshore mechanical industries had become a more
significant group. The 1978 strike on Statfjord started, because workers
were refused access to a connection platform bridge, where previously, they
could take their breaks and have a smoke in a safe area. Although this was
the incident that sparked the protest, workers’ grievances were broader and
included many other health and safety issues. Among other things, workers
108 H. RYGGVIK

demanded proper doors on the toilets. The supervisors had cut doors in
half to discourage workers from taking long breaks. However, despite these
workers having backgrounds as LO members, the strikes showed how
quickly LO could lose its influence on offshore workers. Because the strike
was technically illegal, LO sent a large negotiation team offshore, which
upon arrival on the platform was promptly locked in a room by the striking
workers.17 The union officials returned to shore humiliated. After 7 days,
Mobil was forced to give in.
In September 1978, Spanish-speaking construction workers employed
by Brown and Root went on strike on the Statfjord A platform. The
intensive use of low-paid Latin American immigrant workers for some of
the heaviest offshore tasks was another side of the prevalent labor practices
in the Gulf of Mexico that American companies brought with them to the
North Sea. The strike became dramatic when a part of the newly estab-
lished Norwegian anti-terror police force was sent out to Statfjord A to join
private security personnel there. Such coercive tactics had not been used on
strikes in Norway since the 1930s. However, some of the strikers were
experienced union activists, hardened by struggles against dictatorship in
Spain. In the end, the Norwegian “SWAT” police team returned in its
helicopter without any confrontation. One Spanish worker summarized his
experience shortly afterwards as follows: “At first I believed Norway was a
socialist country, but we were treated in a way that was astonishingly similar
to the methods of Franco.”18 The strike did not come to an end until the
leader of the newly established LO union NOPEF struck a deal. The
migrant workers got a pay raise. However, a few months later, the
subcontracting company that used to hire Spanish-speaking workers lost its
contract. American, British, and some other groups of experienced skilled
oil workers continued to work together with Norwegian workers on the
platforms. The 1978 deal and the following loss of contract of the involved
firms marked the abrupt end of Spanish, Portugues, and Latin American
migrant workers in the Norwegian oil industry.
Many of the strikes in the wave of conflict that followed focused on the
implementation of rights granted by the Working Environment Act. The
oil workers’ strategic position in what rapidly became Norway’s highest
income industry represented a challenge for the income policy that was an
important part of the tripartite system. The oil workers’ demands for
higher pay could potentially threaten the negotiated limits agreed upon
between the LO and the Norwegian Employers’ Confederation (NAF).
This placed the LO in an awkward position. On the one hand, its
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 109

continued recruitment of oil workers and the establishment of further

branches were predicated on demanding better pay and working condi-
tions. On the other hand, it had to make sure that oil workers’ agreements
did not become too good in comparison with those of other Norwegian
workers. As soon as Norwegian oil workers achieved a certain strength,
pressure developed to break out of the box of establishing different deals
than workers in other industries onshore. The LO leadership accepted the
employers’ argument that Norwegian income levels were becoming too
high compared to other countries. While the economic crisis in Europe was
creating downwards pressure on income, the effect of the major oil
investments in Norway was the reverse.
In the summer of 1978, catering employees went on strike for higher
salaries. Contract employees on the floating rigs and drilling personnel on
the fixed installations carried out successful actions over pay raises in the
autumn of 1978, in defiance of the wage freeze policy adopted by the
government. This, in turn, brought about strikes for similar salary increases
among other groups in the winter of 1979. In 1980, finally, it was the
operator personnel’s turn to go on the offensive. Operator employees,
organized in OFS, were potentially the most influential group of oil
workers in the sense that their industrial action could easily block pro-
duction across the industry. During the period that followed, production
on the Norwegian shelf was stopped several times.
When oil workers were struggling for higher salaries, the Norwegian
media often portrayed them as greedy. In 1974, Norway had adopted a tax
regime based on the idea that as much as possible of the “economic rent”
or oil rent belonged to the nation and, therefore, should be acquired by the
government.19 From such reasoning, it could be argued that oil workers
were in a position to acquire “rent” that otherwise belonged to the nation
as a whole. However, with their access to large oil fields and the accounting
loophole of deducting costs from their tax bill, the oil companies’ net
profits were consistently above the average for other industries, allowing
them to pay their workers well. Oil workers could also argue that the
extreme, harsh conditions under which they were working required com-
pensation. By the end of the decade, discontent and restlessness among oil
workers had reached such intensity that they became a major political issue.
The increasingly more radical OFS association that stood outside the tra-
ditional tripartite system wanted to become part of the nation wide annual
110 H. RYGGVIK

negotiation process. With the support of key civil servants in the ministry
responsible for labor relations, the LO worked hard to prevent this.
Eventually, the OFS managed to obtain the right to collective agreements,
and in the summer of 1981, the union used these agreements to initiate
strikes for higher wages. When the ruling Labor government used com-
pulsory arbitration to stop the strike, workers employed by Mobil on the
Statfjordfield went on an illegal strike. There were only a few days left to
the general election. Mobil gave in and accepted the workers’ demands,
which led to salaries increasing 30%.
In this rebellious atmosphere, there was a trend towards breaking down
the barriers between different trade unions and occupations offshore. Now,
members of the Seamen’s Union on semisubmersible rigs and drillers on
production platforms organized NOPEF, both unions part of the LO, also
went on strike. After the strikes, many of the involved workers broke away
from the LO and began talks with production personnel in the OFS. As a
result, the OFS opened the organization to all oil workers, thus becoming
an industry-wide union. For some time, it appeared as if the LO might
completely loose its hegemony among oil workers, as now, the majority
were organized outside the traditional tripartite system. Ironically, the OFS
had originally started as an American company union, but now it had
become radicalized by strikes, and was situating itself in strong opposition
to dominating foreign oil companies, as well as the traditional social
democratic class collaboration. The LO unions were eventually rescued
from an unexpected quarter.

A JOINT COUNTEROFFENSIVE BY THE STATE

AND THE COMPANIES

In the run-up to the general election in 1981, several of the political parties
in the center-right opposition repeatedly supported independent oil
workers’ unions in an effort to establish themselves as a recognized part of
the negotiation system outside the LO.20 This was a way to undermine the
union, which was a staunch supporter of the Labor government. At
the same time, it was a way to broaden their social base for winning the
election. Unsurprisingly, their support for rebellious sections of the oil
workers changed as soon as the same parties took power. On December
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 111

11, 1981, representatives of all the foreign oil companies operating on the
Norwegian shelf were summoned to a meeting with the newly elected
conservative Prime Minister Kåre Willoch. Like the previous Labor gov-
ernment, the new government shared the view that the foreign oil com-
panies’ behavior had been instrumental in provoking the conflicts. At the
same time, there was frustration that some companies were giving in too
easily to the workers’ wage demands. The message to the companies was
clear21: they were all asked to harmonize their wage systems in a way that
did not deviate from income policies in other parts of the Norwegian
industry. To achieve this, they were asked to immediately join the
Norwegian employers’ association (NAF, later NHO). This in turn meant
that they had to accept the LO as a legitimate counterpart. The conse-
quence for companies who did not comply was explicit: they would have
no future on the Norwegian Shelf. In other words, the foreign companies
were asked to accept and take part in the existing tripartite system. At the
same time, a clear signal was given to both the companies and the state
administration that the rebellious oil workers’ unions should be if not
smashed then at least weakened.
The unrest among oil workers has no equivalent in Norwegian labor
relations after the Second World War. A study shows that on average
between 1978 and 1985, oil workers went on strike 26 times as often as
workers in all the other land-based industries combined.22 The degree of
militancy was particularly strong between 1978 and 1981. Most strikes
were thoroughly controlled from the grassroots. At the helicopter termi-
nals, where workers and management were shipped in and out, there were
always significant groups of oil workers who were on their breaks when the
strikes broke out. The platforms were often in practice occupied by the
workers. If helicopters with managers or other staff whom strikers did not
want on board attempted to land, large groups of workers would lie down
on the helipad so as to block landing. This all-encompassing and lengthy
involvement, and the fact that most strikes ended in victory for the
workers, left not only a strong workers’ collective but also a series of
well-trained, self-confident shop stewards.
The most visible and lasting expression of this was the oil workers’
involvement in health and safety issues. Prior to the Working Environment
Act, workplace conditions had been exclusively regulated between the state
112 H. RYGGVIK

and the employer.23 With the Act, from 1977, co-decision was extended to
the workers. Employees gained the right to elect safety delegates, who had
rights that directly affected management practices. At the time, this was not
unique to Norway. What distinguished labor unrest in Norway’s oil
industry was the degree to which health and safety representatives got
enforceable rights and how they were linked, via training and otherwise, to
the trade unions.24 It was not until after the strikes that oil workers started
to use the law. From the early 1980s, however, no other group of
Norwegian workers utilized the possibilities that were built into the law.
On all oil installations, Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) commit-
tees were established, where both workers and employers were repre-
sented. The text of the Act itself was shaped by a philosophy which can be
summed up thus: in contrast to previous health and safety practices, it was
no longer the human being (the employees) who were to adapt themselves
to existing technology. Employers were required to ensure that the tech-
nology was adapted to human beings. This was very different from the
behaviorist stimuli-response approach that had dominated much of the
industrial safety regulation in the 1950s and 1960s.
The oil workers’ influence on improving safety conditions and regula-
tions was also reflected in the responsible regulatory authorities. The
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) (from 2005 the Petroleum
Safety Authority, PSA) developed a regulatory system, where strong labor
safety delegates became an important element. For example, since the
approach was one of building robust technology with high safety margins
and workplaces that adapted to workers’ needs, from the mid-1980s, safety
representatives had the opportunity to give advice in the design process
itself when new large platforms were to be built. With large living
accommodations and working quarters situated on top of dangerous oil
and gas wells, the potential for catastrophes on large oil platforms was
indeed very present for those spending most of their work life there. In the
beginning, workers, with the support of the NPD, demanded that
accommodation platforms should be separate from production platforms.
A compromised was reached, with a total redesign of platforms, where
accommodation areas were separate from production facilities, often with
firewalls and sometimes open space in between.
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 113

THE INDEPENDENT UNION ON THE DEFENSIVE

While the 1980s represented huge gains for workers in the form of
improvements in safety, higher wages, better accommodations, shorter
working hours etc., in the same period, oil companies often supported by
the Norwegian state went on a counteroffensive, trying to weaken the
unions. In several instances, oil workers reacted with new strikes, although
now of a more defensive character. What also followed was a long drawn
out period of infighting among different oil workers’ unions.
The creation of OFS was an expression of the many contradictory forces
at play in the Norwegian oil sector. Its members had been forged together
by the same kind of grassroots collective struggle from below that had laid
the foundation of social democracy as a political force earlier in the century.
One of the unions’ main political tools was the Working Environment Act,
possibly the most “Social democratic” of all laws implemented in Norway.
However, both OFS’ origin (as a company union), its membership base (a
large number recruited from areas lacking strong labor traditions) and its
actual experience (workers who were involved in industrial action repeat-
edly met people and structures linked to the Labor Party on the other side
of the negotiating table), made it a strong counterforce to the Norwegian
social democratic state. Skepticism towards the Labor Party was not unique
to OFS, the most rebellious of the oil workers’ unions. At the same time,
the LO union NOPEF also marked itself out within the LO confederation
by its demand to act more independently of the Labor Party. Both in the
strikes and in the leadership of OFS and NOPEF, there were a significant
proportion of individuals whose political affiliations were to the left of the
Labor Party, people who had come to political awareness through the
youth radicalization of the late 1960s and the 1970s. However, on average
and in comparison with other traditional industrial workers, oil workers
tended to vote considerably to the right of the other traditional industrial
workers.
In the years that followed after the climax in 1981, OFS went on (legal)
strike several times. However, again and again, the government intervened
with compulsory arbitration, and the best outcome was a copy of the
agreement made by industrial unions in other industries onshore. On some
occasions, competing LO-organized unions received better agreements
without having taken industrial action. Many in the OFS felt that this was
part of a conscious attempt by employers and the state to undermine their
union. At the same time, there was a real danger that the solidarity across
114 H. RYGGVIK

different occupational groups that had marked the uprising would be

undermined by more particularistic/sectionalist interests. In particular,
some oil workers in key positions directed their discontent towards workers
lower down the hierarchy.
Some of this discontent came to the surface in 1986, when the
Norwegian Employer’s Confederation, partly inspired by the waves of
international attacks on labor movements, in particular British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher’s assault on the unions in Britain, undertook a
major lockout in connection with the main agreement on non-oil-related
activities on land. The initiative was fiercely repelled. It soon transpired that
during the Norwegian version of the “Yuppi” boom years (1983–1987),
the enthusiasm for confrontational action was weak among the employers
themselves. After only a few days of full-scale trade union mobilization, the
lockout fell apart. However, a corresponding lockout in the oil industry
lasted considerably longer.25 Here, the employers had broken off negoti-
ations that had started with demands from the catering workers in OFS.
Other oil workers had not even started negotiations. While all the other
conflicts that had crippled or restricted oil production after 1981 had
ended by compulsory arbitration, this time around the government avoi-
ded intervention as it found industrial action to suit its interests. In the
spring of 1986 the price of oil was at a historic low of under $10. With all
production blocked, Norway could contribute to the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)’s attempt to raise prices, without
being accused of taking part in a cartel.26 However, insofar as the lockout
contributed to emptying the strike funds of all the oil workers’ unions, this
was also an attack on the strength of the oil workers. By attacking catering
workers, it also contributed to strengthening internal conflicts between
different groups of oil workers. The lockout was lifted after 3 weeks.
Shortly, after a significant group of employees working in key positions in
the production process broke out of OFS and joined a union for managers.

NORWEGIAN OIL COMPANIES TAKE OVER

In the space of only 2 years, from the end of 1986 up to 1988, Norwegian oil
companies took over as major employers on the Norwegian sector of the
North Sea. In December 1986, Statoil started production on the major
Gullfaks field, and soon after, it acquired Mobil’s organization on the three
giant platforms on the Statfjord field. In 1988, Norsk Hydro, the second
partly state-owned Norwegian oil company, started production on the
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 115

Oseberg field. If, initially, it had been foreign oil companies that had pro-
voked the intense conflicts around 1980, now that Norwegian companies
had taken over a more harmonious relationship between the companies and
employees might have been expected. This was certainly not the case,
especially not initially. In 1990, with the state-owned Statoil as the dominant
company on the employers’ side for the first time, the Norwegian continental
shelf experienced its most polarized period of labor conflict ever.
Many years of repeated state interventions on the employers’ side had
led to a considerable build-up of frustration among OFS’ members.
The OFS submitted complaints about these interferences to the ILO and
had secured a ruling against the government, on the ground that they
constituted biased and unreasonable interventions against labors the right
to collective action and strikes.27 However, the Norwegian government,
which otherwise emphasized loyalty to UN-linked institutions, chose to
ignore the ruling. In 1990, if onshore refineries and petrochemical plants
were included, the LO union NOPEF had become the largest oil workers
union. However, OFS’ members could still block more or less all pro-
ductions of oil and gas in the Norwegian sector. Many at the grassroots
thought that they should do what they had done earlier in the 1980s: strike
for better conditions, even if it was illegal. One of the demands that were
raised was for an improved pension agreement. In the summer of 1990,
OFS went on a (legal) strike once again. Then, the Minister for Local
Government warned after only 36 hours that he would stop the conflict,
but assemblies on Ekofisk, Statfjord, and Gullfaks decided to continue
regardless, and workers from several smaller oil fields joined in.
Unlike the early 1980s, this time the oil workers were facing an
employers’ side that already had plans for how to deal with illegal industrial
action. Around 1980, the striking workers had always been a clear majority
on the rigs. Before the 1990 conflict, employers, with Statoil in the lead,
had ensured that the number of ordinary workers was minimal. By con-
trast, many foremen and others in management positions were on the rigs.
On most rigs, employees’ communications to land were cut. On the
employers’ side, Phillips and its Ekofisk organization played an important
role, but the nerve center of the employers’ operation and tactics was
Statoil’s personnel department outside Stavanger. Statoil’s leader Harald
Norvik was directly involved. Among other things, he read out an
announcement, which was repeatedly played on the loudspeakers on
Gullfaks and Statfjord.28 He pointed out that the conflict was a breach of
Norwegian law, that Statoil would not enter negotiations under any
116 H. RYGGVIK

conditions, and that those who took part risked being fired. The fact that it
was management and not the workers that controlled the loudspeakers was
itself an expression of how the balance of forces had shifted. Many line
managers were also forced to confront employees with whom they
otherwise had good relationships in the close-knit milieu of the oilrigs. The
possibility of loosing their job added to the pressure on workers. It took
some time before the low oil price from 1986 was felt in the rest of the
Norwegian economy. However, a crack in the property market from 1988
lead to a total banking collapse, from 1989. This again lead to increased
unemployment. The psychological pressure was intense, and many wound
up in the infirmaries.29 There were cases of heart attacks and nervous
breakdowns on both sides. The strikers on the Ekofisk field were the first to
cave in. After a week on illegal strike, isolated on the large ocean rigs, the
last Statoil employees finally gave up.
Statoil proved to be at least as ruthless an opponent as the foreign
companies. This was also shown by the events that followed the strike. All
28 workers were sacked. Phillips, which did not want to further polarize
the conflict once the strike was over, accepted that their workers could get
their jobs back. BP and Elf also came to amicable agreements with their
employees. However, Statoil’s personnel management, which had sacked a
total of 20 workers, was far more recalcitrant. Those who had been sacked
were popular rank and file workers who had loyally taken part in the strike.
However, none of them were the real strike leaders. When Statoil offered
to give them their jobs back in return for OFS taking disciplinary pro-
ceedings against the real strike leaders, many felt that they were being held
hostage to the company’s ruthless tactics. The union nearly broke apart as a
result of internal conflicts.
For a long period after, the relationship between Statoil’s personnel
department and its largest group of operator employees remained tense. The
strike’s defeat was real in the sense that the membership’s resolve to take part
in new, divisive conflicts were considerably dampened. The strong collective
which had existed in the early 1980s had been undermined. However, after a
few years, Statoil visibly abandoned its attempt to break the once-unruly
trade union. The state company was continuing its expansion as an operator.
There were constantly new platforms and fields to staff, preferably with
experienced oil workers. Many of those who had been active in the strike
were skilled, professional workers that the company needed both on its new
rigs and on the old ones. Eventually, a more business-like relationship was
established between the unions and the company.
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 117

On platforms with equally large unions competing for the same mem-
bers, branch meetings took on more the character of factional meetings and
were no longer a political expression of collective workers. As long as the
oil industry as a whole was expanding, the battle over recruiting members
did not completely damage and permanently undermine the oil workers’
strength vis-a-vis the employers. Although it was started as a “responsible”
alternative to the rebellious OFS, NOPEF also proved to be willing to
challenge the employers. In 1993, the two unions carried out a joint
political strike for the first time, in protest against proposals linked to
Norway’s incorporation into the European Economic Area (EEA).30 As a
result of the strike, parliament explicitly decided that Norwegian regula-
tions and employment conditions should apply to the oil industry, even if it
was to become easier for foreign companies to gain access.

FROM YOUNG REBELS TO MODERATE FAMILY MEN?

The Norwegian oil workers’ militant actions from the late 1970s had many
parallels to the radical breakthrough in the Norwegian workers’ movement
around the First World War when foreign investment had led to indus-
trialization around Norway’s hydropower resources. Similar to that earlier
period, the economic starting point in the latter twentieth century was a
rapidly expanding new industry, where new barriers were constantly being
broken through the interaction between humans, nature, and technology.
A generation of mostly young workers had set their mark on this new
situation through direct action, grassroots-directed activism, and a critique
of bureaucratisation in the traditional and established trade unions. The
pioneer discussion of this radical period of the Norwegian workers’
movement’s history came from the historian Edvard Bull Sr.31 His son,
Edvard Bull Jr., describes the institutional adaptation that took place after
the great rebellion.32 Bull Sr. identifies the shift from a “noisy” period
marked by a hectic pace of new initiatives towards a far more stable state of
normality. Young migrant workers (mostly Swedes) set roots in the new
industrial towns and started families. With new institutions, there was a
kind of natural adaptation.
The adaptation that took place among the oil workers in the 1990s had
clear similarities to that earlier era. As younger generations of workers
matured and became more established, the average age rose, the young
started families, and an apprehension about the punitive consequences of
militantism began to blunt their willingness for radical collective action.
118 H. RYGGVIK

If one compares the oil workers’ strikes in the 1980s with those that took
place in the following decade, it is clear that concerns over possible ter-
minations and their impact on their home life had become far more salient
in many workers’ consciousness. The earlier militantism underwent some
changes as labor became more unionized during these two decades, and
had very different political expressions. While the disruption in the
Norwegian labor movement around and after the First World War had laid
the basis for the relatively radical Norwegian social democracy, the oil
workers’ rebellion in the latter part of the twentieth century was in many
respects a reaction against the social democratic state itself.
At the dawn of the oil industry in the 1970s, the Norwegian oil workers’
collective actions and political attitudes were still shaped by their diverse
social backgrounds. By the 1990s, they had established themselves as a
distinct social group, although there were still many subgroups depending
on whether one was working in an operative company or for a contractor
company. Furthermore, workers in the contractor sector could be divided
into different subgroups. Some, like drillers, experts on well services, sup-
port services such as catering, or various groups which carried out con-
tinuous maintenance work, might work closely with operator employees in
the oil firms. Others, like the ever-growing group which worked on various
types of specialized supply ships, had less direct contact to other oil
workers. From the 1980s, all diving activities were also moved from the
platforms to specialized diving ships. Workers in the supply fleet might
muster in coastal harbors, while other oil worker groups usually flew out on
an ever-busier helicopter network.
In connection with the hectic construction phase at the end of the
1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, there was a significant sense of
community among oil workers, also during offshore leave. The average age
of Norwegian oil workers was low at this point. Nearly all were men. In
between intense offshore work periods, many oil workers met in particular
pubs and nightclubs in Stavanger, which at times could also act as unofficial
recruitment offices.33 In Stavanger, one can to this day hear stories about
cocky, young, and uneducated oil workers, doing the town and showing
off their Rolex watches.34 However, many victories in the union struggles,
and a gradual professionalization of various occupational categories, also
contributed to changing oil workers’ social life and collective culture. Most
Norwegian oil workers went from a work schedule of 2 weeks on and 2 off
to 2 weeks on and 3 off. By the turn of the twenty-first century, some were
even working 2 on 4 off. The companies also pledged to pay for individual
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 119

workers’ trips home, irrespective of where they lived in the country. This
expressed the concept of equality and Norwegian society’s strong regional
orientation. An oil worker’s job was seen as a privilege which ought to
benefit all Norwegian regions. Gradually, more women were recruited as
offshore workers. From the outset, women had been hired in catering
services, but now, there were women being employed for skilled positions
ranging from process operators to engineers and managers.
In the 1990s, some geographical patterns could still be detected in the oil
workers’ origins. The regions linked to the most important helicopter ter-
minals in Western Norway were over-represented. Established eastern
industrial towns far from the oilrigs were also well represented. Otherwise,
there were oil workers from and across the country. The long periods of leave
between hard work shifts made it possible to establish social lives which were
almost completely disconnected from one’s working life as an oil worker.
While on leave, many oil workers ran small farms. Even in the regions with
most oil workers, they did not cluster together in residential neighborhoods.
The life of an oil worker was bifurcated, and this had effects on union struggles.
In the course of the 1990s, technological change contributed to this
break down and exacerbated some of the divisions between the offshore
and onshore activities. When the platform for the giant Troll gas field was
ready for production in 1996, it was equipped with a computer system that
was supposed to make it possible to carry out all production functions from
a remote control station on land. In practice, this proved far more difficult
than expected, and in 2016, the platform still had a significant crew.
Nonetheless, for oil workers, the prospect that oilrigs could be remotely
operated from land was a signal of what was to come, and the realization
had immediate consequences for the strategies they chose. For the large
gas fields, Ormen Lange and Snøhvit, which were developed in the early
2000s, all the offshore functions seafloor installations operated without
offshore platforms and offshore workers. They were operated with remote
control systems that were directed from land stations outside Molde and
the Artic town Hammerfest, respectively.
LO, which already had a good foothold in the oil-related workplaces,
was well placed to tackle this combination of offshore and onshore func-
tions, whereas for OFS the question of achieving agreements, onshore
became a question of survival. Furthermore, the pressure on OFS increased
when it became known that a government-appointed commission dis-
cussing workplace issues had proposed that only unions with over 10,000
members would have the right to enter national-level agreements.35
120 H. RYGGVIK

If the proposal were accepted, OFS would lose its right to existence. In
April 1996, OFS went on strike to get an agreement onshore. The strike
lost, and once again, it looked as the union could fall apart. OFS survived
by joining Yrkesorganisasjonenes Sentralforbund (YS), a large federation of
various professional groups outside LO. The occupational backgrounds
were in some cases very different from the oil workers who were now
joining, but YS had members both in the oil company’s onshore staff and in
several refineries. However, YS was involved in Norway’s institutionalized
income policy cooperation in the same way as LO. From the employers’
perspective, they had thus largely achieved the goal of taming the orga-
nization that in many ways organizational expression of the oil workers’
revolt in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the years that followed, there
were no attempts by oil workers to gain benefits through strike action
outside the framework of the tripartite system.

INTERNATIONALIZATION AND INDIVIDUALIZATION

What at the end of the 1990s might have appeared as the new normal, with
oil workers acting as disciplined counterparts in the traditional tripartite
cooperation, never turned out to be an “end of history” moment. After a
temporary decline around 2000, there was a new and powerful growth in
offshore employment. Norwegian oil production reached its peak in 2001.
A rise in gas production contributed to keep the fall in overall production
less pronounced for some years. Higher oil prices and the fact that a range
of extra investments were needed to maintain activity on fields which were
in a so-called tail production phase contributed to the growth in
employment. This meant that both OFS (which had changed its name to
SAFE) and NOPEF (which following a merger within LO also changed its
name to Industri Energi, IE) could continue to grow numerically. Among
offshore workers, the two unions were equally large. Negotiations over
wages continued, as in the 1980s and 1990s, with various forms of state
intervention, which meant that the possibility of legal strikes remained
limited. However, overall, the oil workers’ unions maintained considerable
strength, as the vast majority of workers offshore in the Norwegian sector
remained organized. The challenge to the traditional tripartite cooperation
now no longer came from trade unions using their strength to break out,
but rather from the employers’ side, an employers’ side where a partially
privatized and increasingly internationalizes Statoil took the lead.
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 121

STATOIL, AN OIL COMPANY LIKE ANY OTHER?

During the widespread unrest at the end of the 1970s and the start of the
1980s, Statoil distanced itself on several occasions from the foreign oil
companies’ lack of acknowledgement of what were described as the tra-
ditional Norwegian workplace relations. When Statoil as employer took
such a hard line, particularly with the OFS, it could be interpreted as a
desire to discipline the most radical oil workers and lay the basis for a more
harmonious cooperation, albeit from a position of strength. However,
closer analysis suggests that Statoil’s support for the traditional tripartite
cooperation gradually became more a matter of opportunism than princi-
ple. In LO too, many oil workers experienced Statoil as being a more
aggressive employer than foreign companies in the 1990s. While foreign
companies felt forced to adapt to the Norwegian system in order to have
continued access to lucrative oil and gas concessions, Statoil was auto-
matically assured of such concessions. From the agonizing conflict in 1990,
and on it was Statoil which took the lead when employers wanted change.
The oil workers’ dissatisfaction with Statoil was made amply clear when
the company’s board presented a proposal for partial privatization at the end
of the 1990s.36 In many oil-producing countries, struggles against the
privatization of state-owned oil companies were a major political issue at the
turn of the century. OFS made its opposition public with a political reso-
lution against privatization.37 However, there was little enthusiasm among
the union membership for engagement in a campaign to maintain the
company as it had been. The LO union NOPEF eventually supported
the demand for privatization. Compared to other oil workers union around
the world, this was a unique position to take. In many oil-producing
countries, struggle against privatization was the main priority in the late
1990s and early 2000s. The union’s support for privatization was decisive
for the Labor Party government, which after a significant battle with the left
wing at the party’s congress, could start privatization process. From summer
2001, the state started a sell-off process to reach the goal of 33% private
ownership. The state made assurances to the new private owners that it
would not use its majority share to interfere in the company’s operations,
and would allow signals from the market to guide company strategies.
Naturally, there were significant aspects of Statoil that distinguished it
from many of the foreign oil companies operating in Norway. Although Arve
Johnsen, Statoil’s first general director (1972–1988), was a Labor Party
member, he was not overly concerned with workplace relations, and never
122 H. RYGGVIK

tried to hide the fact that he took the large international oil companies as his
model. Although Statoil recruited and trained many managers in the same
cultural and social mold as other large Norwegian firms; nevertheless, it was
also deeply influenced by global models and was at odds with the more
corporatist practices prevalent among other large companies in Norway.
When Statoil took over Mobil’s Statfjord organization (from December
1986), the company inherited a middle-management stratum which had
been trained in an American management tradition. Most managers were
Norwegian, and in keeping with official requirements, Norwegian had been
introduced as the lingua franca. Statoil’s organization for the Gullfaks field,
which was almost as large, had been built up with Exxon’s technical
assistance. In both places, many staff members had been trained and
molded by the management traditions of the overseas companies. It was
typical of the latter that they related to employees as individuals, rather
than as a collective with democratically elected representatives chosen to
speak for and to negotiate on behalf of their constituents.
Immediately after the 1990 divisive strike, Statoil announced that the
company had entered a strategic alliance with BP for exploration and
production in various regions around the world.38 The alliance with BP,
which was maintained until 1999, was to have great significance for the
development of Statoil’s internal workplace regime. BP saw itself benefit-
ting from the collaboration, partly because Statoil had good access to
capital (many oil companies were struggling in the late 1980s) and partly
because Statoil as a Norwegian company could expect certain goodwill and
a warmer welcome in the countries where joint investments and operations
were planned. On the other hand, Statoil, as the junior partner, needed a
mentor with long experience on the international oil scene. In all the
countries where the alliance operated, joint offices were created where
employees from both companies worked together. It was John Browne,
then head of BP Exploration and later the company’s CEO, who worked
out the alliance deal with his counterpart Harald Norvik. At the time,
Browne was behind the far-reaching reorganization and downsizing that
fundamentally changed BP’s workplace culture.39 Although BP was a
former state company, international financial markets perceived it as a
corporate pioneer in the international oil industry. The differences between
working conditions in BP and Statoil were significant enough to cause
major frictions and internal conflicts within the joint work groups. A 1993
internal Statoil report discussing these problems listed the elements that
highlighted the perceived cultural differences between the two companies.
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 123

The attitudes and work practices of BP’s employees were described as:
individual initiative, information hoarding, individual empowerment, less
rigid procedures, result-oriented, self-promotion, long working hours, and
sense of insecurity and anxiety. In contrast, the working culture of Statoil
employees is described as: teamwork, information-sharing, authority
retained by management, rigid procedures, a focus on processes,
self-deprecation, fixed working hours, security, and sense of confidence.40
The Statoil employees who were involved in the alliance at this point
were often highly trained personnel, often engineers and geologists. Only a
few would have their background in the union OFS/Safe or the LO
unions. Part of these differences can be ascribed to the particular situation
employees in the two companies found themselves in: BP was experiencing
dramatic downsizing, while Statoil was in the midst of an expansion. These
diverging circumstances affected the attitudes of workers and employers.
Nevertheless, on a more general level, the above mentioned assessment
reveals that a typical Statoil employee in 1993 had a far more collective
attitude than a comparable BP employee.41
In the years that followed, it became clear that it was BP’s organization
and corporate culture, and not Statoil’s that was meant to be adopted as a
model. The collaboration with BP had direct consequences in the
Norwegian sector insofar as BP took part in benchmarking projects com-
paring the productivity of BP and Statoil installations in the British and
Norwegain sector of the North Sea, respectively. When Statoil merged with
Amoco in 1998 and the alliance was dissolved, Statoil had to manage
abroad on its own, but the BP influence continued. In 2000, a manager
from BP was recruited to lead Statoil’s international department. Thus, by
the turn of the new century, through their close collaboration with BP,
after overcoming the union resistance of the 1990s, and after partial pri-
vatization, Statoil managers came to adopt new corporate management
and labor practices that were more in line with those of international oil
companies and other multinational corporations.

FROM RESPECT FOR THE WORKERS’ COLLECTIVE

TOCOMPETITIVE AND ATOMISTIC INDIVIDUALISM
Many of the management systems used by BP and other major oil com-
panies in the early 2000s were based on an underlying ideology whose
keywords were the individualisation of incentive and responsibilities. This
124 H. RYGGVIK

was also the case in the industry’s approach to safety. We have seen how the
Norwegian offshore oil sector from the 1980s was based on a system where
oil companies had a clear responsibility to constantly improve safety. The
focus was on improving technology by designing robust installation and
creating barriers that would make sure that smaller incidents did not
escalate to catastrophic events. In addition, in relation to safety, the tri-
partite system played an important role. Even if the Norwegian model is
based on cooperation, it always operates with the assumption that
employees and employers (because of competition) have different interests.
There are openings, both through the system of safety representatives, and
through the unions, for employees to make safety demands on the firm’s
management.
In contrast to the Norwegian safety approach, oil companies and large
oil suppliers and service firms, from the late 1990s through the 2000s,
relied heavily on a new wave of behavior-based safety systems (BBS) in
their work. The conceptual basis of this orientation can be traced back to
the American H.W. Heinrich’s 1931 book Industrial accident preven-
tion,42 where he claimed that 88% of accidents could be traced to workers’
unsafe acts. Ten percent could be traced to mechanical and physical con-
ditions and 2% would be unpreventable. The approach and the formula
have been heavily criticized ever since.43 Nevertheless, it still survives as a
mantra in many multinational companies’ safety approach. This theory
shifts the focus on the behavior of individual workers. A typical approach in
most BBS programs would be various forms of stimulus based on rewards
and punishment. Using prizes and bonuses for periods without any
reported time lost due to accidents was common. This turned into a form
of collective punishment as a single reported accident would be enough to
take away everyone’s bonuses.
BBS campaigns from the early 2000s often used revivalist-style meetings
to point out every individual’s responsibility. Statoil used similar measures
when it ran its BBS-inspired “colleague programme.” More than 20,000
workers, including Statoil contractors, took part in the programme’s
opening seminars between 2002 and 2005.44 A highlight of the seminar
was an emotional film about the reactions of survivors to a fatal accident in
one of the company oilfields. More a piece of propaganda than an impartial
and informative documentary, this story was given an ideological twist, as
with comparable films in BBS campaigns in the USA, in that it emphasized
that the accident could have been avoided if employees had paid more
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 125

attention, without really exploring the wider context of the workplace

safety hazards.
Many newer BBS systems emphasized employee involvement, for
example, in correcting and reporting the mistakes of others. Employees are
involved, but as an extended and decentralized arm of management’s own
control activity. This activation has little in common with the kind of
grassroots participation which had been available through the Norwegian
safety representative regulations. The Norwegian oil workers union
OFS/SAFE criticized BBS for leading to under-reporting and a one-sided
focus on lost time accident statistics instead of training in process safety.
The main focus of the Norwegian safety system was, as we have seen, the
development of robust technology and the elimination of risks. There was
also a focus on individual behavior and responsibility by ensuring that
workers actually wore hard hats and other protective gear, follow proce-
dures and so on. However, the assumption was that improvements are best
achieved through training, not stimulus and response. The different ori-
entation of the Norwegian safety system became even clearer when a
regulation directed at management system in 1995 and later in 2001
specified that: “collective precautions are to be preferred over precautions
directed towards individuals.”45
The clearest expression of Statoil’s shift towards a more individualistic
approach to its own employees can be found in its income policy. Here too,
the influence of its time in alliance with BP is noticeable. As early as the
1990s, Statoil introduced aspects of a reward system for part of the com-
pany’s upper management reminiscent of what was in use in BP. After
privatization in 2001, this form of individualized reward was further
developed when about 400 Statoil managers entered a personal bonus.
Parts of the Norwegian trade union movement had experience with
result-oriented wage system through agreements which were widespread
both in the iron and metal industry and in construction up to the 1960s.
These agreements, however, were not bonus systems in the sense that these
were previously negotiated targets and rates where union members had
substantial control. Bonus systems operated quite outside of established
wage agreements, and management controlled who should receive them
and how much. In other words, these were not collectively negotiated
wages.
When in 2002, Statoil’s CIO announced that ordinary oil workers
would also be paid bonuses, various trade unions had difficulties in
responding. Could they reject an offer which involved giving many
126 H. RYGGVIK

employees significant extra payments? Statoil was in a unique position as

rising oil prices allowed it to record surpluses greater than all other
Norwegian companies. In the years which followed, large new bonuses
were paid. Statoil, which in the early 1980s had criticized Mobil for giving
large increments outside the framework of income policy cooperation, and
which in 1990 went on the offensive against unions that had led this
breakthrough, was now itself operating in an income gray zone. None of
the Statoil unions recommended that their members reject the offer of
bonuses.
In 2007, Statoil went a step further in individualization when a large
part of the company’s administration was put under a system where pay
determination was linked to grades awarded in different areas. These were
grades as in Norwegian school, from 1 to 5. The areas covered included
not just concrete outcomes, such as financial results, cost control, and
safety outcomes, but also on how these outcomes were achieved. Statoil’s
director of information pointed out that alongside simple goal achieve-
ment, the new system also aimed to evaluate how much individuals carried
out their job in keeping with the company’s values.46 In practice, this could
mean being evaluated in terms of whether one was seen to be loyal to
superiors. The system first became the focus of public attention in 2010,
when Statoil indicated that it would now also apply to employees in
ordinary wage situations. However, this time, there were loud protests. All
unions came out in clear opposition to the proposal. LO leader Roar
Flåthen announced that he saw the system as unjust and that he feared it
would create frustration and suspicion.47 Terje Nustad, then leader of
SAFE (former OFS), felt that the system created a culture of obedience and
fear which meant that employees would be reluctant to speak up about
conditions which might have safety risks.48
If the tripartite cooperation discussed above had still been functioning,
one might have expected that if the top leadership of Norway’s two main
trade union federations came out so strongly against a particular system,
Statoil would hear the signals and shelve the project. However, Statoil
decided to ignore the signals.

CONCLUSION
With an economy awash with oil money and a surplus in the form of a giant
petroleum fund, it had for many years appeared that Norway would stand
outside the whirlwind of austerity packages, economic constrains, and
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 127

neo-liberalist reforms which were sweeping through Europe, often with

the result of weakening unions position in society. At the moment of
writing, there is no strong indication that Norwegian employers in general
are aiming to break with tripartite cooperation. When Statoil operates in
Norway, it must still observe traditional wage agreements, negotiate with
trade unions on pay increments, pension arrangements, and working time.
Alongside the attempts to individualize responsibility for safety, using
elements from behaviorist conceptions of health and safety, and the use of
concepts like results-based management, the company is still legally
obliged to create the conditions for workers to elect safety representatives
and chief safety representatives. If we only look at the tripartite cooperation
as a channel for high-level communication between the main employment
partners, developments in Statoil do not represent a great danger for
unions. However, if we see tripartite cooperation as a social compromise
based on the relative strengths of the parties, which for trade unions rests
on the sense of community and workplace solidarity, the shift in Statoil and
many other Norwegian and foreign companies operating offshore in the
Norwegian oil sector from the collective to the individual level is a treat to
the strength of oil worker unions. An example of what such a threat might
mean was seen in the 2012, when the employers, with Statoil in the lead,
responded to a limited strike by oil workers with a total lock-out.
Employers speculated that the government might intervene, and that they
would achieve their goals. But unlike the 1986 lockout or the 1990 and
1996 strikes, the employers were now faced with unions working together.
Since oil workers now felt that the threat lay in employers’ overriding the
whole collective-based system which had been key to improving their
safety, raising their wages and ensuring their security, they had everything
to win by standing together. An even stronger test to for the tripartite
system occurred after summer of 2014 when oil prices entered a seeming
free fall. After decades of steady growth, Norwegian workers are now
facing the looming threat of job insecurity and widespread layoffs.

NOTES
1. Stig Kendseth, Funn! Historien om Ekofisk 20 første år [Find! The history of
Ekofisk’s 20 first years] (Oslo: Phillips, 1988), 21.
2. Helge Ryggvik, “The Norwegian Oil Experience: A Toolbox for Managing
Resources?” Oslo, 2010, available at http://www.sv.uio.no/tik/forskning/
publikasjoner/tik-rapportserie/Ryggvik.pdf.
128 H. RYGGVIK

3. Nik Brandal, Øivind Bratberg, and Dag Einar Thorsen, The Nordic Model
of Social Democracy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
4. Atle Blomgren, Anne Marthe Harstadog, and Silje Haus-Reve,
Offshoreansatte: Hvem er de? Hvor mange må erstattes I årene fremover,
Report IRIS-2014/028, Stavanger, 2014.
5. http://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/economy/employment-petroleum-
sector/.
6. Innst. S. (recommendation to parliament) no. 294 (1970–1971).
7. St. tid. [parliamentary proceedings] (1965–1966), 2260.
8. Helge Ryggvik and Marie Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3: blod,
svette og olje [Norwegian Oil History, vol. 3: Blood, Sweat and Oil] (Oslo,
1997), 77.
9. St. meld. (white paper) no. 25 (1973–1974), Petroleumsvirksomhetens plass
i det norske samfunnet. [The role of petroleum activities in Norwegian
society].
10. Marie Smith-Solbakken, “Oljearbeiderkulturen, Historien om cowboyer og
rebeller” [Oil Worker Culture. A Tale of Cowboys and Rebels] (Ph.D.
diss., NTNU, Trondheim, 1997).
11. Ryggvik and Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3, 92.
12. Smith-Solbakken, “Oljearbeiderkulturen.”
13. Dokument no. 15 (1995–1996)—Rapport til Stortinget fra kommisjonen
som bled nedsatt av Stortinget for å granske påstander om ulovlig
overvåkning av norske borgere [Report from the Parliamentary Commission
to investigate claims of illegal surveillance of Norwegian citizens].
14. Terje Johansen, Kampen om oljearbeiderne, NOPEFs historie [The Struggle
for Oil Workers: NOPEF’s Story] (Stavanger: Industri energi, 2009).
15. Lov om arbeidervern og arbeidsmiljø mv [Working Environment Act],
February 4, 1977. Lov om petroleumsvirksomhet på kontinentalsokkelen [Oil
Activities on the Continental Shelf Act], March 22, 1985.
16. Ryggvik and Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3, 232.
17. Ø.M. Halvorsen (pseudonym), Streiken på Statfjord A [The Strike on
Statfjord A] (Oslo: Forlaget Oktober A/S, 1978).
18. Agustin Asenjo, Norsk Olje – spansk svette. Fremmedarbeidere og amerikansk
kapital i Nordsjøen [Norwegian Oil, Spanish Sweat. Foreign Workers and
American Capital in the North Sea] (Oslo: Pax, 1979).
19. Ryggvik, “The Norwegian Oil Experience.”
20. “Høyre støtter de streikende” [The Conservatives Support the Strikers],
Stavanger Aftenblad, January 10, 1980.
21. Prime minister’s announcement following the meeting with the oil com-
panies on December 11, 1981.
22. Svend Otto Remøe, “Arbeidskonflikter i norsk oljevirksomhet: En statistisk
oversikt og analyse” [Workplace Conflicts in the Norwegian Oil Industry:
 NORWEGIAN OIL WORKERS: FROM REBELS TO PARTERS … 129

A Statistical Overview and Analysis], Rogalandsforskning Report

No. 56.1123/2, 1986.
23. Helge Ryggvik, Adferd, teknologi og system – en sikkerhetshistorie
[Behaviour, Technology and Systems: A History of Health and Safety]
(Trondheim: Tapir, 2008).
24. Preben Lindøe, Michael Baram, and Ortwin Renn, eds., Risk Governance of
Offshore Oil and Gas Operations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013). The importance of trade union related safety delegates in the
Norwegian safety system is discussed in chapters by Jacob Kringen, Ragnar
Rosness, Ulla Forseth, and Helge Ryggvik.
25. Ryggvik and Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3, 294.
26. Bente Egjar Engesland, Norge og OPEC – fra konflikt til samarbeid
[Norway and OPEC: From Conflict to Cooperation], Oslo, 1988.
27. ILO, Case No. 1255. 1985, Case No. 1389. 1986.
28. Ryggvik and Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3, 307.
29. Ibid., 306. “Ekofisk vaklet i går: ‘Folk knakk sammen’” [Ekofisk faltered
yesterday: ‘people were broken’], Rogalands Avis, July 6, 1990 (Front page).
30. Ryggvik and Smith-Solbakken, Norsk oljehistorie bd. 3, 314.
31. Edvard Bull Sr., “Arbeiderbevegelsens stilling i de tre nordiske land 1914–
1920” [The Workers’ Movements’ Situation in the Three Nordic
Countries, 1914–1920], Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens historie nr. 1.
1976.
32. Edvard Bull Jr., Arbeidsmiljø under det industrielle gjennombrudd [The
Workplace in the Industrial Breakthrough] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,
1972).
33. Kristin Øye-Gjerde and Helge Ryggvik, On the Edge, Under Water –
Offshore Diving in Norway, Stavanger 2014, 77.
34. Ibid., 93.
35. Labor Law Council (Arbeidsrettsrådet), Prinsipper for ny arbeidstvistlov
[Principles for a New Law on Industrial Conflicts]. Report from June 21,
1996.
36. Draft parliamentary resolution (St.prp.) 36 (2000–2001), Eierskap i Statoil
og fremtidig forvaltning av SDØE [The Ownership of Statoil and the
Future Administration of the State’s Direct Financial Interest].
37. Helge Ryggvik and Thorstein Dahle, En oljepolitikk for Fremtiden. En
kritisk gjennomgang av St. prp. nr. 36 (2000–2001) [An Oil Policy for the
Future: A Critical Review of St.prp. 36 (2000–2001)]. Report written for
OFS together with its leader Terje Nustad and the branch leader for Statoil
employees, Tor Stian Holte.
38. Helge Ryggvik, BP/Statoil alliansen. Et samarbeid til besvær [The
BP/Statoil Alliance: A Problematic Cooperation], TIK working paper
No. 16/2003.
130 H. RYGGVIK

39. Loren C. Steffy, Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit
(New York: McGraw Hill, 2011); Tom Bergin, Spills and Spin: The Inside
Story of BP (London: Random House Business Book, 2011).
40. Statoil Report No. 0513 Audit, BP-XFI Report No. 01/93.
41. See also Lin Lerbold, “Reputation by Association, Exploring Alliance
Formation and Organizational Identity Adaption” (Ph.D. diss., Stockholm
School of Economics, 2003).
42. H.W. Heinrich, Industrial Accident Prevention (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1931).
43. Fred A. Manuele, Heinrich Revisited: Truisms and Myths (Itasca, Ill.:
National Safety Council Press, 2002).
44. Interview with Bjørn Arve Berntsen, March 1, 2005.
45. Forskrift for systematisk oppfølging av arbeidsmiljøet i petroleumsvirk-
somheten [Regulations Governing Systematic Oversight of the Workplace in
the Petroleum Industry], Petroleum Directorate March 8, 1995. The
regulations were renewed as Petroleum Directorate, Guideline regulations
2001, Sect. 1.
46. Teknisk Ukeblad, January 11, 2011.
47. Teknisk Ukeblad, December 9, 2010.
48. Teknisk Ukeblad, January 11, 2011.
 The Role of Labor in Transforming
Nigerian Oil Politics

Andrew Lawrence

INTRODUCTION
Nigeria is often taken as the paradigmatic “oil curse” exemplar; that is, the
very existence of its oil industry is often taken as a necessary and sufficient
explanation for the extreme poverty, inequality, corruption, and lack of
transparency that have plagued the country for decades. As is often the case,
however, the conventional wisdom occludes more than it clarifies. This
sweeping view assumes that oil’s influence on a country’s political economy is
always negative across historical periods, always the same for major oil pro-
ducers the world over, and thus somehow beyond the reach of popular
democratic forces. A closer look at Nigeria’s political history shows that
during its initial phase of extraction, oil exacerbated, but did not create the
state fragmentation and chronic societal mistrust rooted in the country’s
colonial past. These factors contribute to a broader political culture of
clientelism and corruption from which virtually no organized interest,
including the labor movement, is entirely immune. But the country’s political
culture is neither monolithic nor unchanging. Moreover, on occasion oil
workers played a decisive role in supporting and sometimes leading the

A. Lawrence (&)
Vienna School of International Studies, Vienna, Austria

© The Author(s) 2018 131

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_6
132 A. LAWRENCE

pro-democracy movements. Indeed, precisely because oil has colonized such

a major segment of Nigeria’s political economy, at key junctures oil workers
are able to exercise leverage far beyond their numbers. These oil workers were
able to exercise this power not despite inadequate institutions, but through
the creative appropriation of the informalization of politics. These successes
can inform different challenges concerning outsources and casualization
characterizing the past two decades of democratic transition.
The chapter proceeds as follows. After providing a brief overview and
critique of “oil curse” literature, it sketches the specific nature of the oil
industry’s political and social history, and the place of oil workers within it. It
then describes how these workers moved from a position of numerical and
political weakness to one of increased political and social strength. Although
they are far from being the only important popular actors in the industry or in
society more broadly, they have assumed a leading role in pro-democracy
struggles—paradoxically making use of the country’s dependence on oil for
maximum social benefit. They remain part of the coalition of actors with the
greatest potential to articulate oil’s “moral economy,” and thereby help to
promote the continued consolidation of the country’s democracy. The
chapter concludes with a reflection upon the importance of taking the social
history of oil workers seriously, as a useful corrective to overly sweeping—and
pessimistic—political economy narratives, such as that of the “oil curse.”

GOING BEYOND THE “OIL CURSE”

What power can oil workers exercise in oil-rich states, what power have
they exercised, and can this power promote goals of broader democrati-
zation? Most discussions regarding oil politics and democracy have
neglected these questions, focusing either on elite strategies in power
distribution or, more broadly, on the political economy of oil wealth.1
Other research on contentious politics in extractive industries has examined
other civil society actors—for example, challenges from organized coali-
tions or indigenous populations to export-oriented development policies.2
This essay analyzes the paradoxical yet vital role of Nigeria’s oil workers
played, and continue to play, in the country’s democratization processes.
The “oil curse” literature, by contrast, in sweepingly associating oil
economies with undemocratic outcomes, presents a distorted picture of the
oil-democracy relation in several respects. It does not adequately disag-
gregate specificities of political culture, geography, and history from
resource endowment.3 To be sure, oil’s high level of energy density,
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 133

together with its comparatively simple extraction and transportability,

underlies its enormous revenue-generation potential that has often yielded
violent conflicts over its control. Oil companies have often responded to
this threat by locating oil production and distribution in physically and
politically remote sites so as to reduce their vulnerability to political pres-
sure and attempt to keep workers isolated, divided, and powerless in the
workplace and broader political arena.4
Yet, neither geography nor geology is destiny, and popular contention
around oil can yield—and has yielded—more democratic outcomes. This
remains the case for some of the world’s largest producers. According to
IEA data, Nigeria belongs to the world’s top 15 oil producers, which
together account for over 75% of total output: in 2013, Nigeria was the
world’s 13th largest (2.5 m bbl/day, 2.6% of world total). More politically
salient, perhaps, is the fact that Nigeria is among the top ten major pro-
ducers with the above average oil revenues as percentage of GDP—a
common measure of a country’s dependence on oil.5 As shown in Chart 1,
Nigeria’s oil dependence has reached or exceeded 25% for most of the past
four decades, on occasion exceeding 50%.6
Indeed, it is precisely immense revenue-generating potential that
informs the similarly immense potential power of oil workers, positioned,
as they are, at points of production of what is the country’s (and arguably
the world’s) pivotal resource of the past several decades.7 This power is

Chart 1 Nigerian oil revenues as a percentage of GDP.

134 A. LAWRENCE

found not only in their organizational capacity and their bargaining power,
but more fundamentally, in their capacity to combine these advantages
through translations of power into critiques of the status quo.8 In this
regard, oil workers’ power is broadly comparable to that of coal miners in
older industrialized economies during the Industrial Revolution.9 The
basic mechanisms are intuitively obvious: a vital resource is vulnerable to
expressions of contention. Given the sector’s high capital intensity, even
minor attempts at disrupting oil’s production, distribution, and con-
sumption—from go-slows, absenteeism, and contractual disputes to
bunkering and infrastructural sabotage—will have extensive economic and
political effects. Nonetheless, the translation of power is an ever-shifting
challenge, dependent upon creative responses to changing circumstances—
a point the essay returns to in its conclusion.
This insistence upon oil workers’ power goes against the thrust of not only
the “oil curse” literature, but that of several of its prominent critics, as well.
Timothy Mitchell, for example, argues explicitly against this claim, asserting
that coal miners could mobilize more political power than oil workers ever
could. It may indeed be true that coal workers in numerous contexts have
been more decisive in shaping national labor movements and allied political
parties. However, such an argument would place undue emphasis on national
(especially parliamentary and procedural) representations of power, rather
than on contentious politics.10 In addition, it overlooks those aspects of the
oil industry that are more capital intensive, more vulnerable along a longer
commodity chain, and thus entail the participation of a wider array of workers
than has been the case historically for coal. Oil’s production, distribution, and
consumption link together with a chain of productive activities that go
beyond the phase of extraction (under more diverse geographic settings that
include shallow as well as deep water, in addition to land based wells), to
include construction, pipeline transport and oversights, shipping, refining,
etc. Failure to make these distinctions is a major flaw of the “resource curse”
literature, which typically emphasizes the GDP share alone as the basis of their
claim for the unimportance of labor as a political factor.
A further decisive difference with coal is the increasingly uneven tem-
porality of contemporary capitalism compared with one or two centuries
earlier—one that is “composite and contradictory, simultaneously still and
hyper-eventful.”11 This contradictory temporality is characterized by
recurrent crises of legitimation and profitability that are both damaging to
employers and political elites, and arguably more frequent than during the
age of industrial capitalism’s ascendancy. When labor movements organize
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 135

and mobilize during such moments of concurrent crisis, they can reap
benefits in both the political and economic realms by strengthening—or
“translating”—which ties between the two conceptually and organiza-
tionally. The frequency of such crises makes such conjunctural opportu-
nities for labor movements increasingly likely occurrences.
Oil workers’ power in the Nigerian context and elsewhere is arguably
further magnified by the fact that private ownership of oil and gas resources
worldwide has dropped below 10% in recent years, as national governments
restrict the access of foreign companies to oil reserves in their territories in
favor of national oil companies (NOCs).12 In these contexts, there is
increasing potential for labor not only to rally political support in favor of
keeping production in the hands of the state, but more importantly, to
politicize production politics and the distribution of accruing income.13
Historical institutionalist approaches to resource governance suggest
that the extent to which organized labor can shape trajectories of state–
society relations is historically contingent upon prior institutional con-
texts.14 Indeed, the actual influence exercised by workers in oil-exporting
countries around the world is highly variable.15 The strength of states
alone, however, does not necessarily translate into more redistributive
agendas, as can be seen regarding the “capital surplus” Middle Eastern
Gulf States, where the weakness of labor movements has yielded weak state
“infrastructural power.”16 These approaches highlight path dependence
(whereby initial factors contribute to stable institutional reproduction over
time) and the critical junctures during which significant choices concerning
institutional arrangements were made. Rather than emphasize corporatist
institutions that mediate associational power, however, I seek to highlight
the importance of workers’ contentious politics in shaping not only initial
conditions but—equally importantly—conjunctural leverage to explain
political outcomes.
In particular, I stress the importance of oil workers choosing to engage
in contestation and qualitative bargaining, rather than politics as usual,
during periods when oil production attains political salience.17 Although
oil workers’ capacity to influence oil politics is facilitated or hindered by the
way their state’s institutional context promotes or deters either workplace
control or associational power, or both these sources of worker power, it is
their choice to exercise their capacity toward democratizing ends that is
decisive. When oil workers mobilize around issues of workplace control
and organizing rights while politicizing the way in which oil revenues are
spent, they exercise a durable translation of their prior associational and
136 A. LAWRENCE

structural power.18 Nigerian oil workers, to be sure, face challenges on

both counts, but these are to a certain extent the consequence of prior
successes. The country’s first decade of popular mistrust of central
authority, culminating in attempted secession and civil war, led to a
post-conflict exclusionary settlement characterized by state-corporatist
approaches to oil sector management and employment in the 1970s. As
with other exclusionary settlements, this one fueled further violence,
manifest especially in Delta-based regional insurgencies in the 1980s and
1990s. However, these structures also helped channel popular democratic
initiatives. Workforce casualization, together with intensified violence and
repression, characterize the present period of return to formally democratic
but still highly corrupt rule. The challenge for oil workers and the broader
labor movement, therefore, is to try to enforce existing laws nationally
while promoting accountability and equitable development locally.

THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NIGERIA’S DELTA REGION

The preceding emphasis upon the latent potential power that oil workers
can exercise does not detract from the often-immense challenges they have
faced, or from the highly unstable nature of the sector. Over the past five
decades, it has witnessed significant shifts in the site of oil extraction, the
profiles of corporations involved, the political regimes in power, the extent
of environmental degradation, and the modes of contention that workers
and communities have pursued in their attempts to realize this power.
The initial onshore site of oil extraction lay in the Delta’s complex
ecosystems of lowland rainforest, freshwater swamp, mangrove swampland,
and coastal barrier islands. The Delta is shaped by a dense network of
thousands of distributaries of the Niger river, extending over 70,000 km2
of the south central region of Nigeria and making up 7.5% of its land mass.
Upon independence, the region comprised the Bendel and Rivers States
further subdivided in 2000 to include Akwa-Ibom, Cross River State, Edo,
and Ondo States in the region. Although the region is inhabited by less
than 15% of Nigeria’s total population (today, over 30 million people), it is
perhaps the country’s most ethnically diverse, with more than 40 ethnic
groups speaking scores of languages and dialects. The difficult terrain and
ethnolinguistic diversity presented greater challenges to achieving a unified
regional political identity, compared with Nigeria’s north, southwest, and
southeast regions.
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 137

This terrain also helps to explain both the advantages and disadvantages
of the modes of extraction. For over four decades since its discovery, oil
was extracted from dozens of shallow water oilrigs throughout the Delta.
Compared to their deepwater counterparts in other countries (as well as to
more recent, and increasingly prominent, developments in Nigeria’s coastal
waters), this terrain not only increased the likelihood of comparatively early
discovery and large-scale extraction by oil multinationals, but also rendered
the social and environmental effects of extraction much more visible and
contentious. If the ecological damage became increasingly clear, however,
the industry’s revenue flows grew in magnitude, and its accounting became
increasingly opaque.
Within a few years of the discovery of oil in 1956, Nigeria became (and
has remained) Africa’s largest oil producer, with approximately one third of
the region’s proven reserves. As one of the largest sources of “light sweet”
crude, whose low sulfur content makes it eligible for use in a wider range of
(especially North American) refineries, its geostrategic importance is mag-
nified, in contrast to most Gulf region oil. Oil accounted for between 25 and
40% of GDP from the 1970s to 1990s, for about three-quarters of gov-
ernment revenue since the 1980s, and roughly 90% of its export earnings. In
2008, oil exports were valued at more than $74 billion and earned billions in
profits for the five multinational “oil majors” (i.e., Royal Dutch Shell,
ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Agip) that partner with the
Nigerian government on oil and gas projects. It is important to emphasize,
however, that official statistics in the sector have always been themselves
objects of contention. While it is certainly the case that well over
three-quarters of oil revenue have accrued to the country’s wealthiest 1% of
the population, it is unknown how much of this revenue has remained “off
the books”—by one estimate, perhaps three-quarters of the $400 billion in
revenue generated “has simply gone ‘missing’ since 1970.”19

OIL WORKERS IN THE SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

OF CONTENTION
In the fluid period from the 1940s to 1960s, it was by no means clear
whether workers’ institutions, identities, and demands would have an
employer-based, regional, ethnic, or class-based character. In fact, all these
factors have become institutionally manifest at various points. As was the
case for much of the colonial world, wartime mobilization stoked
138 A. LAWRENCE

independence movements in Nigeria in the 1940s, and roughly 50,000 rail

workers led workers from over a dozen other unions in the first national
strike in 1945 for more rights and better pay.20 The June 1964 general
strike, lasting nearly 2 weeks and with almost 800,000 organized as well as
unorganized workers (almost 5% of the workforce), signaled a degree of
political capacity and independence that for some participant-observers,
was propitious for the formation of a union-supported Nigerian Labor
Party.21 Both strikes followed a pattern that would be echoed repeatedly in
episodes of mass action by Nigerian oil workers and others in the labor
movement: “What began as a protest over wages quickly widened into an
attack on the very basis of the regime’s authority. … In the confrontation,
Nigerian workers scored a significant victory, while the regime was dis-
credited across a wide and crucial segment of public opinion.”22
As is well known, the majors’ collusion with a succession of repressive
and corrupt regimes has led to inequalities on a massive scale. At the same
time, however, the state’s penetration of the industry and moves toward
quasi-nationalization and revenue decentralization, has made it all the
more vulnerable to both political as well as economic disruption. As a result
of growing ethnic and regional tensions, in January 1966, Nigeria expe-
rienced its first military coup, which Nigerians widely supported.
Rather than adopt a “night watchman” stance of neutral adjudication,
however, the state became progressively involved in the oil industry. The
Nigerian government is a majority shareholder in many projects run by the
oil majors, and it operates a network of its own refineries, gas facilities, and
other installations through the National Nigerian Petroleum Company
(NNPC) and its many subsidiaries; indeed, the NNPC is often called the
“other major” because of its significant role in the oil business. In 1969, the
Nigerian federal government’s Petroleum Act made all oil discovered in
Nigeria the sole possession of the government and created financial mech-
anisms to distribute the money collected from oil concessions. During the
1970s oil boom, the federal government raised its allocation of oil revenues
from 50 to 80%. More recently, local government elites have demanded an
increasing share.23 As federal and local governments have become more
dependent on oil revenue, not only has its distribution become more
politicized, but the potential for widespread economic and political dis-
ruptions has increased, as oil workers discovered during this period.24
An early state response to popular contention was to promote the
industry’s “Nigerianization.” At present, the oil industry employs an esti-
mated 60,000+ workers, of whom about 65% are regular (full-time,
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 139

permanent managerial, senior, and junior staff) workers, 25% are contract
workers, and 10% are subcontract workers. While as many as 20–25% of regular
workers are not Nigerian citizens (a proportion that has steadily increased over
the past decade as a result of outsourcing), only about 5% of contract workers
are foreign and all subcontract workers are Nigerian citizens.25
Despite the effects of outsourcing, the fact that the industry continues to
employ a comparatively high proportion of Nigeria nationals is the conse-
quence of several government decrees and regulations. In particular,
Regulation 26 of the 1969 Petroleum and Drilling Act stipulates that the
licensee of an oil prospecting license is obliged within a year of receiving the
concession to submit for ministerial approval “a detailed programme for the
recruitment and … training of Nigerians in all phases that are handled
directly by the lessee or through its agents and contractors.” Section 29 of
the Act further requires submission of a progress report on this program’s
execution, and Paragraph 37 of its first schedule mandates that the holder of
an oil-mining license should ensure, within a decade, that the number of
Nigerian citizens employed in connection with the lease in managerial,
professional, and supervisory grades shall reach at least 75% of the total
number of persons employed in those grades; the total number of Nigerian
citizens in any one such grade shall not be less than 60% of the total; and that
all skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers are citizens of Nigeria.26
More recently, the Nigerian Content Act (NCA, 2010) sets a legal limit
of at most 5% of non-Nigerians in management positions, and forbids
expatriates in lower positions. Estimates of total expatriate employment
vary from one fifth to a third of workers, but observers agree this pro-
portion is growing.27
Senior staff, over three-quarters of all regular employees (including most
skilled Nigerian personnel in offshore, drilling, refining, technical, and
managerial positions), are organized in the professional staff union
Pengassan (Petroleum and Natural Gas Staff Association of Nigeria), while
junior staff, 10–15% of regular employees, are organized in Nupeng (the
Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers). Contract workers
are organized in both unions, whereas subcontract workers are unorga-
nized, working for stints lasting typically 3 months.28 The state boosted
membership in these two unions considerably in 1978 when it introduced
automatic membership registration with “opt out” provisions to all new oil
sector hires. Although it rescinded this policy in 2005, fearing that the
unions would become too powerful, the sector still retains a union density
of roughly 60% (of whom 20% are women).29
140 A. LAWRENCE

There are three sectoral subdivisions: the upstream sector, pertaining to

oil exploration, extraction, production, and export, and dominated by the
half dozen major multinationals, whose workers command the highest
wages; the downstream sector, focused on refining, domestic oil and gas
distribution, in which several mostly Nigerian firms compete, and the
service sector dominated by the NNPC, which provides consulting and
technical services, as well as facilitating government relations.30 As it is
typical of the industry the world over, a substantial majority (roughly 85%)
of the workforce is male. Women are concentrated in the service sector of
the industry, in particular, in administrative, medical, personnel, human
capital development, public affairs, and legal positions.31
Although the industry as a whole employs a relatively large proportion
of Nigerians, Nigeria’s oil workers are unrepresentative of the broader
society in which they live and work. They represent only a small fraction of
the country’s formal sector workforce. They tend to earn significantly
higher wages than workers in other sectors, they are overwhelmingly male,
they tend to come from regions outside the Delta, and although private
firms employ the majority of oil workers, their terms of employment are the
direct consequence of state action. The politics of production relations in
the Nigerian oil industry also shows lasting effects of wide-ranging state
involvement and the attempted corporatist subordination of workers
within statist structures, during the period of military rule in the 1970s.
This privileged, minority status would seem unpropitious for engaging in
large-scale, protracted cycles of contention.
Nonetheless, at key moments in the country’s political history, Nigeria’s
labor movement has played the decisive role of unofficial national oppo-
sition in the county’s complex and contradictory democratization when
political parties have been unwilling or unable to do the same. While many
analyses bemoan the comparative weakness of Nigerian unions, beset with
regionalism, factionalism, and bureaucratic conservatism, the more
remarkable fact is that they remain a significant and contentious presence in
Nigerian politics.32 This is particularly true for the oil workers’ union,
Nupeng. As oil’s growing dominance has increased the domestic econ-
omy’s vulnerability to price swings, it has yielded more complex political
effects. Facing persistent constraints on the basic organizing and contract
rights, oil sector workers became increasingly obliged to court public
opinion to rally support.
They did so in the context of increasingly unpopular national political
developments. The second coup against a nominally democratic regime (in
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 141

December 1983) was even more popular than that of 1966; but most
popular of all was the “palace coup” of General Muhammad in July 1975,
overthrowing the Gowon junta that had taken power in 1970, in the wake
of the Biafra War. Before his assassination in February 1976, Muhammad
promoted a degree of administrative decentralization and pursued
anticorruption measures, with the intent of promoting ethnic pluralism but
subsequently leading to the further marginalization of the least
well-organized ethnic communities of the Delta. Nupeng’s latent power
historically was magnified by the failed attempts at imposing state corpo-
ratist structures. Upon succeeding Muhammad as Head of the Federal
Military Government in 1976, General Olusegun Obasanjo continued to
pursue the centralization of power, including state-corporatist control of
the country’s unions. Decree 53 of 1970 had already severely restricted the
right to strike under the Gowon military regime.33 In response, the four
regional labor centers had merged in late 1975 to form the Nigeria Labor
Congress (NLC). The Trade Unions (Central Labor Organizations)
(Special Provisions) Decree 1976 (No. 44) then attempted to transform
the NLC into an arm of the state, disciplining dissident trade union
members and dissolving labor centers. Other measures designed to erode
the right and ability of unions to organize and recruit workers included the
Trade Disputes (Essential Services) Act 1976 (No. 23), which allowed the
president to ban any trade union or association representing employees; the
Trade Disputes Act 1976 (No. 7), establishing the National Industrial
Court with jurisdiction over trade dispute matters; and the Trade Unions
(Prohibition) (Federal Fire Service) Order 1976 (No. 42), prohibiting
members of the Federal Fire Service from organizing or becoming mem-
bers of a trade union.
Notwithstanding these restrictions, unions’ rationalized structures
facilitated their national reach and appeal. By emboldening unions to strike
more frequently, government imposed mandatory check-off dues for NLC
members had the effect of increasing rather than reducing levels of con-
tention. In addition, the common-law colonial legacy of a highly frag-
mented and pluralist union landscape was substantially superseded in late
1977 when more than 1000 existing organizations merged into 42
industrial unions, spurring many wildcat strikes.34 Labor movement
activity also became marginally easier upon the lifting of a 12-year ban on
political activities in 1978.
Yet it was not so much greater legality, but rather increased economic
hardship, that provided the labor movement with the opportunity for more
142 A. LAWRENCE

widespread contention. Just as the Gowon junta had been the initial
beneficiary of the 1973 oil boom (but squandered these gains and became
even more unpopular in the process), so the civilian presidency of Alhaji
Shagari, which succeeded Obasanjo’s junta in 1979, began office with
growing revenues but could not manage the consequences of a fall in prices
in 1981. Conflict with state-level opposition parties grew, and unions
seized the brief political opening by staging the country’s first general strike
since 1964. The NLC organized this nationwide strike of up to one million
union members, including the oil workers, and extending over 2 days in
May 1981.35
Dutch disease effects, mounting corruption, inefficiency, and indebt-
edness–all a consequence of oil dependence–swiftly eroded the govern-
ment’s popularity and fiscal room of maneuver during this period.
Although oil’s price per barrel rose dramatically from $3.80 in October
1973 to $14.70 in January 1974, this rate paled in comparison with the
exponential rate of increase in Nigeria’s oil revenue—over 800-fold in the
1960s, then from N166 million in 1970 to N3.7 billion in 1974, and to
N5.3 billion in 1976. Such rates clearly could not last, yet the government
took no meaningful steps to adopt counter-cyclical policies that would
balance sectoral growth and smooth out revenue cycles. On the contrary,
the Gowon regime went on an unprecedented spending spree, granting
huge wage increases to civil servants while massively increasing the size of
the public sector (especially the army), leading to unsustainable debt levels
when the price of oil declined in the late 1970s, and more precipitously
during the Iran-Iraq War of the early 1980s. The neglect of the agricultural
and manufacturing sectors meant that these goods were increasingly
imported during this period, leading to ballooning trade deficits, a problem
exacerbated by (momentarily) higher wages, which also contributed to
triple-digit inflation. Government attempts to curb inflation by sharply
reducing tariff rates led to a flood of imports, making trade deficits and
further degrading the competitiveness of Nigerian agriculture and
manufacturing.36
By 1985, debt service payments alone cost the government almost 39%
of total revenue.37 Structural adjustment, both necessitated and exacer-
bated by oil’s predominance, challenged the elite’s legitimacy to an
unprecedented extent. Their response tended to combine suboptimal
economic outcomes with growing expressions of opposition to their rule.
At first, the Buhari regime responded by refusing, on grounds of national
sovereignty and pride, to implement the IMF’s Structural Adjustment
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 143

Program (SAP), as a precondition for debt rescheduling. Increased dis-

content spurred General Babangida to overthrow Buhari in a palace coup
in August 1985, and then to finesse the issue of SAP adoption by pro-
moting national debate around the choice between the IMF’s package, or
avoiding the embarrassment of accepting the IMF loan while implement-
ing several similar reforms without IMF monitoring. The latter option
(monitored by the World Bank) enabled the regime to reach a debt
rescheduling agreement with creditors in 1986. This agreement allowed
the postponement of most debt repayments for at least 5 years, depreciated
naira by over two thirds, liberalized trade, and reduced tariffs.38
While these measures enabled a reduction of debt service by about 25%,
a decrease in imports, and a marked increase in agricultural productivity,
they also brought severe disruptions. Public as well as private sector
unemployment jumped, wages fell by over 90% from 1985 to 1989,
manufacturing productivity decreased, and inflation spiked to between 40
and 70% until the mid-1990s. In the wake of anti-SAP protests, the gov-
ernment briefly banned the NLC in 1988, and the military resumed con-
trol shortly afterward. In 1993, it nullified the election results—seen by
Nigerians and foreign observers alike as the country’s freest, fairest, and
most peaceful—and under General Sani Abacha, exercised the most bru-
tally repressive, corrupt rule, to date.

OIL WORKERS’ CONJUNCTURAL LEVERAGE

In the wake of the SAP protests, however, this move provided unions, and
above all Nupeng, with a critical juncture to challenge the military regime
and absence of democracy at all levels of society. The challenge confronting
Nigeria’s political élite after the first oil crisis in 1986 to control the process
of economic liberalization as well as revenue appropriation, while resisting
political reform only intensified as the economic crisis deepened and
popular demands grew. The Nigerian military’s state-corporatist institu-
tions became a flashpoint of broader societal discontent.39
Although this repression fell disproportionately on Nupeng and the
(heretofore more conservative) Pengassan, ironically, it underscored the oil
workers’ latent power, further politicizing the membership and leading it
to press for more wide-ranging democratic reforms. When the coopted
NLC leadership called off their general strike in September 1993 after only
3 days without realizing any of their demands for a return to constitutional
rule, Nupeng filled the void. It led an expanded general strike that enjoyed
144 A. LAWRENCE

nation-wide popularity, despite paralyzing the economy, cutting oil exports

by half, and causing a widespread electricity blackout and water shortages.
The strikers demanded not only a release of all political prisoners, but also a
revocation of the military’s annulment of the June elections.40
The government took steps to repress protests. It disbanded Nupeng
and NLC, arrested the Nupeng and Pengassan general secretaries, as well
as Moshood Abiola the perceived winner of the 1993 elections (Abiola
would die in detention 5 years later). The repression only served to reduce
the government’s legitimacy. Its only significant source of support
remained the oil multinationals, and this backing would shortly experience
unprecedented scrutiny and pressure.
Most notoriously, this resulted from its crackdown on the Movement
for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The Ogoni are among the
smaller ethnic groups of the Delta region, numbering about half a million,
but as much as half of the oil extracted in this period came from their
territory, including most of the oil extracted by Shell. MOSOP was laun-
ched by Ogoni activist and writer Ken Saro Wiwa in 1990, in response to
the growing ecological crisis of the Delta region, and continuing political
indifference in the face of it. Tens of thousands of Ogoni and members of
other Delta communities lost their jobs in the wake of SAP implementa-
tion, only to return to the Delta and find that their traditional farming,
hunting, and fishing ways of life had been destroyed by oil industry
pollution.41
These grievances were presented to Shell and the Federal and Rivers
State governments in the form of the Ogoni Bill of Rights, which
demanded compensation for the ecological damage and “political control
of Ogoni affairs by the Ogoni people.” After this petition was ignored,
MOSOP organized a peaceful mass protest in Ogoniland in January 1993,
resulting in the expulsion of Shell workers from Ogoni oilfields. Ogoni
youth also engaged in sabotage of pipelines and attacks on Shell’s pro-
duction activities, leading to the company’s fall in output between 1990–
1993, thousands of worker days lost, and two thirds of the company’s spill
incidents in 1992—nearly 2000—resulting from community protest.42
The government’s response to peaceful petitions and protest was to arrest
Saro Wiwa and eight other MOSOP activists on trumped up murder
charges, suppress evidence pointing to their innocence, and hang all but
one of them in November 1995. Shell secretly channeled funds to a gov-
ernment military task force that was sent to the region to engage in “a
campaign of mass murder, rape, and terror in Ogoniland.”43 These actions
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 145

led to widespread condemnation of the regime and the oil companies that
supported it, above all, Shell.
In spearheading the democratization movement, the oil workers both
drew upon and helped expand the transnational political consciousness of
consumers, activists and unions. Their actions made a decisive contribution
to delegitimizing the military government. This pressure not only facilitated
the transition to civilian rule in 1999 and decentralized oil budgeting.44 It
also presaged the type of oil worker contention under democratization that
has continued to the present. Worker protests have maintained the politi-
cization of oil and the leverage that local communities exercise in con-
demning inequalities and demanding compensation. For example, in 2004
over 70% of Nigerians lived on less that $1 per day, while only 1% of the
population controlled 80% of the oil wealth. Although per capita oil rev-
enues rose tenfold between 1965 and 2000, from $35 to $325, per capita
GDP stagnated at $245 throughout this period. Large-scale waste and poor
resource use exacerbated the problem. For example, the estimated 182
trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves in the Delta were flared instead of
being marketed. This amounted to an estimated annual loss of two to three
billion dollars of income, while causing significant air and water pollution in
the region.45
Oil workers mobilization against patronage politics and lack of trans-
parency has often been in conjunction with Delta-based groups. These
alliances have had the short-term paradoxical result of decentralizing
patronage down to local levels and formalizing it. This can be see not only
in the multiplication of federal units from three in the 1960s to three dozen
today, but also in the addition of the 13% budget derivation, included as a
constitutional provision by then-President Obasanjo in 1999 to address
Delta-area concerns, which had been marginalized by the prior system of
revenue allocation.
The supposed result of this form of “affirmative action” for the region that
has suffered the most from the oil economy is that local communities could
exercise more control over oil funds. The federal budget constitutes slightly
over half the amount disbursed by the Federation Account.46 The Federal
Account Allocation Committee, in turn, reported a gross revenue allocation of
N1.014 Trillion (approximately $6 billion USD) in 2013, distributed between
the Federal, State, and Local government councils. Of this, the states were
allocated between 1.5% to 7.5% of the total, a five fold differential that is not
fully accounted for by population. Thus, the populous states of Kano and
Lagos had a per capita allocation equivalent to $11, compared to $40 for Akwa
146 A. LAWRENCE

Ibom, and more than $50 for Bayelsa, both in the Delta region. Mostly as a
result of the Delta derivation funds, the Delta and Southeast receive higher
allocations than the North and Southwest regions.47
Despite accompanying official increases in public health and education
salaries, the end result is a decentralization of corruption, with a continued
absence of transparency or accountability.48 Even official figures for 2014
show almost twice the allocation for police and military-related expendi-
tures as for education and health.49 Most members of the local political
class were supporters of the former military junta who used the decen-
tralized funds to arm local unemployed youth to help rig elections, both in
1999 and 2003. The funds have helped to swell a local arms industry,
further exacerbating the practice of “oil bunkering,” or illegal siphoning of
oil in commercial quantities for sale on the underground market. A 2003
consultant’s report commissioned by Shell estimated that each day between
275,000 and 685,000 barrels of oil were being stolen in the Delta, with
most of the proceeds going to purchase arms. In concluded that “Shell has
become an integral part of the Niger Delta conflict.”50
If the state’s trend toward increased decentralization of budgeting was
designed not only to address Delta-states’ grievances, but also to bribe
communities’ quiescence, it has failed entirely in this regard. If anything,
violent conflict has been on the rise. The Nigerian state has increasingly
militarized its activities in the Niger Delta. These include Operation
Salvage, Operation Flush, and the deployment of dedicated military task
forces such as the River State Task Force and the Joint Task Force. The
latter includes mobile police units called “kill and go,” the regular police,
the secret State Security Service (SSS), and the Directorate of Military
Intelligence (DMI), both associated with widespread human rights abuses.
For example, in 2002, these forces committed the Odi massacre of Ijaw
people, resulting in “2000 deaths, many more missing, thousands forced to
flee and virtually no house left standing in Odi” (Ibeanu 2002/2003:
30).51 These repressive state interventions provoke further conflict and
contribute to a vicious circle that serves to justify the state’s continued
militarization of the region, while provoking local resentment and mobi-
lizing resistance in the Delta.
Both major oil companies and the Nigerian state actively contribute to
fostering violence in the Delta region. It is widely believed in the region
that oil companies have local chiefs and notables on their payrolls in return
for cultivating favorable public opinion on behalf of oil companies. At the
same time, oil companies have been known to fuel dissention among local
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 147

Delta communities by divulging the names of these collaborators to local

restive youths.52 The multinationals not only rely on the state for policing
the rigs, but they also recruit locals to act as guards to protect oil facilities
against their own communities. By the late 1990s, an estimated 20% of
Shell’s workforce in Nigeria was categorized as “security.”53
Officially, Nigeria began to democratize in May 1999 with the election
of Obasanjo. But elected civilian government has not put an end to ethnic
or regional conflict. Rather, it has exacerbated tensions by increasing the
leverage of the main actors in these conflicts and the stakes at play. This
became apparent when, shortly after winning the 2003 elections (marked
by a high degree of voting fraud), the People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) began deregulating the oil sector. After it removed subsidies,
domestic oil prices increased by nearly 25%, spurring a strike wave led by
the Nigerian unions. Rebel groups in the Delta region also escalated their
conflict with the government in September 2004, leading a month later to
a signed truth with provisions for regional improvement and rebel disar-
mament. While the truce ultimately stalled, the unions (including oil
unions) succeeded in blocking government attempts to reduce unions’
rights—especially, the right to strike—as well as the president’s attempt to
amend the constitution to allow himself a third term in 2007. This
mobilization consolidated the unions’ national reputation as the only
credible opposition to the governing elite.54
Their repertoire of comparatively peaceful contention stands in growing
contrast with the (entirely predictable) further radicalization of local
communities. In the wake of the Ogoni trial, groups such as the Ijaw Youth
Congress (IYC), representing youth from the Delta’s largest ethnic group,
emerged in 1998, reiterating the demand that oil companies leave the
region. IN 2005, former IYC President Asari Dokubo, who formed the
Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), an armed vigilante group
with ties to corrupt Rivers State politicians to fight for Ijaw “self deter-
mination” and “resource control,” was arrested and charged with treason.
Ijaw militants responded by forming a coalition of western Delta armed
militant groups, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
(MEND). In 2006, MEND militants attacked naval officers protecting a
major Shell complex, blew up a Shell pipeline, kidnapped nine expatriate
staff of the US servicing company Wilbros, and promised further escalations
unless their demands were met.55 MEND’s spokesman, whose nom de
guerre is Gbomo Jomo, explained: “All pipelines, flow stations, and crude
loading platforms will be targeted for destruction. We are not communists
or even revolutionaries. Just a bunch of extremely bitter men.”56
148 A. LAWRENCE

As MEND’s attacks aimed at influencing the global price of crude

suggest, the stakes in the conflict have grown increasingly international.
The attacks have prompted the US and UK to establish US Africom, their
military presence in the Gulf of Guinea, an extension of EUCOM. Oil
companies have also contributed to the region’s growing militarization,
not only through the deployment of private militias and joint exercises with
the government, but also via the industry’s Global Memorandum of
Understanding (GMoU) whose stated purpose is to ensure “high levels of
transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability in managing development
funds,” as well as through the branding exercise “Legaloil.com” (analo-
gous to the diamond industry’s labeling of “conflict diamonds”).57 These
industry-led measures are designed to appropriate distinctions between
legality and illegality in order to improve their bargaining power with local
communities and thereby criminalize non violent protest and local oil
markets.58
The same oil companies promoting these measures are, however, also
guilty of undermining the legality of collective bargaining agreements and
work contracts. In addition to coping with an increasingly dangerous work
environment, the oil unions continue to grapple with the reality that many
Nigerian oil workers are still denied the de facto right to organize and
bargain.59 Unpredictable and opaque labor practices undermine workplace
rights, including revolving day-labor agreements, “direct labor” hires of
workers as independent contractors, “service” contracts between majors
and small, localized firms (with only 40% of such contract workers
unionized), “yellow dog” contracts explicitly forbidding workers from
joining unions (which despite being illegal, remain widespread), and “body
shop” (or labor broker) contracts, where the broker acts as paymaster for a
group of casual workers.60 Under these conditions, the unions have
learned that it is only through modes of collective action that connect
union demands to the broader interests of the Delta that oil workers can
defend their interests and realize some gains.61
The period since 2009 potentially heralds a new era of Delta oil politics
characterized by reduced levels of insurgency violence, increasingly public
and vocal oil worker strikes and campaigns of contentious politics, and
increasingly localized settlements. In that year, the government signed an
amnesty with members of the Niger delta insurgency, yielding a fragile but
lasting peace. Also in 2009, Pengassan exposed “serious expatriate abuses”
at Chevron, where over 900 expats were employed in positions which
“were considered nationalized.” Unionists hold that, at present, expatriates
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 149

earn up to ten times what Nigerians earn for the same job, and dispute
companies’ argument that it is hard to find qualified Nigerian workers.62
More broadly, in their frustration at the lack of progress in gaining
recognition, as well as at the practice of bribery-induced quota-busting, the
unions have recently attempted to combine lobbying the state with more
assertive joint strike action against companies.
The unions have found that without broad-based workplace represen-
tation and voice, they are in a weaker position to engage in bargaining with
the state over the moral economy. Their associational weakness was
underscored when they tried to lead the millions of Nigerians protesting
the repeal of oil subsidies in January 2012. Their profile momentarily rose
when the government, which had stonewalled on their repeal decision,
called for negotiations in response to the oil unions’ threat to shut down oil
production. However, the unions were widely criticized for “abandoning
their historical democratic role” once they failed to follow through on this
threat.63
This focused unionists’ attention on the areas where their representation
was weakest. Casualization has taken its toll in membership for both
unions: Pengassan estimates losing between 6500 and 10,000 members to
casualization over the past decade, and Nupeng, even more members to
contracted workers, who are paid three to five times less than union
members on average, but still more than twice the minimum wage.64
Another major source of member loss is the “relocating” of production to
Export Processing Zones (EPZs), first established in 1992 with the pur-
pose (as is the case the world over) of exempting employers from taxation
and adhering to labor laws, and thereby attract investment. The fenced
security walls that are supposed to protect workers and property instead
serve to exclude union organizers from entering. This was a major factor in
preventing unions from shutting down the industry. Although Nigeria’s
dedicated Oil and Gas Export Free Zone in Onne, Rivers State, with 155
registered oil companies, does not employ a majority of the sector’s
workers, the EPZ firms are disproportionately concentrated in service and
transport. Only five had allowed the unions to organize workers, and at all
five companies union leaders complain of having been victimized and
dismissed. When, at the end of January 2013, oil companies refused to
heed the ultimatum issued by Nupeng and Pengassan, at the end of
January 2013, the two unions issued notice of a 3-day strike to start on
February 13, if dismissed shop floor union leaders were not reinstated and
union rights re-established in all companies in the free zone.
150 A. LAWRENCE

Seeking to resolve issues before the strike, the Minister of Labor and
Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, met with the Oil and Gas Free Zone
Authority (OGFZA) and the unions, and issued a communiqué giving the oil
companies 90 days to comply with provisions in the law allowing unions to
operate. The communiqué also required companies to establish departments
of industrial relations to interface with the free zone authority and the
unions. It also mandated companies to comply with labor laws and ILO
conventions stating, “No worker shall be victimized for any role played in the
unionization process and union activities.”65 In response, however, a zonal
representative simply commented that “The unions can picket some com-
panies involved in unwholesome labor practices but they cannot shut down
the entire zone.” The unions focused their ire on the zonal law providing a
10-year moratorium on strikes and lockouts, pressuring the Labor Minister
to confirm that the moratorium was to last 10 years from its inception in
1992–2002. Nonetheless, according to Pengassan’s General Secretary,
companies continue to claim the “freedom to exploit workers.”66 More
recently, members of Pengassan have threatened to strike if the federal
government does not curb the increased rate of crude oil theft—an activity in
which not only local communities, but also government officials and foreign
parties, participate.67 On June 6, 2013, Nupeng issued a 14-day strike notice
to the Federal Government over disputes with Shell Petroleum
Development Company, SPDC, Chevron Nigeria Limited, and Agip Oil
Company. At a briefing after its Central Working Committee (CWC),
President of Nupeng, Achese Igwe, threatened that if the government did
not summon a stakeholders’ national conference to address labor issues in the
sector, the union would declare an indefinite nationwide strike.68 After a
promised meeting with company representatives failed to resolve any issues,
Nupeng renewed its strike threat, this time in conjunction with the Maritime
Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), which threatened to shut down the
nation’s ports over the refusal of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) to pay
11 months of back salaries still owed to its members.69
This has become a familiar pattern of contention in the industry, with the
unions mobilizing for strikes to oppose privatization of refineries,
retrenchments, and casualization—most recently connected with strikes
against Chevron Nigeria Ltd and Weatherford Ltd—while advocating for
measures enjoying broad community support, such as opposition to police
brutality.70 However, oil unions have achieved greater and more durable
success when they have succeeded in joining forces with community
organizations and other organized sectors of the economy. Such a
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 151

compelling counter-narrative is provided by the example of Edo state,

whose strongly contested gubernatorial election in 2007 was ultimately
decided by a Court of Appeal in favor of the then-president of the Nigeria
Labor Congress (NLC), Adams Oshiomhole, backed by a broad social base
of unorganized workers, peasants, and small scale traders, as well as
unionists and sections of the middle class. Oshiomhole decided to secure
external financing and concentrate spending on road works as “a high
profile, relatively quick way to deliver political assets that can appeal to a
range of constituencies, generating jobs, facilitating commercial activity and
private sector investment, access to markets and services, bringing order and
tidiness to urban environments.”71 Rapid improvements in this infrastruc-
ture led directly and indirectly to significantly increased state-level internally
generated revenues from local taxation. These increased by an average of
20% each year between 2008 and 2012. Working class support was garnered
by beginning with statutory personal income taxes contributed by civil
servants and high income taxpayers and local businesses. The revenues also
enabled the governor’s plans to reintegrate tens of thousands of young
former Delta insurgents into society by providing education and training, as
they moved to Edo in the wake of deindustrialization.72

CONCLUSION
The Nigerian example demonstrates how organized labor has shown
strength in mobilization capacity, sustaining strike activities against oil
firms despite anti-union measures. These specificities notwithstanding,
however, there are clear lessons to be learned from this case when it comes
to the role of labor in transforming oil politics.
Read in the broader comparative context of major oil producers, it
suggests that the timing of episodes of workers’ collective action is affected
by, but also substantially independent from, oil production’s growth and
decline. Had full-scale production had occurred in Nigeria a decade or two
later, organized workers in other sectors and regions outside of the Delta
might have had a greater impact in pursuing democratization, perhaps even
to the point of avoiding civil war. It is not far-fetched to consider that
declining reserves might have afforded the military with fewer resources,
thereby reducing their ability to cement their rule. However, the success of
episodes of contention during the industry’s height suggests that concerted
collective action toward democratizing goals may succeed under diverse
circumstances.
152 A. LAWRENCE

Similarly, workers’ collective action can draw on a wide array of insti-

tutional contexts in pursuing its goals of further empowerment. Although
lacking analogous party allies, Nigerian oil workers played a decisive role in
the democratic transition, and contributed to the ongoing decentralization
of oil income appropriation. Whereas the development of state capacity and
workers’ associational power prior to the discovery of oil can influence
outcomes during episodes of contention, this influence is not unambiguous
or decisive. Nigerian traditions of state-led corporatism, centralization, and
modernization proved an even greater challenge to achieving unions’
autonomy. However, once established, labor movement activists could use
these traditions instrumentally toward redistributive and democratizing
goals. Path dependencies—“the dynamics of self-reinforcing or positive
feedback processes in a political system”73—can have a lasting impact on
political development in oil-rich countries. However, these paths are paved
with, and their course shaped by, episodes of struggle.
The flurry of writing about oil-rich countries asserts that political out-
comes are path dependent and that initial conditions matter for political
development. However, while many studies have traced how oil wealth
creates self-reinforcing mechanisms in income allocation and social control
(contributing to the durability of authoritarian regimes),74 there is a critical
need to consider other dimensions of the political economy of oil. This
essay adds an essential and largely missing dimension of labor contention,
showing how the relative mobilizing capacity of non-state actors, notably
oil workers, are key factors that shape political trajectories of oil-based
societies. Although countries’ experience of dictatorship and democracy—
including in those with significant oil resources—is determined by “big
structures and large processes”75 in the long run, these interactions are also
driven by labor mobilization at critical junctures.
By recognizing the varied political processes in Nigeria, this essay helps
to unpack the simplicity of rentier-state theory. It shows that arguments
about state building to be excessively statist, and too dismissive of the
relative influence of labor unions in shaping the political arena.76 The
experience of Nigerian oil workers shows that with well-timed mobilization
workers can intensify their organizing and exercise greater influence at
political openings, though collective action. Theorizing about contempo-
rary democratization in oil-rich societies must consider the centrality of
domestic political actors, including, notably, oil workers, who hold the key
to explaining the durability (or fragility) of economic reforms, governance
frameworks, and the broader political regimes.
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 153

NOTES
1. Terry Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997); Benjamin Smith, Hard Times in the
Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2007).
2. Anthony Bebbington, ed., Social Conflict, Economic Development and
Extractive Industry: Evidence from South America (London: Routledge,
2012); Marcus Krøger, Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics
(London: Routledge, 2013).
3. For example, the comparative absence of democratic regimes in the Persian
Gulf or Western Asia—or the relative presence and persistence of Great
Power interference in the region—are most likely spuriously associated with
the region’s small subset of major oil producers. On great power influence,
see Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil
Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Timothy Mitchell,
Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2011).
4. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy.
5. Apart from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait (in a class of their own, averaging
40–60%), only Iran and Venezuela have achieved higher average percent-
ages than Nigeria, and some years Nigeria was higher. Despite producing
larger total volumes, Russia, the United States, China, Canada and Mexico
have percentages below Nigeria’s over the past two decades. See
International Energy Agency, “Statistics,” accessed May 1, 2017, http://
www.iea.org/statistics.
6. World Bank, “Oil rents (% of GDP),” accessed May 1, 2017,
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PETR.RT.ZS.GDP.PETR.
RT.ZS/countries/1W-BR-NO-NG?display=graph.
7. Vaclav Smil, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects (Santa
Barbara: Praeger, 2010).
8. On labor movements’ translations of power, see Andrew Lawrence,
Employer and Worker Collective Action: A Comparative Study of Germany,
South Africa, and the United States (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
9. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical
Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).
10. This is more broadly the focus of “power resource” literature; for a critique,
see Lawrence, Employer and Worker Collective Action, Chapter 2.
11. William H. Sewell, “The Temporalities of Capitalism,” Socio-Economic
Review 6, no. 3 (2008): 517–537.
12. Mark Thurber, David Victor, and David Hults, eds., Oil and Governance:
State-owned Enterprises and the World Energy Supply (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011).
154 A. LAWRENCE

13. See also Steven Levitsky, Transforming Labor-based Parties in Latin

America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’
Movements and Globalization since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
14. Rosemary Thorpe, Stefania Battistelli, Yvan Guichaoua, José Carlos
Orihuela, and Maritza Paredes, The Developmental Challenges of Mining
and Oil: Lessons from Africa and Latin America (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012).
15. Michael Herb, “No Representation without Taxation? Rents,
Development, and Democracy,” Comparative Politics 37, no. 3 (2005):
297–316; Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats. Oil and the
State in Saudi Arabia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).
16. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Volume II: The Rise of Classes
and Nation-States, 1760–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
17. Critical junctures do not always result in change; they are, however,
characterized by the fact that for a relatively brief period, the number of
choices available to key political actors over issues of clear consequence
increases. An identification of such junctures necessarily implies a number
of plausible counterfactual alternatives. Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel
Kalemen, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and
Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics 59, no.
3 (2007): 352–354.
18. On associational and structural power, see Erik Olin Wright,
“Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise,”
American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 4 (2000): 957–1002.
19. Michael Watts, “Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble
for Africa,” Monthly Review 58, no. 4 (2006): 11–12.
20. George Padmore, “General Strike Called by Nigeria Labor,” The Chicago
Defender, July 7, 1945, 1.
21. Robert Melson, “Ideology and Inconsistency: The ‘Cross-Pressured’
Nigerian Worker,” The American Political Science Review 65, no. 1 (1971):
161–171.
22. Larry Diamond, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of
the First Republic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), Chapter 6, “The
1964 General Strike,” 162.
23. The NNPC parastatals and federal government are not the only
quasi-public actors in the sector. The 1978 Land Use Decree overturned an
existing system of community land ownership, enabling state governments
to expropriate any land not already owned by the federal government, and
thus, negotiate lucrative oil concessions. Human Rights Watch, “Chop
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 155

Fine: The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and

Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria,” accessed May 1, 2017, https://
www.hrw.org/report/2007/01/31/chop-fine/human-rights-impact-local-
government-corruption-and-mismanagement-rivers.
24. Danièle Obono, “Trade unions as social movements and political actors in
Nigeria (1994–2004),” Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische
Afrikastudien 11, no. 20 (2011): 95–113.
25. Sola Fajana, “Industrial relations in the oil industry in Nigeria,” ILO
Working Paper 237, no. 47 (2005): 5.
26. Ibid.
27. Obinnah Emelike, Victor Obayagbona, and Joshua Bassey, “Expatriates
Flout Quota Act in Workplace,” Business Day, February 20, 2015;
Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, “The Degradation of Work: Oil and the
Casualization of Labor in the Niger Delta,” Washington, DC, accessed
May 1, 2017, https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/
2014/11/pubs_nigeria_degradationofwork.pdf.
28. Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, “The Degradation of Work,” 4.
29. Ibid., 5–6.
30. Onyemaechi Joseph Onwe, “Problems and Prospects of Labour
Management Relations in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry: Some
Conceptual and Contextual Issues,” Journal of Human Resources
Management and Labor Studies 2, no. 2 (2014), 121.
31. Fajana, “Industrial relations,” 5.
32. Michael Oyelere and Oluwakemi Owoyemi, “Any Prospect for Trade
Union Revitalization in Nigeria through Democratization and Democratic
Leadership?” Journal of Politics and Law 4, no. 1 (2011): 27–35; Fajana,
“Industrial relations.”
33. Adrian J. Peace, Choice, Class and Conflict. A Study of Southern Nigerian
Factory Workers (New York: Humanities Press, 1979), 124–126.
34. Tayo Fashoyin, Industrial Relations in Nigeria: Development and Practice
(London: Longman, 1980), 35–36.
35. Shehu Othman, “Classes, Crises and Coup: The Demise of Shagari’s
Regime,” African Affairs 83, no. 333 (1984): 441–461.
36. Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, A History of Nigeria (New York:
Cambridge University Press), 182–183.
37. Ibid., 215.
38. Ibid.
39. Carl LeVan, “Questioning Tocqueville in Africa: Continuity and Change in
Civil Society during Nigeria’s Democratization,” Democratization 18, no.
1 (2011): 141–144.
40. It was Nupeng, “led by its Secretary General, Chief Frank Ovie Kokori, that
was to challenge the military, capitalize on its strategic location in the
156 A. LAWRENCE

political economy, and provide a lot of impetus and international recog-

nition to the prodemocracy movement in Nigeria.” Julius Ihonvbere,
“Organized Labor and the Struggle for Democracy in Nigeria,” African
Studies Review 40, no. 3 (1997): 80.
41. Ibid., 80.
42. Ike Okonta, “Nigeria: Policy Incoherence and the Challenge to Energy
Insecurity,” in The Handbook of Global Energy Policy, ed. Andreas Goldthau
(Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2013), 510.
43. Ibid., 511.
44. In the last decade, local governments have started to gain a stronger voice
in oil money allocations, with local government budgets tripling since
1999. Human Rights Watch, “Chop Fine.”
45. Joint UNDP/World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance
Programme (ESMAP), “Strategic Gas Plan for Nigeria,” 2004, 16, acces-
sed May 1, 2017, https://esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/
FR58200861713_Nigeria_strategicgasplanfornigeria.pdf.
46. The Federation Account is itself funded primarily by oil revenues (shared
with joint venture cash calls, the Excess Crude Account, and a derivation of
13% targeting oil producing states and local governments), as well as by some
custom and excise duties and company taxes. See Aaron Sayne and Alexandra
Gillies, “The Prospects for Cash Transfers in the Niger Delta: A Skeptical
View,” Oil-to-Cash Initiative Background Paper, October 2011, 6.
47. Premium Times, “FAAC REPORT – Revenue allocation to states and LGA
for June 2013, shared in July 2013,” accessed May 1, 2017, https://www.
premiumtimesng.com/oilgas-reports/faac-reports/144623-faac-report-june-
2013.html.
48. With an aggregate expenditure of roughly N3 trillion, the 2009 budget
allocated N94.9B for police, N58.6B for the Presidency, and almost N15B
for the State House. This compares with N155B for health; Nigeria Budget
Office, “2009 Budget,” accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.
budgetoffice.gov.ng/appro.html.
49. Out of a total appropriation of N4.6 trillion, the 2014 Appropriation Bill
devotes N2.4 trillion for recurrent non-debt expenditure. Items include
N373 billion for education, N300 for the military, N290 billion for the
police, N216 billion for health, and roughly N300 billion for civil, police,
and military pensions. Of the remainder, almost N400 billion is allocated
for statutory transfers (including N62 billion for the Niger Delta devel-
opment commission and N70.4 billion for universal basic education),
N712 billion for debt service, and N1.1 trillion for the development fund
for capital expenditure. See 2014 Appropriations Bill HB.13.12.668,
accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.placng.org/new/reports/2014%
20Appropriation%20Bill.pdf.
 THE ROLE OF LABOR IN TRANSFORMING NIGERIAN OIL POLITICS 157

50. Okonta, “Nigeria: Policy Incoherence,” 512.

51. Okechukwu Ibeanu, “(Sp)oils of Politics: Petroleum, Politics, and the
Illusion of Development in the Niger Delta, Nigeria,” Association of
Concerned Africa Scholars Bulletin, no. 64 (2002/2003): 16–36.
52. Okechukwu Ibeanu, “Janus Unbound: Antinomies of Petrobusiness and
Petropolitics in the Niger Delta.” Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Bulletin, no. 60/61 (2001): 13.
53. Michael Watts, “Resource Curse?: Governmentality, Oil and Power in the
Niger Delta, Nigeria,” Geopolitics 9, no. 1 (2004): 15.
54. UN IRIN, “Trade unions draw more support than opposition parties,”
accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.irinnews.org/report/51770/nigeria-
trade-unions-draw-more-support-than-opposition-parties.
55. Okonta, “Nigeria: Policy Incoherence,” 512.
56. Chip Cummins, “As Oil Supplies Are Stretched, Rebels, Terrorists Get
New Clout: Media-Savvy Guerrillas Roil Global Oil Prices in Fight with
Nigerian Government,” Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2006, accessed May
1, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114463092157621421.
57. Shell, “Shell in Nigeria: Global Memorandum of Understanding, 2013,”
accessed May 1, 2017, http://s08.static-shell.com/content/dam/shell-
new/local/country/nga/downloads/pdf/2013bnotes/gmou.pdf.
58. Anna Zalik, “Labeling oil, contesting governance: Legaloil.com, the
GMoU, and profiteering in the Niger Delta,” in Cyril Obi and Siri Aas
Rustad, eds., Oil and Insurgency in the Niger Delta (London: Zed Books,
2011), 184–199.
59. International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, “Union
Rights at Nigerian Oil and Gas Free Zone,” February 14, 2013, accessed
November 1, 2017, https://www.goiam.org/uncategorized/industriall-
headlines-30-february-14-2013-2/.
60. Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, “The Degradation of Work,” 17.
61. The Majors not only help to create the mass impoverishment of the
Delta—they also profit from its continuation, not least in its provision of a
quintessential reserve army of labor. As one worker observed, “[O]nce their
boss hears the complaint, he will remind them of the large army of
unemployed youths in the delta. The boss will tell them, ‘If you’re not
ready to work according to our terms, there are people outside who are
waiting to take your jobs.’ So, in most cases, if you are daring enough to
complain you will get fired, or they give you some other sanctions.”
Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, “The Degradation of Work,” 14–15.
62. Camilla Houeland, “Casualisation and Conflict in the Niger Delta:
Nigerian Oil Workers’ Unions between Companies and Communities,”
Revue Tiers Monde 224, no. 4 (2015): 25–46.
63. Ibid., 42.
158 A. LAWRENCE

64. Ibid., 31.

65. Isaac Aberare, Acting General Secretary of Nupeng, welcomed the move:
“the free zone authority had been going about its business as if legislated
union rights did not apply in the free zone, now these have been established
through the intervention of government and oil workers in the free zone
will soon benefit from being free to become members of the union.”
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, “Union
Rights.”
66. Chinwo, quoted in “Casualisation and Conflict,” 31.
67. “Nigerian oil workers to suspend production if crude theft persists—
spokesman,” Premium Times, April 26, 2013, accessed May 1, 2017,
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/131545-nigerian-oil-workers-
to-suspend-production-if-crude-theft-persists-spokesman.html.
68. Victor Ahiuma-Young, “Nigeria: Nupeng Threatens Strike Over Dispute
with Oil Giants,” Vanguard, June 7, 2013, accessed May 1, 2017, https://
www.vanguardngr.com/2013/06/nupeng-threatens-strike-over-dispute-
with-oil-giants/.
69. Linda Eroke, “Nupeng to Commence Three-day Warning Strike,” This
Day Live, June 25, 2013, accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.
thisdaylive.com/articles/nupeng-to-commence-three-day-warning-strike/
151457/.
70. Victor Ahiuma-Young, “NUPENG threatens nationwide strike over
dispute with Chevron,” Vanguard, September 22, 2015, accessed
May 1, 2017, https://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/09/nupeng-threatens-
nationwide-strike-over-dispute-with-chevron/; Willie Etim, “PENGASSAN,
NUPENG suspend strike in Rivers,” The Authority, October 22,
2015, accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.authorityngr.com/2015/10/
PENGASSAN-NUPENG-suspend-strike-in-Rivers.html.
71. Doug Porter and Michael Watts, “Righting the Resource Curse:
Institutional Politics and State Capabilities in Edo State, Nigeria,” The
Journal of Development Studies 53, no. 2 (2017): 259.
72. Ibid.
73. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
74. Miriam Lowi, Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
75. Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984).
76. Thad Dunning, Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political
Regimes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
 The End of “The Good Fight”?
Organized Labor and the Petro-nation
During the Neoliberalization of the Oil
Industry in Ecuador

Gabriela Valdivia and Marcela Benavides

INTRODUCTION
Early one morning in August 2003, in a residential area of Quito, hundreds
of oil workers from Petroecuador, Ecuador’s state oil company, stood
outside the headquarters of the Federation of Petroleum Workers of
Ecuador (FETRAPEC). The excitement was palpable. By mid-morning, a
group brought out two giant papier mâché puppets, the first of Lucio
Gutierrez, then President of Ecuador, dressed as a bride in a white dress,
and the second of Horst Köhler, then President of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), dressed as a groom in a black tux. Hanging from
Gutierrez’s dress was a plastic bottle labeled “oil patrimony.” In Köhler’s
hand was a contract and in his breast pocket, dollars. The puppets were
meant to bring attention to Gutierrez’s proposal to privatize the operations
of Amazonian oilfields in order to secure loans from the IMF. Another
group of workers carried a large sign that reads “just married,” and a
nearby sign reads “la boda del año” (“the wedding of the year”), both
referring to how the privatization deal was a marriage of convenience that

G. Valdivia (&)
M. Benavides

Geography Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Chapel Hill, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 159

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_7
160 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

Fig. 1 “The Wedding

of the Year.” Photo credit
Gabriela Valdivia.

weakened state control over the national oil industry, the largest
revenue-generating sector in Ecuador (Fig. 1).
Carrying banners of FETRAPEC alongside the puppets, by the end of the
morning, the oil workers set out to join one of the largest protests against
structural adjustment measures that year. FETRAPEC members marched the
streets of Quito alongside indigenous peoples, teachers, university students,
middle-class urban residents, and workers of all trades. The streets were alive
with colorful banners, signs, and musical instruments accompanying the
vibrant multitude. The march ended at the city center, close to the presidential
palace. The puppets were set down and a small delegation of workers walked
into the congressional building to present their claims. Pressure against oilfield
privatization was so strong this time around that Gutierrez’ proposal was
shelved. In 2005, social movements decrying the negative social outcomes of
neoliberal restructuring in Ecuador ousted Gutierrez.
This moment of oil worker mobilization is but one of several instances
during the 1990s and 2000s in which FETRAPEC joined forces with other
social movements to counter the detrimental effects of neoliberal policies.1
Though comprising under 2% of the organized labor force in Ecuador,2
FETRAPEC’s labor politics shaped how the national oil industry operated,
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 161

and resisted attempts to restructure oilfield, refinery, and pipeline opera-

tions. By August 2015, however, when again thousands of people mobi-
lized to demand the end of neoliberal restructuring, oil workers were
conspicuously absent. FETRAPEC, an actor with over 40 years of expe-
rience in organized labor mobilization, had all but disappeared from the
political map and from public discourse.
Why is the oil worker movement absent from national politics in Ecuador
today? An answer could be found in a regional narrative of the relationship
between urban labor, capital, and the state in late twentieth century Latin
America. During the 1960s–1980s, under socialist and populist regimes,
urban industrial labor unions grew in association with state-led industrial-
ization, leading to the institutionalization of labor politics in government, as
happened in Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay. A collective consciousness linking
identity and industrial work developed during this period.3 Collective labor
laws that underpinned the rights to organize, bargain collectively, and strike
gained ground during this time of “pro industrial worker” governments.4
By the late 1980s and 1990s, Latin American countries moved towards
market liberalization and intensifying export-oriented strategies of eco-
nomic growth. This economic restructuring, often referred to as neoliber-
alization, called into question the basic tenets underlying industrial labor
relations in the region, including models of employer–government-worker
relations, forged under earlier economic and political circumstances.5 While
some governments preserved collective labor laws, they simultaneously
abandoned or weakened safeguards in wages, hours, and individual
employment contracts. In several cases, urban labor responded by morph-
ing into a force of resistance to the hegemony of market liberalization,
specifically, resistance to deregulation that eroded worker protection and
disconnected labor power from its human context.6 The 2000s then came
as the decade of the “return of the state,” through the election of pro-
gressive and left-of-center candidates promising greater regulation and
economic growth attuned to inclusivity and rights. At this point, labor
movements experienced a “crisis of representation.” The dominant models
of mass representation, specifically, the populist “left” positions that defined
organized labor as an agent of critique and resistance, were disarticulated
and eclipsed,7 and left-of-center personality-based governments co-opted
the discourse of radical change,8 minimizing the political agency of the
workers’ party, the union, and the workplace.9
The Ecuadorian oil labor movement, under the leadership of
FETRAPEC, falls within this broad regional description. Oil worker
162 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

resistance to neoliberalization stemmed from working within, even nur-

turing, the hegemony of extractive capitalism under state-led development.
In the 1990s, workers developed a collective moral economy of defense of
oil as national patrimony, which strengthened their resistance to sector
privatization. Former FETRAPEC leaders often refer to this time as
“fighting the good fight.” Linking workplace and nation, they not only
derived privileges from working in the state oil industry, but also they
became national actors. By the 2010s, while their position on oil privati-
zation had not changed, how others saw them, did. President Rafael
Correa, elected on a progressive anti-neoliberal platform in 2007, often
referred to them as burocracias doradas (golden bureaucracies) who had
accumulated hefty salaries, benefits, and job security, and got in the way of
revolutionary change. In addition, other social movements distanced
themselves from FETRAPEC, because they saw them as increasingly dis-
ruptive and interest-based. FETRAPEC, it appeared, had not evolved with
the times. Their critiques of capitalist imperialism, while initially revolu-
tionary, appeared self-serving at this juncture.
In this essay, we show that this broad narrative on the boom and busts
of organized labor is only part of the story. Missing is the situated per-
spective of the industrial laboring class, regarding the building and disar-
ticulation of organized labor throughout economic restructuring, as well as
an understanding of the mechanisms that led to its exhaustion in the
2000s. The oil workers movement was a powerful force and undeniably
understood its privileged position to influence the conditions of its work-
place, the national oil industry. However, rather than narrowing down
organized labor actions and responses as interest-based, which is often the
case in the analyses of industrial labor movements of the twentieth century,
our analysis brings attention to the contrapuntal dynamics of labor politics.
We draw on ethnographic participation in marches; multiple in-depth
interviews with eight former Petroecuador employees between 1998 and
2015, including movement leaders in the refinery, pipeline, and adminis-
trative sectors of the industry; memoirs written by former Petroecuador
employees; and analysis of media produced by the movement and the
Ecuadorian state. Bringing these voices to the fore, we argue that today’s
absence of labor politics in the oil sector is not the result of an internal
inability to get on with the times, but an effect of a sustained grinding
against the neoliberalization of the oil sector that structurally exhausted its
political agency.10
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 163

To examine the grinding of labor politics and neoliberal restructuring, we

follow a “contrapunteo” (contrapuntal) analytic. Cuban essayist Fernando
Ortiz beautifully illustrates this approach in his book Cuban Counterpoint,
where he counterpoints the production of tobacco and sugar with nation
building in Cuba to explain how the social life of commodities is entangled
with the intimate and collective lives of the individuals that are most closely
associated with their production.11 Ortiz weaves identity-making, and the
cultural exchanges through which macro-ideologies are countered, negoti-
ated, and adapted by individuals to illustrate how they are entangled in the
creation of new political economic realities. Similarly, Edward Said favors a
contrapuntal approach in his essays on exile to highlight the intertwined
histories and perspectives that constitute resistance and hegemony to capi-
talist imperialism.12 For Said, a contrapuntal approach represents the
polyvocality of the world and, more importantly, a method for recognizing
how subject positionality informs perceptions about how the world works
and how to act in it. Rather than privileging one master narrative, Ortiz and
Said pay attention to both those who are exiled and/or marginalized from
politics and those who shape this arena, to contribute a more nuanced analysis
of power in postcolonial settings.
We weave together state-making accounts, national imaginaries, and the
affective materiality of labor to describe how FETRAPEC members them-
selves use contrapunctual analytics: how they articulated the oil complex (its
fields, pipelines, and refineries) with their own sense of class identity to
represent themselves as national moral agents. On one hand, workers
opposed industry privatization by claiming working class membership in
high-risk sites. For them, salaries, compensation, and benefits reflected the
profound challenges of industrial work. On the other hand, they also saw
themselves as state actors; they opposed the neoliberal restructuring of the
industry on the grounds that they were defending sovereignty and national
interest. As FETRAPEC leaders publicly declared, their goal was not to
undermine state authority or stop the operations of the petroleum industry,
but to remind administrations of the state’s moral responsibility toward the
nation: to govern petroleum, the people’s resource inheritance, and its
rents, for the benefit of Ecuadorians, not foreign interests.13 With this dual
positioning, they constructed a new political identity that blended laboring
bodies, class and national interests together, the individual, and the col-
lective, to produce what we call “petro-citizenship,” an ethical subjectivity
that responds to the rights and obligations of two spaces/communities of
belonging: a laboring class and a national class.
164 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

The essay is organized as follows. First, we provide an overview of how the

creation of an oil industry in Ecuador, structural transformations, and ren-
tierism shaped the formation of a national oil worker movement. Then, we
discuss how economic restructuring conditioned a new frame of worker
consciousness, petro-citizenship, which articulated class and national inter-
ests. The third section describes the unraveling of the petroleum movement,
elaborating on the counterpointing process of politico-economic restruc-
turing that redefined the conditions of labor and the political identities and
strength of unions. In the last section, we place the exhaustion of the oil
movement in the current political context of Ecuador.

THE NEW COMPANY AND ORGANIZED LABOR

In 1965, the oil firms Texaco and Gulf, invited by the Ecuadorian gov-
ernment, formed a consortium to explore for oil in the Amazon. In 1968,
they located the first commercially viable oilfield in the Ecuadorian
Amazon, which they called Lago Agrio 1. This was a transformational
moment for Ecuador. Until then, Ecuador had been an agricultural nation
and its national revenue depended largely on taxing the productive activ-
ities of private landowners. The discovery of significant and high-quality
fields would allow the state to derive a source of revenue independent of
private landowners. However, because Ecuador lacked its own national
petroleum industry, it managed oil exploitation as a landlord: it granted the
right to extract oil to foreign firms and these, in turn, paid a relatively low
rent for extracting and profiting from the resource. By 1971, 4,096,000
hectares, about 14% of the national territory, had been leased to foreign oil
companies.14
That same year, following nationalist debates and petroleum national-
izations throughout Latin America,15 a military coup redefined oil industry
operations to allow greater state control over oil rents. Ecuador not only
would earn rents and royalties from oil’s circulation, it would also own all
operations. As Ecuadorian sociologists of history Rafael Quintero and Erika
Silva point out, “all social sectors, all classes and political parties, all cor-
porations and labor unions—from businesses large and small—as well as
labor associations and diverse government representatives centered their
attention on how to define this rich resource as a source of ‘economic
development.’”16
The most significant move was the nationalization of the operations of
the oilfields discovered by Texaco-Gulf, the most productive and
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 165

significant at the time.17 During this period, the first national oil law, the
Hydrocarbons Law, was established, which called for a national industry
and to more closely regulate the activities of foreign operators, and the first
national company, the Corporación Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana (CEPE),
was created. In the words of the Minister of Natural and Energy Resources,
General Gustavo Jarrín Ampudia, “Petroleum is… inalienable Patrimony of
the State as established by the Constitution and belongs to thirteen million
Ecuadorians, who are its legitimate owners. The government is simply the
administrator of the resource and is obligated to provide an honest
administration to those owners, who are the present and future genera-
tions.”18 Most foreign firms exited Ecuador at this point, leaving a vacuum
in oil operations trained professionals. Texaco remained, however, under a
new agreement that allowed it to stay as an advisor and a mentor to the
fledgling CEPE until the latter gradually took over oil operations. By 1979,
CEPE acquired 62.5% of consortium ownership and, by 1990, became its
sole operator.
Coinciding with this period of oil sector nationalization, a series of
events strengthened the political agency of oil workers in the new
Ecuadorian oil industry. Regionally, organized labor was on the rise among
established oil-producing nations. In the 1970s, the Ecuadorian govern-
ment sent 100 operators to train in Colombia’s Empresa Colombiana de
Petróleos (ECOPETROL), in the Barrancabermeja refinery, apparently
unaware of the intense labor activism developing there.19 As one of these
Ecuadorian trainees joked in an interview on 10 June 2003, sending the
young workers to Barrancabermeja was a “politically irresponsible” move
that the Ecuadorian state would regret for the next 40 years: In Colombia
“our consciousness was polluted…our perspectives became about revolu-
tion, where we saw ourselves as a class with rights and the right to
self-represent.”
The first workers’ associations developed precisely out of this cohort of
trainees. A former refinery floor manager, interviewed on 14 June 2008,
explained that this “nucleus of technicians… mobilized the labor force and
marked the vision of what it means to labor for the national petroleum
company … from the refinery, we syndicalized the rest of the labor force to
change the terms of capitalism.” A series of small, place-specific unions
representing worker needs proliferated as a result, some stronger and more
contentious than others.20 These ranged from social clubs to sports fed-
erations, to syndicates, and represented the concerns of workers as indus-
trial labor subjects with social reproduction needs (e.g., salary ranges,
166 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

vacation and benefits, and the relationship between branch and the
worker’s social life).
The increasing presence of leftist politics in Ecuador also influenced oil
worker politics. In 1971, the main labor organizations in Ecuador—the
Catholic-influenced Ecuadorian Confederation of Christian Syndical
Organizations (CEDOC), the Marxist influenced Ecuador’s Worker
Confederation (CTE), and the Confederation of Employees in Semi-State
Bodies and Banks (CESBANDOR)—agreed to form the Workers United
Front (FUT) to face the growing anti-labor climate in the industrial and
manufacturing sectors under the military dictatorship. The FUT called its
first strike that same year, calling for a “progressive” and “nationalist”
confrontation. For FUT leaders, industrial workers were the actors
responsible for transforming society.21 Many of the first refinery operators
and workers of the petroleum industry identified with this vision and joined
the FUT to support demands for better workplace conditions in the
industry. As veteran labor organizer Diógenes Cuero Caicedo outlines,
workplace conditions at the main refinery were initially deplorable; plant
workers often did not have the appropriate security implements to protect
them while working under high-risk conditions, and they were often
mistreated by administrators.22
Meanwhile, the oil sector quickly became one of the most important
revenue-generating resources in Ecuador, contributing about one-quarter
of total government revenue and about a half of its exports. As in many
other oil-producing countries, Ecuador assumed a rentier approach to this
lucrative sector, where the focus shifted to the administrative redistribution
of rents accrued from the sale of oil. Investing little in industrial develop-
ment or associated productive industries, the Ecuadorian state oversaw a
politicized distribution of oil revenues,23 providing credit to export agri-
culture and incentives for manufacturing and industry; financing social
programs to improve generalized access to education and health; and
financing equipment for the Armed Forces. Oil income also allowed a level
of economic autonomy from domestic elites, which the state used to
strengthen its relationship with citizens via improved quality of life.
Throughout the 1980s, jobs in the public sector multiplied; taxes kept
relatively low; mega-infrastructural projects built; and subsidies offered for
the basic urban services (e.g., cooking gas), all populist strategies to pacify
citizen demands, courtesy of oil income.24
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 167

PRIVATIZATION AND PETRO-CITIZENSHIP

Just as CEPE was gaining ownership of the oil sector, a debt crisis in 1982
and a significant drop in global oil prices starting in 1983 forced it to adopt
a new operational model. The Ecuadorian government broke down the
large oil complex into a holding company, Petroecuador, with filial and
autonomous state enterprises that managed specific areas: exploration and
production (Petroproducción), industrialization (Petroindustrial), and
commercialization and transport (Petrocomercial). Each branch was given
creative management and economic autonomy over area-specific activities.
As part of the disarticulation of CEPE in the early 1990s, hundreds of
workers were fired and transferred to different locations. Workers feared
that CEPE’s breakup would lead to the loss of the political rights that they
had achieved through syndicalization. In this context, the National
Federation of State Oil Workers (first FETRAPECEPE and later
FETRAPEC), formed in the 1980s by some of the refinery workers sent to
train in Colombia, took a prominent role: to represent the class interest of
all workers. Thus, while workers already belonged to place- and
task-specific unions (e.g., maintenance, refinery, pipeline, and storage
unions), FETRAPEC functioned as the voice of the national oil worker
who linked class interests to matters of national security.
FETRAPEC agglutinated class consciousness among oil workers into a
form of citizenship where they recognized themselves as members with
rights and obligations within the most prestigious and lucrative national
industry.25 They were not only a laboring force; as a former FETRAPEC
leader described, they were obligated to respond to the historical, moral,
and social traditions associated with transforming the resource that fueled
the nation’s well-being. Thus, while privatization and deregulation alien-
ated labor from its social context, petro-citizenship was a conscious attempt
to solidify relations of dependence and co-production with the industry
itself.
FETRAPEC cultivated this “petro-citizenship” in two ways: first, on
matters of individual social reproduction, which included employment
stability protection, remuneration terms, payment hierarchies, subsidies
and bonuses, syndical rights, and contract protection; second, in matters of
national security, by looking after the universal oil worker, the subject who
works for the social reproduction of the collective nation. When workers
were redistributed across the complex, they relied on this extended oil
subject figure to claim the same workplace rights secured in their original
168 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

positions. An oil worker is a national worker, wherever s(he) goes: work-

place rights are coproduced with the sovereign rights of the state oil
company. As political advisor to FETRAPEC, Ramiro Acosta Cerón,
writes, the first clause of the collective contracts that FETRAPEC facili-
tated always included “the defense of non-renewable patrimony” as the
ultimate objective of these contracts.26 Similarly, veteran refinery leader
Diogenes Cuero Caicedo writes that the oil worker is not receiving privi-
leges through syndical activities, but requesting recognition for the man-
agement and operation of a high-risk sector central to the production of
the largest income for the state.27
FETRAPEC leaders and allies visited various worksites, called for gen-
eral assemblies, and focused on the materiality of labor—how individual
bodies toil in the spaces of the oil complex—to educate workers on the
need to see themselves as more than just workers. They also produced a
magazine, Revista Petróleo y Sociedad (Oil and Society) (1994–1998),
which showcased the intellectual and material interventions of organized
labor throughout the entire oil complex. Through these efforts, they
nurtured a “national oil laborer” consciousness that emphasized how the
sovereign vacuum created by economic restructuring affected job security
and protections workers received as state employees who toil in the
high-risk spaces of the oil industry.28 In the Esmeraldas refinery, for
example, FETRAPEC leaders talked about the connections between re-
fining oil and refining consciousness.29 As a former FETRAPEC employee
described on 28 July 2009, a consciousness of petroleum labor praxis
emerged: “those that learn about refining, learn about the economy … all
the possible variables in life are there, in the refining process, in the process
of transformation … this schools you, turns you into a social transformer.”
If the labor force was to remain a critical agent in the industry, a former
movement leader explained in June 14, 2008, the petroleum worker had to
acquire a political vision that extended beyond the traditional spaces of
labor and generated support across the industry.
Thus, when the Ecuadorian government proposed to open up oilfield
operations to private firms, and partially privatize the refinery and the
pipeline in the mid-1990s, organized labor resisted. They claimed that
these calls for privatization were a new wave of “primitive re-accumulation”
of the nation’s patrimony (Interview, October 21, 2009). Workers believed
that disarticulating petroleum and nation minimized their agency, rights,
and responsibilities within the industry. In their view, privatization of
upstream and downstream sectors would have led to the mass layoffs of
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 169

state employees, who would have been replaced by employees of private

firms.
Recognizing that privatization raised significant resistance among
workers, Petroecuador executives introduced “voluntary resignation,” a
form of compensation that offered substantial payoffs for those who agreed
to leave the company. Those who voluntarily resigned received thousands
of dollars in bonuses and lifetime salaries.30 Others stayed on to fight
privatization, using protests, strikes, and the media to question the entire
neoliberal economic model. In 2003, for example, several Petroecuador
operators went on strike to protest plans for increased involvement of
private companies in the country’s oil sector, causing a temporary reduc-
tion in flows through Ecuador’s main pipeline. As the Frente Patriótico por
la Soberanía Petrolera (FPSN) (a collective of oil workers and allies) put it,
a sovereign petroleum policy “starts with the nationalization of petroleum
and ends entreguismo [selling out resources] and allows the country to
restore the rational and sustainable management of its natural resources, so
that the revenues derived…are destined to meet the basic needs of the
population, as well as restore the productive apparatus of the nation, and
do not go exclusively to benefiting the transnational companies.”31
Workers actively engaged in civil unrest to oppose privatization, using
their laboring bodies to link class consciousness with national conscious-
ness. On October 18, 1995, for example, workers chained themselves to a
homemade replica of the nation’s main pipeline, the Trans-Ecuadorian
Petroleum Transportation System (SOTE), staged in Quito’s busiest gas
station, to raise awareness about its privatization. They entered a hunger
strike and even threatened to sever their limbs to emphasize the sacrifice
that they were willing to endure to protect the nation’s patrimony.
Photographs and editorials in newspapers across the nation documented
the strike and helped to generate support for anti-privatization claims.32
The 2-week protest was successful; the government shelved plans to pri-
vatize the SOTE. Refinery operators staged similar protests throughout the
2000s. Clad in company uniforms, they lied down in the street in front of
government offices and stuck hypodermic needles into their forearms,
staining the pavement with their blood. Their goal was to decry how pri-
vatization and labor flexibilization in the refinery led the “bleeding out” of
the social protections and health of the labor force.33
FETRAPEC pushed the articulation of laboring bodies and the national
body politic further, emphasizing that it was not only the social repro-
duction of the worker’s body that was on the line, but also the nation’s
170 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

sovereignty over its own natural body: oil. For example, FETRAPEC sent
public letters to Gutierrez that pointed to the losses to be incurred by the
nation if foreign firms were allowed to operate state infrastructure and
resources. They stated that because they worked within the intimate,
everyday spaces of the industry, they understood how it worked best.
Similar letters were sent to Correa in 2007. FETRAPEC critiqued Correa’s
plan to cede Petroecuador oil operations to foreign companies, which they
saw as the continuation of the “old neoliberal project of privatization” that
does not have the nation’s interests at heart.34
FETRAPEC members often locate their “love” for the movement in
this context of citizen action that articulates labor and nation. When asked
about their experiences of mobilizing against privatization, for example,
leaders described how, in their minds, the physical transformation of oil
into the nation’s most profitable commodity was linked to the transfor-
mation of the national political body. Putting their own bodies at risk, in
public spaces, as well as going into hiding for fear of repression and vio-
lence, solidified their sense of “fighting the good fight” to keep the nation’s
physical resource—oil—connected to the nation’s political body—the
nation. This was a thrilling experience that grounded a consciousness of
belonging amongst the oil labor class, and of relevance to Ecuadorian
society as a whole. Paradoxically, it is in height of this intense sense of
“fighting the good fight,” that a decline in the labor movement becomes
evident. We turn to this fracturing of oil labor politics next.

THE EXHAUSTION OF THE NATIONAL OIL WORKER

During the 1990s, FETRAPEC conveyed a public image of oil workers as
subjects who see the production of oil as interdependent with class inter-
ests. “Fighting for” patrimony and sovereignty over oil, in the wake of
deregulation and privatization, was the movement’s political drive. While
FETRAPEC was able to stall the overall restructuring of the oil industry, it
was not able to stop other forms of restructuring that changed the struc-
ture of labor relations. Below, we describe four interrelated changes in the
terms of industrial labor that eventually dismantled FETRAPEC’s political
capital and exhausted the oil laborer as political subject: the alienation of
workers and workplace; the cooptation of the discourse of the left; and the
emergence of an anti-politics machine within the movement.
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 171

The restructuring of CEPE aimed to decentralize oil operations and

open up the industry to create multiple opportunities to insert private
capital in the industry. One mechanism to achieve this was to “open up” oil
contracts. The nationalization of the oil industry in the 1970s had nar-
rowed down contract types to a few (e.g., services, exploration, etc.).
However, in the 1990s, Petroecuador created a variety of contracts that
allowed private firms to participate in the oil industry. Services throughout
the oil complex that previously had been handled by the state firm were
made available to private ones: from oil camp facilities, to laundry services,
and to transport and maintenance. This proliferation of contracts was
meant to increase the amount of capital invested in the operation of the
state-owned company, while allowing the state to cut down production
costs.35 However, cutting down costs also affected oil workers.
FETRAPEC argued that these reforms did not increase rent efficiency, but
that the new contracts created ideological, political, and legal conditions
for “hollowing” sovereignty over the national petroleum industry and
transforming it into a foreign-controlled one.36
Indeed, the proliferation of contract types translated into labor alien-
ation for state oil workers. A variety of jobs, for example, transport, laundry
and food services, camp management, well perforation, and welding, were
outsourced through subcontracts with private firms, which brought in new
workers to do the work that the CEPE labor force used to do, without
collective bargaining protections. Such subcontracting consolidated some
of CEPE’s worker positions and led to mass-firings. In what seemed like a
twisted turn, many of these workers were then rehired work in the same
sectors, even do the same jobs, but under short-term contracts that pre-
vented them from participating in organized labor affairs.
The new service contract models effectively minimized the role of the
national oil worker. Only those officially employed by the state are pro-
tected by unions and can claim national relevance; those who are sub-
contracted can work alongside syndicalized workers, often perform the
same jobs, but are different subjects with different political rights. Thus, by
the 1990s, the structures of labor relations and the laws governing such
relations had changed in many areas of the oil complex. Thousands of
workers no longer had the legal and juridical right to participate in the
union. Showing support for labor union activities could easily translate into
losing their precarious job positions.
172 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

THE COOPTATION OF DISCOURSE

By the late 1990s, Ecuador faced a perfect storm of financial crises,
resulting from a banking system collapse, a default on the external debt,
natural disasters related to El Niño, and a decline in the price of oil.
Between 1998 and 2000, then President Jamil Mahuad initiated fiscal
austerity measures to manage the crisis. In 2000, thousands of students,
unionists, and indigenous peoples, burdened by and conscious of the costs
of neoliberal restructuring, mobilized against Mahuad. Gutierrez, an army
colonel at the time, was ordered to contain protestors but instead sided
with them, allowing the takeover of the Congress buildings and Gutierrez’s
temporary installation as one of the leaders in a military-indigenous gov-
erning triumvirate of “national salvation.”37 Gutiérrez later launched a
successful bid for the presidency. His campaign hinged on a nationalist
discourse of sovereignty over strategic resources; an anti-establishment
ideology; and an economically redistributive, clientelistic approach. In
2003, Gutierrez was elected on this anti-neoliberal, populist platform.
Soon after assuming the presidency, however, Gutierrez agreed to pri-
vatize oilfield operations for a renegotiation of Ecuador’s foreign debt.
FETRAPEC publicly decried foul play; according to a former FETRAPEC
leader interviewed on November 24, 2008, Gutierrez’s proposal would
limit the state’s ability to manage rents in favor of Ecuadorians, as prior to
the agreement, Petroecuador received 100% of revenues from these fields.
To assert their dissent, in June 2003, workers started a slowdown of their
activities, which eventually led to an interruption in the functioning of the
main pipeline and some refineries. Out of the 9000 Petroecuador
employees, 4500 did not go to work as a sign of protest.38 Petroecuador
was militarized to safeguard operations and protesting workers were fired.
Gutierrez accused workers of interfering with the “natural process of
development,”39 and deployed a violent persecution and imprisonment
campaign, declaring that workers opposing him were enemies of the state
and a threat to the nation’s well-being. FETRAPEC members continued to
publicly decry privatization efforts, as described at the beginning of this
essay, but its leaders went into hiding, fearing for their lives. While workers
managed to stall the privatization of the fields, the intense defamation
campaigns carried out by the government weakened the public’s support
for workers. According to a former FETRAPEC leader interviewed on 5
November 2009, by the time, Gutiérrez was ousted in 2005, 60 people
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 173

had been fired, accused of terrorism and sabotage, nine of them leaders,
and mobilization among the ranks shaken.
Confrontations between organized labor and government continued
after Gutierrez’s replacement by Vice President Gustavo Noboa, who
shelved oil privatization plans, but also approved a highly controversial
pipeline to serve the interests of foreign firms. At this point, the Minister of
the Economy, Rafael Correa, who appeared to align with the labor
movement’s position, announced his intention to run for president. Correa
denounced the environmental injustices associated with foreign firm
operations in the Amazon region40; annulled the contract of US oil
company Occidental due to contractual misconduct; and made evident his
support for responsible environmental protection and resource nationalism.
In a presidential campaign aired on Radio Luna in 2006, Correa stated that
critics “say that we [our emphasis] nationalists who oppose [privatizing]
politics have a Stalinist vision of the situation. That is completely false … In
truth, they have been boycotting Petroecuador, saying that it does not
operate well and wanting to sell its oilfields at sickly low prices.41
According to an FETRAPEC ally interviewed on July 28, 2009, the
labor movement welcomed this nationalist articulation of petroleum
sovereignty, though leaders still questioned Correa’s potential as a
post-neoliberal candidate. After careful consideration, the labor movement
decided to support Luis Macas, an indigenous candidate, declaring their
support for a longer history of common struggles and solidarity with
indigenous movements. Macas was not a strong candidate, however: he
received less than 1% of votes on the first round and thus left the presi-
dential race. The second round of elections put Correa against Alvaro
Noboa, a Guayaquil banana magnate and former President of Ecuador’s
Monetary Board, with a track record of abuses against worker unions, tax
evasion, and privatization. This was a turning point for the oil labor
movement: oil workers (and other sectors of the Left) chose to support
Correa, because they wanted to avoid Noboa’s presidency at all costs.
Correa won the 2007 presidential election with a strong campaign of a
“renewed” Left that stood against the “long neoliberal night” of privati-
zations and denationalizations.
As Ecuador’s president, Correa effectively became the strongest and
loudest voice of the Left, temporarily agglutinating the position of a myriad
of civil society sectors dissatisfied with neoliberal economics. He eliminated
the debt repayment fund and redirected it to public expenditures. He
renegotiated contracts with foreign firms to gather a larger percentage of
174 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

windfall profits and to reduce the number and type of possible contracts
available. However, Correa’s nationalist discourse changed soon after,
when at a 2008 meeting with the Petroecuador executive board, he threw
his support behind privatization.42 He allowed Petroecuador to share the
operations of Ecuador’s most productive oilfields, despite his previous
position on oil nationalism. FETRAPEC leaders were among the first to
publicly question Correa’s policies, saying that was continuing Gutierrez’s
neoliberal framing, and cautioned that he would bring more “invisible
privatizations” (Interview, November 7, 2009).
Correa responded with a heavy hand, aiming to shake the hold of
FETRAPEC among oil workers. While movement leaders saw themselves
as denouncing Correa’s “covert neo-liberalism,” Correa re-signified them
as “petroleum mafias” that impeded progress. Taking advantage of changes
in labor laws that limit who can engage in political activism, leaders became
a target in the industry’s streamlining. The Correa administration
restructured the upper echelons of administration in an effort to bring
management under greater state supervision; the semi-autonomous bran-
ches, which used to have their own boards, have now been fused again
under the centralized supervision of a board of directors. Tellingly, while
each branch had a member of FETRAPEC on the board, in the latest
board structure, the labor force had no representation.
The Correa administration followed up with an aggressive mediatic
campaign that revived the criticism levied in the previous administrations
against the burocracias doradas of Petroecuador. An Ecuavisa news pro-
gram in 2008, for example, made public that 226 voluntary resignations in
Petroecuador amounted to $31 million dollars of “the people’s money.”
Leaders countered this scrutiny over their activities and called it a
state-backed strategy to break down class unity.43 These tactics of
denunciation and countering isolated the labor movement from former
allies, such as indigenous and environmental movements, which, by 2011,
were desperately seeking dialogue, not rupture, with the government.
More importantly, the Correa administration successfully appropriated the
language and representation of the Left, incorporating well-known repre-
sentatives of the Left into his political party and leaving out those with
more critical voices, such as organized labor. For FETRAPEC, this means
the cooptation of the very nationalist and patrimonial ideals that gave
meaning to the oil labor movement and left it without a national voice.
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 175

During Correa’s administration, many of the most militant labor union

leaders were strategically laid off, accused of tampering with the country’s
economic development, some labeled as “terrorists” with their lives
threatened if they continued opposing the restructuring of Petroecuador.
Diego Cano, former president of FETRAPEC, for example, declared in a
2010 radio interview that of the 3800 workers with long-term, direct
laboring experience in Petroecuador, over 1000 workers have been fired or
retired between 2008 and 2010.

THE ANTI-POLITICS OF THE NEW OIL LABORER

While FETRAPEC leaders had actively and at times successfully stalled
privatization in the upstream and downstream areas of the industry, it was
not able to end the mass firings of state employees, particularly those with
historical memory of the syndicate. With a diminished leadership, fewer
workers were willing to put their jobs on the line for nationalist ideals,
which effectively disarticulated class and national labor politics in oil worker
consciousness. Privatization effectively strengthened an “anti-politics
machine”44 within the movement that minimized national politics as part
of the petro-ethic of workers. FETRAPEC leaders began to understand
that “standing up” to the state machine was exhausting their agency,
exiling them from the political stage as a failing/flailing force. Moreover,
FETRAPEC members asked leaders to bracket attacks on the Correa
administration and to treat worker-related issues, like job security and “the
right to work,” as a domain independent of national politics, morality, and
culture. This conscious disconnecting of class and nation paired down
FETRAPEC’s role in the oil industry.
The case of the small fuel enterprise Gasolinas y Petroleos S.A.
(GASPETSA) exemplifies this disarticulation. GASPETSA was a fuel
refining firm created by a cooperative of state oil workers firms in 1999,
under the auspices of the Law of Modernization, which stated that public
employees can participate in the de-monopolization and privatization of
public enterprises. These workers signed an agreement with Petrocomercial
in 2001, under an emergency decree, to manufacture gasoline derivatives
for fisherfolk demand in the Province of Esmeraldas, in northwest Ecuador,
where the refinery is located. GASPETSA processed the fuel and
Petrocomercial distributed it locally. According to GASPETSA,
Petroecuador profited from the deal: while GASPETSA applied technical
knowledge to mix the fuel for local markets, it was the state company who
176 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

sold it. Moreover, according to a FETRAPEC leader interviewed in June

2010, Petroecuador did not apply subsidies, as is the case of all other oil
derivatives in Ecuador. Approximately 200,000 artisanal fisherfolk used
GASPETSAs services. The contract was renewed in 2005.
In September 2010, the National Secretary of Business Management
Transparency accused GASPETSA shareholders (628 Petroecuador
workers) of perjury against national interests.45 Legendary Ecuadorian
cartoonist, Asdrúbal de la Torre, captured this moment of “public ethic”
questioning46 in a cartoon depicting President Correa smelling “something
fishy” in Petroecuador’s labor affairs (Fig. 2). The Secretary of
Transparency called GASPETSA’s agreement with Petrocomercial illegal
and punishable under the new Internal Regulations of the Labor Code of
the Law of Public Enterprises prohibits a state employee from having
agreements or contracts with a public enterprise to derive profit when there
is a conflict of interest. The Secretary sustained that workers were using
privileged information to maintain a contract of derivatives delivery and
that GASPETSA shareholders did not declare earnings from their active
shares. FETRAPEC, in its role as worker representative, countered that
GASPETSA was wrongfully accused; its services were carried out under a
signed agreement with Petrocomercial and was fully known by
Petroecuador.47 Soon after the accusation, Petrocomercial rescinded the
agreement.
In all sites of the oil complex, from refinery to storage to oilfields,
workers were affected by the accusation. Workers marched daily on the

Fig. 2 President Correa

smells “something fishy”
going on in Petroecuador.
Caricature by Asdrúbal de
la Torre, Diario Hoy
(2010, p. 5).
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 177

streets of Quito and Esmeraldas, carrying signs that depicted images of

hand palms open-wide and read “oil workers are not corrupt.” They also
articulated laboring bodies with the right to work: wearing uniforms and
hard hats, the fired workers carried banners that read “somos manos limpias
y trabajadoras” (“we are clean, laboring hands”). The effort was to
showcase a work ethic that is about connection to a job and minimizes the
politics of nation. In a 2010 demonstration in front of the Presidential
palace in Quito, a technician charged with overseeing pipeline operations
and wearing a black shirt with the number “628” (the number of people
fired because of their association with GASPETSA), lamented how “poli-
tics got in the way of doing work.”
Later, marches turned into a critique of government, suggesting that the
firings were a strategy to get rid of Petroecuador’s longest-serving workers.
Many of the workers fired had been originally with CEPE. In protests,
workers highlighted their plight as citizens under attack: “we are
Ecuadorians with families, Mr. President.” Through FETRAPEC, they also
appealed for legal protection through the International Commission for
Human Rights and the International Court. The next step, according to
FETRAPEC, was to begin penal lawsuits against the President of
Petroecuador and the Secretary of Transparency, which would allow
workers to receive payment for burdens incurred as a result of the accu-
sations. “The firings are unconstitutional and are affecting the honor of
many families,” concluded Diego Cano, the president of FETRAPEC.48
Sensing the possibility of a disadvantageous outcome, by May 2011,
Petroecuador agreed to hire back the majority of the workers affiliated with
GASPETSA, under the condition that they desist of legal action against the
state firm.49 However, they were rehired under short-term contracts,
which did not recognize the long-term benefits that they had accrued
through their service in Petroecuador. For the affected employees, some of
whom had been with Petroecuador for over 25 years, these were devas-
tating news. By 2012, all but about 100 employees had returned to
Petroecuador, cleared from the wrongful accusation. As became increas-
ingly evident with this high-profile case, workers no longer talked about
resource sovereignty or national struggles. Worker rights centered, again,
around the immediate needs of oil laborers as a class, not as a national
vanguard in the oil industry. Consciousness of their greater role as
defenders of the petro-nation was not mentioned in their counter
demands. For now, they were grateful that their “rights and names had
178 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

been absolved,” and that they were “ready to give their all again for
Petroecuador.”50

MUTING THE NATIONAL OIL LABOR SUBJECT

FETRAPEC’s reduction and marginalization were not the last event in the
exhaustion of the labor movement. In 2014, the Correa administration
proposed constitutional amendments that modified the political agency of
all laboring subjects. The 1998 Constitution, influenced by social move-
ments, originally distinguished worker types between obrero (limited skills
worker) and obrero calificado (skilled workers with specialized training).
While obreros are regulated by the Labor Code, which protects the freedom
to syndicalize, strike, and claim collective bargaining, obreros calificados and
public servants are regulated by the Organic Law of Public Service
(LOSEP), which does not guarantee collective bargaining rights. If a
worker receives specialized training, and or manages, organizes, adminis-
ters, or represents the interests of others, s(he) has conducted “intellectual”
work and thus is no longer regulated by the Labor Code.
Under the 2014 amendment, workers conducting “intellectual” work
(e.g., organized labor leadership) would be recognized as “public ser-
vants,” and regulated by the LOSEP. According to the leaders of the
traditional labor unions, such as the FUT, these changes in regulation and
rights protection violate the fundamental principles recognized under the
International Labor Organization (ILO) and amount to a serious retreat in
the rights of the laboring class. Implementing the amendments would
mean that no state employee could claim the protection of labor rights
available under the Labor Code.
In the midst of these contentious amendments, a new labor organiza-
tion, the Central Unificada de Trabadores (CUT), with close ties to the
Correa administration, formed. The CUT vocally supported Correa’s
position. Relevant to the oil workers movement is that one of the most
public leaders of the CUT, John Reyes, is also the General Secretary of the
Petroecuador Committee Workers, the union that replaced FRETRAPEC
under the Correa administration. This articulation of government and oil
workers is palpable in several television interviews featuring Mr. Reyes.
While supportive of amendments, he cautiously claims that oil workers are
worried about their future. They are paying attention to how they are
recognized in the Constitution and in labor laws, as this affects their per-
sonal well-being as obreros. Emphasizing the high-risk labor conditions of
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 179

industrial workers, Mr. Reyes pointed out that state oil workers should
have their own labor code. The LOSEP does not guarantee a series of
fundamental labor rights, such as the right to organize as political subjects
to protect themselves through collect bargaining, and against the health
and environmental risks that come with being an industrial professional.
Working with the raw resource, he states and imposes greater risks for the
oil worker.
In this twenty-first century contrapuntual relation between the reorga-
nization of the state oil company and oil worker resistance, Mr. Reyes came
back to the very arguments and observations that the oil workers move-
ment of the 1970s fought for: the connection between worker bodies and
the material conditions of production. Collective consciousness of how
bodies interact with oil production and that of the inherent risks of
industrial production are the reasons why collective bargaining, the right to
strike, and the right to syndicalization must be protected. “This is
democracy,” stated Mr. Reyes in an interview in a televised news special in
December 2014, “what we want is for the government to check in situ the
conditions in which we work…our particularity.” While the new labor
organization draws connections between body, identity, and capital, its
consciousness is predominantly about citizen rights and the plight of
individuals, not about the sovereign rule of the petro-nation. The CUT
does not use the platform of the national oil worker as a political subject
position.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In August 2015, thousands of people marched from the Amazon to Quito
to state their disapproval of the Correa administration. Organized labor
called for a national strike, demanding the right of collective bargaining.
Diverse sectors mobilized to counter the constitutional amendments pro-
posed by the Correa administration and its political economy of resource
extraction. Members of the FUT were present, though not able to gather
significant following. The CUT, affine to the Correa administration, was
also present, focusing on labor-specific concerns. National level indigenous
organizations made up the majority of the opposition, focusing on Correa’s
extractivist agenda, and claiming that oil exploitation threatens their right
to live a dignified life. FETRAPEC was absent. Only former employees,
now removed form Petroecuador for decades, marched alongside pro-
testers, offering support as individuals aligned with the left, not as political
180 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

representatives of the oil complex. There was no demand focused on the

management of oil rents or on oil national identity or sovereignty. The
oil-sovereignty political position was missing; any oil-related concerns
publicly expressed were limited to the conditions of labor, such as the risks
of working industrial sites. Any connection to the petro-nation was men-
tioned in relation to protecting those who labor the nation, rather than the
other way around, laborers protecting the nation.
This essay counterpointed the emergence and exhaustion of the oil
workers movement with the shifting political economy of oil in Ecuador.
The counterpointing methodology allowed tracing the trajectories in labor
belonging/disarticulation since the 1970s, demonstrating the entangle-
ments of the movement with juridical-legal frameworks, public opinion,
and class interest. Organized labor shared the characteristics of labor aris-
tocracy but also combined this with a sophisticated petro-ethic of citi-
zenship that fueled its resistance but also made it vulnerable to the shifting
structures of the oil industry. The rise and decline of FETRAPEC is a
testament to the organic nature of social movements, and to how their
shifting contexts matter to their continued relevance.
It is not possible to claim a conclusion about the fate of the oil labor
movement in Ecuador at this point. It is possible to see, nonetheless, that a
general retreat in the discourse of the Left has taken place, where
“sovereignty” and “state” are no longer part of the vocabulary of organized
labor. And that the fragmentation of organized labor as a force of resis-
tance, and its reconfiguration into state-backed actors, will no doubt shape
the future of labor politics in Ecuador, as in much of Latin America.
Meanwhile, the national oil industry continues to experience organi-
zational and infrastructural changes, some associated with de-nationaliza-
tion, others with the Correa administration’s push for alternative sources of
energy. More broadly, the cooptation and bounding of the discourse of the
Left by the state has repositioned the image of social movements and
limited the spaces of dissent and critique. In the current context of
declining national oil production and declining price of the barrel of oil, we
do not see a decline in labor politics but a search for new political spaces. As
Achim Wachendorfer suggests, exiled labor leaders are aiming to form
supra-national forms of collective organizing that draw on their common
lessons with neoliberal restructuring to reconfigure labor politics.51 Former
FETRAPEC leaders have ventured into these collaborative spaces, though
it is still unclear how these new structures can intervene in the deregulated
labor structures of Ecuador.
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 181

NOTES
1. Marc Becker, Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in
Ecuador (Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010);
León Espinosa and Carolina Larco, El Pensamiento Político De Los
Movimientos Sociales (Quito: Ministerio de Coordinación de la Política y
Gobiernos Autónomos Descentralizados, 2012); José Antonio Lucero
“Crisis and Contention in Ecuador,” Journal of Democracy no. 12/2
(2001): 59–73; Jeffery R. Webber, “A New Indigenous-Left in Ecuador?”
NACLA Report on the Americas 44, no. 5 (2011): 9–13.
2. Diógenes Cuero Caicedo, Petróleo, Realidad y Sindicalismo (Esmeraldas:
Centro de Capacitación y Desarrollo Cultural, 1995).
3. Rainer Dombois, Trabajo Industrial En La Transición: Experiencias De
América Latina y Europa (México: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1993);
Maria Silvia Portella de Castro and Achim Wachendorfer, Sindicalismo
Latinoamericano: Entre La Renovación Y La Resignación (Caracas:
ILDES-FES, 1995); Francisco Zapata, “Hacia Una Sociología del Trabajo
Latinoamericano,” Nueva Antropología: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 8, no.
29 (1986): 7–28.
4. Maria Lorena Cook, The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America:
Between Flexibility and Rights (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2007).
5. Manfred Wannöffel, Ruptura en las Relaciones Laborales (México:
Fundación Friederich Elbert, 1995); Holm-Detlev Köhler, and Manfred
Wannöffel, Modelo Neoliberal y Sindicatos en América Latina (Mexico:
Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1993).
6. Cook, The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America.
7. Elana Shever, “Neoliberal Associations: Property, Company, and Family in
the Argentine Oil Fields,” American Ethnologist 35, no. 4 (2008): 701–716.
8. Kenneth M. Roberts, “The Crisis of Labor Politics in Latin America: Parties
and Labor Movements during the Transition to Neoliberalism,”
International Labor and Working-Class History 72, no. 1 (2007): 116–133.
9. Sara Motta, “Reinventing the Lefts in Latin America: Critical Perspectives
from Below,” Latin American Perspectives 40, no. 4 (2013): 5–18.
10. State oil workers are diverse and distributed along the geography of the oil
complex: from oilfields, to pipeline and storage sites, to administrative
offices, and to refinery and export facilities. Some members directly engage
the means of production and refining; others have a better comprehension
of foreign investment, company politics, and administration. Some are
aligned with political parties of the left, others with the right, and others to
the current ruling party; thus, their ideological principles and professional
training vary significantly. To protect their identities, we do not mention
182 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

the names of those who we interviewed or shared their stories, unless they
have published memoirs and essays that are publicly available.
11. Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint, Tobacco and Sugar (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1995).
12. Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2000).
13. “El Petróleo es de los Ecuatorianos y Debe Servir para los Ecuatorianos,”
Frente Patriótico por la Soberanía Petrolera, accessed March 5, 2010,
http://www.periodicopcion.net/article133029.html.
14. Ramiro Acosta Cerón, “Las Relaciones Laborales en la Petrolera Estatal,”
in Petróleo y Sociedad: El Petróleo es Patria, ed. Asociación Sindical de
Trabajadores de PETROECUADOR y sus Filiales—ASPEC (Quito:
ASPEC, 1994), 123–140.
15. Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in
Venezuela (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1997); John Gledhill, “The
People’s Oil: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Possibility of Another
Country in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela,” Focaal 52, no. 3 (2008): 57–74.
16. Rafael Quintero and Erika Silva, Ecuador, Una Nación En Ciernes Vol.
2 (Quito: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Sede Ecuador,
1991).
17. These oilfields, commonly referred to as the Crown Jewels because of their
high value, have financed 39% of the national budget over the last 40 years,
and thus are considered national patrimony of strategic importance.
18. “Para Recobrar El Patrimonio Petrolero de Todos los Ecuatorianos,”
Gustavo Jarrín Ampudia, accessed March 5, 2010, http://
www.voltairenet.org/article129247.html.
19. Eugene Havens and Michel Romieux, Barrancabermeja: Conflictos Sociales
En Torno a Un Centro Petrolero (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo y
Facultad de Sociología, Universidad Nacional, 1966).
20. Acosta Cerón, “Las Relaciones Laborales En La Petrolera Estatal.”
21. Patricio Ycaza, Historia Del Movimiento Obrero Ecuatoriano (Quito:
Ediciones Tierra, 2007).
22. Cuero Caicedo, Petroleo, Realidad y Sindicalismo.
23. Guillaume Fontaine, and Iván Narváez Quiñónez, Yasuní en el Siglo XXI:
El Estado Ecuatoriano y la Conservación de la Amazonía (Quito: Abya-Yala,
2007).
24. Jean Carriére, “Neoliberalism, Economic Crisis, and Popular Mobilization
in Ecuador,” in Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin
American Populism, eds. Jolle Demmers, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto, and
Barbara Hogenboom (London: Zed Books, 2001), 132–149; Allen
Gerlach, Indians, Oil, and Politics: A Recent History of Ecuador
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2003).
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 183

25. Eric Hobsbawm, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York: Pantheon, 1984),
194–213.
26. Acosta Cerón, “Las Relaciones Laborales En La Petrolera Estatal.”
27. Cuero Caicedo, Petroleo, Realidad y Sindicalismo.
28. Ibid.
29. Movement members include a diversity of state employees, such as refinery
operators, apprentices, floor managers, fuel storage site managers, envi-
ronmental oversight and commercialization employees, maintenance
employees. Understandably, this diversity means that participating in col-
lective decision-making is a challenge. Worker associations use large, gen-
eral meetings to discuss worker interests. Due to different work schedules
and locations of work, only small groups of workers are able to attend
assemblies at the same time. When assembly is called, some teams are not
able to attend because they are at work or they are just ending their shift.
A council of worker representatives was tried in the early 1980s but
abandoned as conflicts over political affiliations reproduced more divisions
over collective bargaining.
30. These “sweet” enticements appeared at first as a positive gain for the few
who agreed to voluntary resignation. But once the payoffs were brought up
to public scrutiny by the media, they tarnished the reputation of the entire
labor movement, breeding distrust among movement members.
31. The FSNP is a collective that includes labor unions as well as civil society
movements, such as the Coordinadora Por la Vida, Coordinadora de
Movimientos Sociales, CONAIE, Diego Borja, Movimiento Polo
Democrático, and Observatorio de las Energías.
32. Iván Narváez, Ramiro Galarza, Fernando Villavicencio, and Miguel Ortiz,
Los Encadenados Del Oleoducto (Quito: FETRAPEC, 1996).
33. Nicholas Welcome, “The Smell of Petroleum: Health, Insecurity, and
Citizenship in “Revolutionary” Ecuador” (Ph.D. diss, University of
California Riverside, 2013).
34. Whether directly related or not (different sides will argue different motives),
syndicate leaders that openly criticized Correa’s resource policies in 2008
have been laid off or accused of exhibiting “questionable” behavior.
35. Henry Llanes Suárez, Oxy: Contratos Petroleros: Inequidad En La
Distribución De La Producción (Quito: Bazar y Papelería El Mantial, 2006).
36. Diego Cano et al., “Letter to the Treasury Controller’s Office: Request to
Investigate the Implementation of the Contract of Specific Services for the
Operation of the Sacha Field between Petroproducción and the Mixed
Enterprise Rio Napo” (Quito, 2009).
184 G. VALDIVIA AND M. BENAVIDES

37. “Biografías de Líderes Políticos CIDOB: Lucio Gutiérrez Borbúa,”

CIDOB, accessed March 1, 2016, http://www.cidob.org/biografias_
lideres_politicos/america_del_sur/ecuador/lucio_gutierrez_borbua.
38. “Gutiérrez No Cede a La Presión De Los Petroleros,” América Económica,
accessed October 13, 2008, http://www.americaeconomica.com/
numeros4/217/reportajes/chema217.htm.
39. “Heads Roll at Petroecuador,” Business News Americas, March 1,
2004, http://www.bnamericas.com/news/oilandgas/Heads_roll_at_
Petroecuador.
40. Rolando del Pozo Vallejo, “Conflictos Socio Ambientales en las Áreas de
Influencia del Campo Libertador, Provocados por la Extracción Petrolera
en la Filial Petroproducción en la Región Amazónica Ecuatoriana”
(Master’s thesis, FLACSO-Ecuador, 2013).
41. President Correa, quoted in Cano et al., “Letter to the Treasury
Controller’s Office.”
42. “Campo Sacha: Privatización en Tiempo de Revolución,” CENAPRO,
accessed December 15, 2010, http://cenapro.info/index.
43. “Renunció El Consejo de Administración de Petroecuador,” Diario
Expreso, June 11, 2008, http://www.expreso.ec/junio/dia11/html/
economia13.asp.
44. James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization,
and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1994).
45. “No Hay Base Legal para un Acuerdo,” El Comercio, May 16, 2011, http://
www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/negocios/no-hay-base-legal-acuerdo-1.
html.
46. “GASPETSA y la Ética Pública,” Diario Hoy, Editorial, September 21,
2010, http://biblioteca.bce.ec/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=
91275.
47. “Gaspetsa: Lo Único Que Hicimos Fue Llenar un Vacío del Estado,” RTU
Noticias, accessed December 15, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pncPk-aykb8.
48. “No Hay Base Legal.”
49. Ibid.; “Trabas en Retorno de Ex Trabajadores,” El Comercio, July 1, 2011,
http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/negocios/trabas-retornode-ex-
trabajadores.html.
 THE END OF “THE GOOD FIGHT”? ORGANIZED LABOR … 185

50. “Ex Empleados Petroleros Vuelven a sus Puestos,” El Comercio,

November 24, 2012, http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/negocios/
ex-empleados-petroleros-vuelvena.html.
51. Achim Wachendorfer, “Hacia una Nueva Arquitectura Sindical en América
Latina?” Nueva Sociedad 211, (2007): 32–49.

Acknowledgements Our special thanks to those who shared their life stories of
petroleum-related struggle and their contagious passion for social justice and
change. All errors of interpretation remain ours.
 PART II

The Productive Life of Oil

 Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian
Oil Industry 1908–1951

Touraj Atabaki

INTRODUCTION
The course of history in the Persian Gulf, an area rich in spatial networks,
commercial associations, and traffic of ideas, was decisively altered by the
arrival of British colonialism. By the mid-nineteenth century, the British
had turned the Persian Gulf into a “British Lake.” In the early period of
expansion of British hegemony, Indian subjects of the Empire landed in
Persia as soldiers, with rifles in hand. However, by the discovery of oil in
southern Persia in 1908, Indian skilled and semiskilled workers outnum-
bered Indian soldiers.
Following the discovery of oil, a massive construction effort was needed
to mine, process, and transport the mineral to the world market. Access
roads, pipelines, an oil refinery, and shipping docks had to be built. The
immediate problem, which the oil business then struck, was the scarcity of
skilled and semiskilled labors within Persia/Iran. The unprecedented scale
and novelty of the project demanded a grand recruitment drive to find
suitable workers, from Mesopotamia to South Asia. While unskilled labor

T. Atabaki (&)
International Institute for Social History, Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

© The Author(s) 2018 189

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_8
190 T. ATABAKI

Fig. 1 Oil fields and refinery 1928.

 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 191

could be supplied by local tribal pastoralist and village-based laboring poor,

the skilled and semiskilled workforce was recruited from as far away as India
and Burma. The recruitment of workers from India by the oil industry
continued for more than 40 years. Indian migrant workers formed their
own social and residential communities in the major Iranian oil towns, and
constituted a distinctive and significant labor cluster in the industry until
the mid-twentieth century.
The historiography of Indian migration beyond British colonial frontiers
certainly provides perspectives on the established history of labor in India.
Pioneer researchers of trans-ocean Indian indentured labor migration have
published extensively on the Indian migrant workers who embarked for
Africa and the Americas. Among the many publications about these types
and routes of Indian migration, the classic works of Gillion, Lal, Emmer,
Carter, and Mohapatra should be mentioned.1 Singha and Tetzlaff have
studied Indian indentured labor in Mesopotamia and the northern Persian
Gulf; Seccombe and Lawless examined the migration of Indian labor to the
Arabian Peninsula at the south end of the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, the
life and times of Indian workers who migrated to West Asia, the Persian
Gulf, and Persia/Iran in the era of British colonial rule have only rarely
been described.2

DEPARTING FOR PERSIA

In December 1907, 20 Indian cavalrymen landed at the port of
Mohammareh (Khoramshahr) on the waterway to the Persian Gulf. Their
mission, as outlined by the British Consul in Mohammareh, was to guard
the expeditionary operations of the Burma Oil Company. The company
was engaged in oil exploration in the south of Khuzestan, a Persian pro-
vince.3 Oil was discovered at Masjed Suleiman in Southwest Persia/Iran
5 months later. The use of Indian cavalrymen by the young
Persian/Iranian oil industry was a precursor to decades of employment of
Indian skilled and semiskilled artisans and clerical workers. The era of
Indian employment ended in 1951, after the nationalization of the oil
industry in Iran and subsequent changeover in management when the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company4 became an international consortium.
In 1901, William N. D’Arcy, an Australian entrepreneur supported by
the British legation in Tehran, obtained a remarkable concession in Persia,
which gave him monopoly rights to “search for, obtain, exploit, develop,
render suitable trade, carry away, and sell natural gas, petroleum” and all
192 T. ATABAKI

Table 1 Employment in the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian Oil Company 1910–

1950.

Year Iranian Indian European Other Total

1910 1362 158 40 146 1706

1915 2203 979 80 187 3449
1920 8447 3616 244 35 12,342
1925 15,820 4890 994 7201 28,905
1930 20,095 2411 1191 7549 31,246
1935 25,240 954 1035 119 27,348
1940 26,484 1158 1056 15 28,713
1945 60,366 2498 2357 240 65,461
1950 72,681 1744 2725 34 77,184

Sources R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 1, The Developing Years 1901–1932 (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1982); J.H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 2, The
Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

the derivatives “throughout the whole extent of the Persian Empire.”

Article 12 of his agreement stated that “the workmen employed in the
service of the Company shall be subject to His Imperial Majesty the Shah,
except the technical staff, such as the managers, engineers, borers, and
foremen.”5 After the first oil flares and the expansion of drilling operations,
access roads were built, pipes were laid to bring oil to the Persian Gulf, and
the Abadan Refinery was constructed. At that time, the recruitment of
unskilled, semiskilled, and unskilled labors for the industry was poorly
regulated. Unskilled labor was chiefly recruited from Bakhtiyari peasants
and pastoral nomads living in the region adjacent to the oilfield. Indian
migrant workers comprised the main trunk of the semiskilled and skilled
workforce6 (Table 1).
The number of Indian migrant workers grew from 157 in 1910 (rep-
resenting about 9% of a total workforce of 1706 at that time) to a peak of
4890 workers in 1925 (about 16% of a total workforce of 28,905).
The early cluster of Indian migrant workers who joined the Persian oil
industry was either recruited through an intermediary agency in India, or
transferred directly from the Rangoon Refinery through the coordination
of the Burma Oil Company, which had a large stake in the D’Arcy
concession.7
In the early years of its operation, the oil company was mainly concerned
with establishing the basic infrastructure required to supply oil to the
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 193

Fig. 2 Indian employment in the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian Oil Company

1910–1950. Sources R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 1, The
Developing Years 1901–1932 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982); J.H.
Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 2, The Anglo-Iranian Years,
1928–1954 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

market. Training facilities for local labor were, therefore, not on its list of
priorities. At this initial stage, the recruitment and employment policy of
the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) aimed to overcome the scarcity
of skilled and semiskilled labors by employing large numbers of migrant
workers, mostly from India, both in clerical and skilled or semiskilled
manual professions.8 As I will show in this essay, this policy changed when
the industry grew bigger. Employing labor came to be influenced by
political factors—both at the top, through the tripartite relations of APOC,
the Government of India, and the Persian government, and from below,
through labor activism aimed at improving the situation of workers.
In India, the British Indian trading company Shaw Wallace & Co. Ltd
was the intermediary agent recruiting labor for Persia, with Strick, Scott
& Co., as its representative in Persia. “With the flotation of the APOC,
work in the Bombay office increased rapidly as equipment of every
conceivable kind had to be forwarded to the [Persian] Gulf, where
Mohammareh was then the base office, and not only for equipment but
the clerk staff as well as household domestics and servants for the office.”9
Shaw Wallace worked closely with the Burma Oil Company and APOC,
and its mission as labor recruitment agency lasted until 1926, when
APOC decided to take over the task and recruit Indian labor via its office
in Bombay. In India, Shaw Wallace was the sole agent of these oil
companies, providing various services in addition to labor recruitment.
194 T. ATABAKI

Fig. 3 Construction of the Gach-qaraguli (Gachsaran) Road, 1909. Source British

Petroleum Archive, Warwick, Britain.

Charles Greenway, who originally worked in the oil department of Shaw

Wallace as agent of the Burma Oil Company in India, later joined the
Persian oil industry in 1910 as Managing Director and became Chairman
of APOC in 1914–1927.10
The majority of migrant workers recruited to the Persian oil industry
from Burma were Indians employed by the Burma Oil Company. Their
lengthy experience of working at the Burma oilfields and the Rangoon Oil
Refinery made them an attractive labor source. Using a free-contract sys-
tem, Shaw Wallace arranged for the passage of these workers from Burma
to Persia. They were mainly Chittagonian Sunni Muslims, who had joined
the Burmese oil industry in the 1890s.11 In the APOC administrative
records or British colonial archives, the social, territorial, ethnic, or reli-
gious backgrounds of Indian migrant workers were never separately
identified. The same applied to Iranian workers. Thus, all migrant workers
from India employed by the Persian oil industry were simply classified as
“Indians.” However, by collating data found in the national archives of
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 195

India, Iran, and Britain, sources in the APOC and British Petroleum
company archives, and records from the community of Indian migrant
workers living in Iran, some additional distinctions can be made. In Persia,
workers originating from Burma were, for example, categorized as
Rangoony (from Rangoon), so distinguishing them from other Indian
migrants. In the city of Abadan, the Rangoony community had its own
mosque, segregated from other Indian Sunni and Shiites Muslims. It was
known as the “Rangoony Mosque,” no doubt a reference to a substantial
Burmese population in Abadan.
Shaw Wallace recruited not only Indian migrant workers from Burma to
work in the Persian oil industry. Through subsidiary or subcontractors’
offices, it also recruited both skilled and semiskilled workers in Bombay and
Karachi. Subcontractors like I.A. Ashton & Sons and Bullock Brothers
were specialized in recruiting fitters, oil and diesel engine drivers, marine
signalmen, marine raters, boilermakers, pipe fitters, etc.12 Recruiters often
advertised in Bombay papers, especially for clerical employment. However,
there are also references stating that intermediaries such as I.A. Ashton
posted notices, posters, and wallpapers in the Punjab.13 All workers who
applied for the announced positions first had to go through a qualifications
examination. Those recruited in Punjab were interviewed in Lahore, and
Bombay recruits were interviewed in Mazagaon Dock Bombay, before
joining the mass of employees departing for Persia. The intermediary
companies charged each new recruit 25% of their first month’s pay. Those
who had previously worked for the oil company in Persia and returned to
India in less than 2 years were required to pay an admission fee of 10
rupees.14 The same rule applied to workers hired for household and
domestic services, such as butlers, cooks, domestic servants, hospital ward
orderlies, and sweepers (these were chiefly recruited by Osborn & Co.,
affiliated to the Parsee enterprise based in Bombay).15
With the founding of Abadan Refinery in 1909, the number of Indian
migrant workers steadily increased. By 1913, there were 1000 clerical and
manual employees. However, around the time that the First World War
broke out in 1914, there were two new developments, which had a big
effect on the recruitment of labor from India. First, the British admiralty
decided to convert all its marine steam engines (industrial, army, and naval
units) from coal to oil fuels, a transition that had already begun in 1912.16
Within a few years, that made oil a crucial economic resource for British
interests around the world, causing the oil industry to boom. Second, the
British government decided to raise its shareholding in APOC to 51%, and
196 T. ATABAKI

thereby became the major owner of the company.17 A generous prefer-

ential contract was signed in 1914, under which the British admiralty could
purchase Persian oil from APOC for the Royal Navy at a fixed price for
30 years. Oil suddenly became a strategic military commodity in the British
Empire.18
As the Persian oil industry expanded its operations during the First
World War, the need for an adequate and constant supply of labor became
urgent. Unsurprisingly, the whole question of how to allocate and maintain
the workforce became a priority in APOC policy, and the British Raj itself
became directly involved in administering the migration of Indian workers
to the oil industry. APOC claimed that the biggest obstacle in obtaining
labor for the Persian oil industry was a formality in the Indian Emigrations
Act of 1883, which restricted labor migration to specified destinations,
which did not include Persia.19 In March 1915, the APOC Board pro-
posed to the Government of India that restrictions imposed by the Act
should be waived, so that APOC could recruit more skilled labor:

Owing to the non-existence of such [skilled] labor in Persia, and the

impossibility of training Persians in sufficient number for their requirements,
the Company is compelled to indent largely on Indian for skilled laborers of
many kinds, such as riveters, engine drivers, assembling machine men, iron
and brass moulders, solders, core makers, and others. Now, the number of
Indian employees in Abadan and the oil fields is about 1020. It is found
nevertheless that it is very difficult to induce men of these classes to leave
Bombay, Rangoon, Karachi, or the other ports where they are recruited and
to accept employment in Persia. …. Indian Emigration Act, which are unduly
magnified in their imagination, and consequently act as a serious deterrent to
their taking the service offered.20

To strengthen its argument, APOC noted its special status as a British

company in which the British government had acquired a major share-
holding, providing “full power of control and of British Indian subjects
being under the jurisdiction of His Majesty’s Consul.” APOC, therefore,
petitioned the Government of India to apply the same emigration rule to
Persia that was used for Ceylon and the Straits Settlement. According to
APOC, the administrative power of the Government of India should be
extended to new territory:
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 197

… under the provisions of the Persian Coast and Islands Order of 1907,
British Indian subject in the Persian littoral is entirely under the jurisdiction
of the Consul-General and Political Resident and his subordinate officers.
British Indian law is in force and under the provision of the Order, the Indian
Code of Criminal and Civil Procedure have effect ‘as if the Persian Coast and
Islands were a neighbourhood in the province of Bombay’. In these circum-
stances, the position of Indian emigrants in the Gulf approximates to their
position in Ceylon and the Straits Settlements, which are expressly exempted
from the operation of the Emigration Act, and the object of this letter is to
enquire whether a similar exemption cannot be accorded to the areas
occupied by the Company’s Work at Abadan, Mohammareh, and the
Oilfields.21

The Persian Coast and Islands Order of 1907 referred to in APOC’s

petition was an appendix of the Anglo-Russian Convention signed in
August 1907 in St. Petersburg. This convention aimed to consolidate in
international relations various political changes that had occurred in the Far
East, the Middle East, and Europe after the Russo-Japanese war and the
Russian revolution of 1905. Since 1903, the territorial sovereignty of Persia
had been recognized by both Russia and Britain, except for the Persian
Gulf, which was considered as a “British lake.” However, the 1907
Convention in substance rejected Persia as a sovereign territory, although
formally it was still regarded as a sovereign state. The core of the
Convention was its first section, which created Russian and British terri-
torial spheres in north and south Persia, while leaving the central part as a
buffer zone between the two imperial powers.22
In April 1915, the Department of Commerce and Industry of the
Government of India reacted to APOC’s petition in the following terms:

The Government of India is very reluctant to extend the exemption to other

countries. The conditions mentioned above do not apply to the Persian Gulf.
Emigration of artisans to the Persian Gulf is of very recent date and living
very expensive. It is possible that an account of these reasons that artisans are
unwilling to proceed to the Persian Gulf even on the high Burma rates and
not because of the restriction imposed by the Emigration Act. The artisan
class is not so ignorant as the ordinary coolie class and is not likely to be
frightened by requirements of the Act, which are not of harassing nature.23

However, the Government of India did not completely close the door to
further negotiations with APOC, and in the same memorandum, it was
198 T. ATABAKI

considered that if “His Majesty’s Government would consent to be a party

to the agreement,” and then, it would consider the desirability of an
exemption, provided that “the Governments of Bombay, Punjab—where
the emigrant proceed mostly from there—United Province, Bengal, and
Bihar and Orissa [were] consulted.”24
The dispute between APOC and the Government of India about
whether Persia should be a legal destination for Indian labor migrants was
not settled until February 1918. At that time, the Government of India
finally agreed to a temporary suspension of the Emigration Act restrictions
for territories under the APOC aegis. However, it had already realized the
strategic importance of oil supply, and during the war, it had, therefore,
extended the scope of its cooperation with APOC, so that oil production
would not be hindered by labor scarcity.25 APOC remained very insistent
about the importance of a continuing labor supply from India. If that labor
supply was cut off or temporarily strained, this posed a risk. When Indian
workers deserted their job with the oil company in search of better pay in
the British military, a manager commented:

A large number of Sikh fitters are pressing to get leave to return to their
country, and a number of them have worked here at least a year. We cannot
very well force them to remain as they are not under agreement, and their
chief grievance is one of money.
I have no doubt that some of the men wish to go to India, than return for
work in Basra, and by this way evades the Force Routine Order of 4th April.
Others again will, no doubt, apply in India to Shaw Wallace and Co. for work
either at the Gunboats or the I.O. Barges, as they will thus get much higher
wages than that we can offer. Regarding the fitters who wish to go to their
country, I have had a talk with the Head Fitter Mastery, and he tells me that
some of his men here are writing to their friends in Lahore, Amritsar etc.,
telling them not to apply for work in this Company owing to the troubles
caused by the war, dearness of living, and coercive methods that they say that
we use in order to retain their services.26

APOC’s concern was “fully appreciated” by the army when “a special order
was issued to effect that no labor ex Abadan to be employed by any Military
or Naval unit.”27
During the war, APOC was not only troubled by the problem of skilled
workers deserting the Persian oil industry; the scarcity of the supply of
unskilled labor was also a hurdle for the company. During the war, there
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 199

were several factors to be reckoned with. There was anti-British tribal strife
in Persia. There were famines and epidemics, which caused massive dislo-
cation of the population in the region,28 at least in the early stage of the
war. The proximity of the oilfields and refinery to the war front also caused
local unskilled labor to leave the oil company. As British forces advanced in
Mesopotamia, and were active on the Baghdad front, a new labor market
with more favorable working conditions emerged, attracting not only local
skilled and unskilled workers, but also migrant workers from other regions,
including India:

We have, all along, been having the greatest difficulty in retaining coolies at
Abadan, [and]. … I regret to say that matters have got very much worse
during the last fortnight, and we are now nearly a thousand Coolies under
strength. … Last payday (6 days ago), some 200 men cleared off, and this
morning, Abadan has rung up to say that a similar number went yesterday. …
I suppose that it is the fall of Baghdad, which it so some extent responsible
for this sudden extra demand for Coolies by the [British] government.29

Adding coolies to the list of their preferred recruits was a new chapter in
APOC’s labor policy. The Indian Labor Corps was invited to join their
workforce in Persia.30 In October 1917, when APOC had already
accommodated a 300-strong Indian Labor Corps in Abadan, the oil
company petitioned the Government of India to increase the total number
of men to 800:

We understand that Persian coolies are available and will accept some with
very many thanks but if it was possible our existing Indian Corps to be
increased, we imagine that it would save having two separate organizations.31

The response of the Government of India to APOC’s petition was not

favorable. About 7 months earlier, on March 12, 1917, the Government
had already suspended all unskilled labor migration from India, except to
Ceylon and Malaysia.32
Nevertheless, recruitment of migrant labor from India continued and
even increased significantly—despite the problem of desertions by workers
in pursuit of better pay, or the restrictions of the Emigration Act, which
remained in force during the war. By the end of the war, the enlarged army
of Indian migrants at work in the Persian oil industry was sourced from all
across India. Chittagonian workers worked in harbor engineering and naval
200 T. ATABAKI

Fig. 4 Power Station, Abadan Refinery, 1921. Source British Petroleum Archive,
Warwick, Britain.

transport, while the Punjabi Sikhs were chiefly employed as drivers, tech-
nicians, and security agents. Migrants from the Madras Presidency occu-
pied clerical functions, the Gazars from Punjab working as dhobi
(washerman), while Goans served as cooks and servants.33
According to the signed contract, Indian migrant employees were not
allowed to take their family to Persia. While this was of major concern for
some workers, the oil company considered the ban on family reunion as
strictly nonnegotiable, except for some high-ranking clerks. However,
reports in Iranian archives state that some Indian Muslim migrant workers
approached the Persian authorities to intervene on their behalf, calling on
APOC to grant permission for family living arrangements. For example,
one appeal—signed by “Indian Muslims working at the Persian oil
industry” and presented in the autumn of 1927—petitioned the
“Shahanshah [king of kings] of Iran as the guardian of Islam” and the
“protector of people of Islam” as follows:
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 201

We are guest in your holy land and hope someday the Iranian workers replace
us all. However, since some of us are young and newly married, in order to
elude any non-Islamic conducts here, while we are far from our family, or our
spouse who burns from such partition to be fallen into naughtiness.34

The contribution of oil capitalism to shaping the course of the First World
War was very significant. As I mentioned before, months before the final
armistice of November 1918, the Government of India temporally sus-
pended the application of its Emigration Act to Persia, and liberalized
migration traffic. However, this suspension was short-lived. In 1920, the
Government of India reversed its policy, and once again restricted labor
migration to the Persian oil industry. Two years later, in 1922, the old
Emigration Act was restructured via an amendment. The amendment
intended to end the practice of indentured labor, extensively practiced
during the war. As I will discuss in more detail, the main reason for this
change in labor policy was the gradual escalation of labor protests among
Indian migrant workers.
Following the amendment to curb the Emigration Act in 1922, the
maximum period of employment for migrant labor recruited by APOC was
reduced from 3 years to 1 year. By reducing the contract period, the
Government of India and APOC gave themselves more bargaining power
in dealing with labor unrest. However, one drawback of this policy was
that, with its reliance on Indian skilled and unskilled migrant labor, APOC
now confronted labor shortages and increased labor costs:

The withdrawal of this concession is extremely detrimental to the interests of

the Company who has been obliged to rely on India not only for unskilled
but for skilled labor as none is obtainable in Persia. You will readily realise
how very seriously the limitation of the agreement affects the Company
seeing that Indians very often do not reach the oilfields until 6 or 8 weeks
after the agreement comes into operation and should a similar period elapse
before they reach India on the return journey, the Company gets only 8 or
9 months work for 12 months pay, accordingly not only are labor costs very
much increased, but there are more frequent changes in the personnel which
it is to be avoided as far as possible.35

A new Emigration Act was introduced in 1922. Other developments in the

employment policy of APOC followed. The end of wartime policy and the
prohibition of the indentured labor system at first motivated APOC to
become directly involved with workforce recruitment. Thus, APOC
202 T. ATABAKI

opened its own labor recruitment office in Bombay, and began to tap the
local labor market for its Persian industry. In November 1925, APOC
instructed Shaw Wallace & Co. to end its labor recruitment mission for the
Persian oil industry in India as of January 1926. APOC said that it expected
“lowered requirements for Indian labor” by replacing Indian labor with
locally trained Persians.36 However, that was not the only reason for the
new policy.
The “Persianization” of the workforce had been of concern to the
Persian government from the time that the oil concession was granted in
1901. According to Article 12 of the D’Arcy Agreement, “the workmen
employed in the service of the Company shall be subject to His Imperial
Majesty the Shah, except the technical staff, such as the managers, engi-
neers, borers, and foremen.”37 However, this rule was not always followed
by APOC. For example, in a 1910 letter sent by Sadiq al-Saltaneh (Oil
Commissar of the Persian government) to the Persian Charge d’Affaire in
London, we find a complaint that non-Persian coolies were employed by
APOC.38 The question of schooling Persians for the technical professions
was raised only in the 1920s, during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (who
came to power through a coup d’état in 1920, and was inaugured as the
new king in 1925). In 1927, the Persian Ministry of Finance called on the
Ministry of Endowment and Education to promote the education of
Persians for a technical career in the oil industry, by establishing technical
institutes in the southern province of Khuzestan:

According to the report compiled by the Oil Company, at the present, there
are 4598 non-Iranians working for the Oil Company. Although the Oil
Company, according to the concession [of 1901] preserved its right to
employ non-Iranian labor for its technical careers, nevertheless, all necessary
measures should be made to replace the entire non-Iranian with the Iranian
national.39

By the late 1920s, training Persian labor in APOC workshops had become
normal. Persians were instructed by Indian engineers in what today would
be called “on-the-job training.” As quasi-apprentices, Persians followed
training courses to become “fitters, turners, moulders, blacksmiths, car-
penters, armature winders, general repair electricians, boilermakers, weld-
ers (electric and acetylene), and instrument makers.”40
In 1933, the Persian government canceled the D’Arcy concession, and
offered APOC a new agreement that was more favorable to Persia.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 203

According to the new agreement, APOC was required to employ only

Persian nationals for unskilled occupations. In hiring clerical and technical
employees, Persian nationals were to be preferred, if they had the necessary
competence and experience.41 Article 16 of the new 1933 Agreement—
carefully worded to meet Persian employment requirements—stipulated
that:

… the Company shall recruit its artisans as well as its technical and com-
mercial staff from among Persian nationals to the extent that it shall find, in
Persia, persons who possess the requisite skill and experience. It is likewise
understood that the unskilled staff shall be composed exclusively of Persian
nationals.
The parties declare themselves in agreement to study and prepare a general
plan of yearly and progressive reduction of the non-Persian employment with
a view to replacing them in the shortest possible time and progressively by
Persian nationals.42

The oil company was invited to advertise its job vacancies not only in the
local Persian press, but also in the national press and at employment offices,
in order to promote a bigger Persian workforce.43 In one initiative, the oil
company called on all its employees to ask their friends and relatives
throughout Iran to apply for vacancies in the oil industry.44
Taking into account the combined effect of all these developments—
new employment policies, political pressure from the Iranian government,
and increased labor activism (initially among Indian migrant labor, but
later involving Persians)—we can better understand why the number of
Indian migrant workers in the oil industry decreased considerably from the
mid-1920s and in the 1930s.45
The outbreak of the Second World War once again powerfully boosted
the demand for oil. A new oil boom resulted, and the number of Indian
migrant workers in the oil industry grew by 100%, reaching 2498 men in
1945. However, the Indian independence movement together with the
campaign to nationalize the Iranian oil industry caused the Indian migrant
labor community in Iran to dwindle. When the Iranian oil industry was
nationalized in March 1951, the community of Indian migrant workers
broke up. Some had worked for the fallen Anglo-Iranian Company
(APIC). A large number of Indian employees decided to join the European
staff, and left Iran. Some Indians opted to stay in Iran, and continued to
work in the oil industry under a Persian employer.
204 T. ATABAKI

ABADAN, A TRIPARTITE CITY

In her seminal study of colonial urbanization in Morocco, Janet
Abu-Lughod refers to Rabat as a dual city, with sharply segregated urban
spaces of the colonizer and the colonized.46 However, there is often
another urban space in the colonial cities, between the colonial settlers and
the colonized indigenous population—a buffer zone occupied by inter-
mediary groups. For example, in Calcutta, “British colonists deliberately
cultivated a segment of the indigenous elite, who served as intermediaries
between the colonizers and the colonized.” 47
When the first stone of the refinery was laid in 1910, the island of
Abadan (or ‘Abbadan, as it was spelled back then) was thinly populated by
the Nassar Arabs. Their leader was the local Sheikh Khaz‘al, who lived in
the nearby village Mohammareh (later Khoramshahr). The inward
migration to Abadan of people seeking employment in the oil industry, or
providing services to the employees of the oil industry, soon grew beyond
all expectations—especially after the First World War when the global
dependency on fuel oil greatly increased. APOC’s Indian employees in
Abadan numbered only 80 in 1910, but gradually rose to 1028 in 1914,
and then grew sharply to 3816 in 1922.48 Thus, in two decades, Abadan
grew from a modest sheikh’s village to a large company town, which by
1930 had around 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants,49 of which about half—
17,370 men—worked at the oil refinery.50
In the warm climate of southern Persia, long working hours were
normal. In the early years of the oil company, no standard working day for
employees existed at all. Workers were often expected to work 7 days a
week, from sunrise to sunset. Some years later, however, on the eve of the
First World War, a new workday regime was implemented: 6 days were
worked per week, from 9 to 12 h per day, depending on the season. Work
typically started at 6 o’clock in the morning and ended at 6 o’clock in the
evening during the winter, and continued from 6 o’clock in the morning
until 3 o’clock in the afternoon during the summer. It was only after a
series of labor protests in the 1920s that APOC eventually adopted stan-
dard working hours throughout the year, commencing at 6 in the morning
and finishing officially at 5.30 in the afternoon, with an hour and a half for
breakfast and an hour for lunch.51 In the early days, the oil company
designated Sunday as a day off. In later years, the rest period started at
noon on Thursday, and included Friday.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 205

At first, APOC offered temporary housing exclusively to its British and

European staff. Two years later, in August 1912—when the construction of
the refinery was sufficiently near completion to allow a trial run to be
made52—APOC’s European employees were accommodated in brick villas
and bungalows surrounded by gardens. These houses were built at the
northwestern site of the refinery known as Braim, where the Sheikh
Khaz‘al also had his residence. On the opposite side of the refinery, to the
southeast and north of the old village, a new neighborhood was con-
structed for Indian clerks and artisans. The refinery was in fact a “buffer
zone” between the Braim and the new neighborhood. During the early
years, this new neighborhood was called Coolie Lane. Its name later
changed to Sikh-Lane, when the majority of Indians working at the
refinery were Sikhs, and finally to Indian Lane. Indian employees in the
Coolie/Sikh/Indian Lane were housed in parallel long and round bar-
racks. Each barrack was divided by wall portions into number of units.
Each unit could accommodate several employees, or else a family, if by
exception family members were permitted by the company to join the
employee.
In the early days, Persian recruits either lived in sunbaked mud houses in
the old village, around sheikh-bazar, or around the old town, in shelters
made of loosely lashed sticks or bamboo, roofed with palm leaves.53
However, during the later period, they moved to Ahmadabad,
Bahmanshir, and Kofeysheh, often on their own initiative. In the early
1920s, APOC added two new neighborhoods to Abadan: the Bowardeh
area and the Indian Quarter (kuarter-e hendi-ha). Bowardeh was con-
structed to accommodate Persian clerks and skilled workers. The Indian
Quarter was intended for Indian semiskilled workers and security agents.
Between the two new labor neighborhoods of Bahmanshir and
Ahmadabad, the Indian Quarter featured row houses and a public toilet
(new to Iranian architecture), and had its own Sunni and Shi’ite mosques
as well as a home-based Hindu temple.54 The old Indian Lane, well
maintained, was for the use of Indian clerks and artisans.
As a tripartite city, Abadan was spatially divided according to the social
stratification principles imposed by British colonialism. A highly stratified
racial hierarchy existed, which APOC’s British employees brought with
them from home and from India. The city was divided between Europeans
at the top, Indians in the middle, and native Persians at the bottom. This
racial partition was consistently observed, even when new neighborhoods
206 T. ATABAKI

Fig. 5 Map of Abadan in 1926, showing the new suburbs built in the 1920s and
1930s. Source British Library. Location of new suburbs added by the author.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 207

were added to the city, as the oil industry expanded, the refinery was
extended, and the employment policy was altered.55
Crossing this very rigid racial partition was possible when higher ranking
Indians (and, later, Persians) were invited to attend official ceremonies,
congregations, or worship services with the European community.56
However, mixing across racial borders was “specifically discouraged, and
segregation was held up as the best alternative.”57 The APOC archive
contains a 1926 memorandum signed by Armstrong, an APOC executive
in Abadan, which illustrates this segregation. According to the memoran-
dum, when some Indian clerks at APOC approached Armstrong in Abadan
to get permission to use the library, he was reluctant to respond positively
to their demands, because he was worried that if he granted access to
Indian clerks, this might cause Europeans to avoid the library.
Consequently, he advised Indians to create their own library with old and
used books from the European library.58
In colonial culture, racial segregation had a domino effect. In Abadan, it
was not just Indian employees who were supposed to have their own
community library. The “native” Persians were also barred from using the
Indian Library and encouraged to have their own. This ethnic partition
extended to other services, such as health and sports facilities. The
Europeans had their own exclusive hospitals and sports clubs, separate from
Indians and Persians, with different quality standards.59 APOC justified its
policy and actions by arguing that:

Under European guidance, Persians were learning to separate themselves

from fellow Indian workers. Separate Persian clubs would serve the dual
purpose of stilling complaints in Tehran and keeping labor divided in
Khuzestan.60

LABOR ACTIVISM ENCOUNTERS NATIONALISM

The dialectics between nationalism and labor movements during colonial
rule in Asia and Africa have been the subject of a few major studies.61
Increasingly, large-scale labor migrations became a feature of imperial
social formations. As anticolonial nationalism gathered steam, there were
more and more cases of backlash against migrant workers, including
among labor activists and labor movements inspired by nationalist ideas. In
many instances, transnational migrant laborers were perceived as invidious
208 T. ATABAKI

guests, who were there at the courtesy of patronage by the colonial power,
in order to weaken the colonized, or aid their further exploitation. The oil
towns of Persia were founded as migrant towns. They accommodated large
groups of migrant labors coming from different parts of Persia, as well as
colonial subjects from the Indian subcontinent. For APOC, all Iranian
workers were classified as “Persians,” irrespective of their provincial origin,
and they were generally treated as third-class employees. The migrant
workers from the Indian subcontinent were considered as the second-class
employees and treated accordingly. In the Persian oil industry, the social
stratification scheme imposed by British colonial rule contributed to cre-
ating nationalist sentiments, both among Indian migrant workers and
among the “native” Persians.62
There is no reference in APOC records to any major labor discontent or
mass protests in the oil industry during its early years. Nevertheless, the oil
company’s operations were not always running smoothly. Many skirmishes
and clashes occurred between abusive European foremen and disgruntled
workers.63 In the early years of the oil industry, these frictions were
negotiated via foremen. Casual workers did not agitate for
self-organization as a class of employees. All these changed after the First
World War. In December 1920, some 3000 Indian workers of the Abadan
Oil Refinery staged a strike. Their demands included an increase in wages, a
reduction of daily working hours, additional pay for overtime, improve-
ment of sanitary conditions, and an end to vilification and molestation of
workers by staff members.64 They were soon joined by their Iranian
coworkers, which forced the refinery authorities to accept some of the
demands of the workers. This turn of events was of great concern among
APOC directors. They feared the radicalization of their skilled Indian
workers and the infection of unskilled Iranians by “subversive ideas.” In
addition to workers’ fury over “conditions and cost of living,” the British
Petroleum historian Ronald Ferrier refers to the 1920 strike as “a conse-
quence of the bitter resentment in India, following the Amritsar massacre
riot of April 1919,” and says that it was provoked by some Indian
“semi-organized” political agitators.65
More recently, other historians have also regarded the Amritsar massacre
as the cause of the 1920 Indian workers’ strike.66 However, it is doubtful
that the Abadan strike of December 1920 can be associated with a mas-
sacre, which occurred more than a year and half earlier. Such an inter-
pretation downgrades the extremely deprived living conditions and low
wages of workers in the oil industry, or arises from a colonial reading of the
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 209

past. The 80% salary increase demanded by workers illustrates how poorly
paid both Indian and Persian workers actually were. The petitions by
Persian workers, which were sent to the government in Tehran, all refer to
“poor pay, inadequate facilities, dirty living conditions, and the lack of
compensation in case of disability.”67
Although, in the end, APOC’s attempt at reconciliation did concede the
strikers’ demand for wage increases, it did not go beyond that. It left other
workers’ petitions unrequited. Other workers’ demands had concerned
“accommodation, married square, medical services, leisure amenities,
exchange rate, and the sale of discharge certificates of Indian employees.”68
It was, therefore, to be expected that workers’ discontent would flare up
again. Therefore, it did, 18 months later. In May 1922, another strike of
Indian workers broke out, which was soon joined by Persian workers.
George Thomson, an employee of APOC, recalled the strike as a
“well-organized” protest, by “the skilled artisans, involving about 2000
Indians.”69 Thomson does not probe the roots of this strike. However, one
of the Indian employees of APOC, named Mudliar in an “eyewitness
account,” described, in detail, the poor working and living conditions of
Indians in APOC. The account of Mudliar followed an early statement by
Dr. Ghore in the Bombay Chronicle under the title of “Indian Workers in
Persia, Miserable Condition.” According to Ghore’s statement:

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company Limited alone employed 95% Indians.

There is no restriction in the number of hours worked everyday. Neither coal
nor ice was supplied to workers until agitation was stared. Workers die of
sunstroke in summer and pneumonia in winter as a little is done to look to
their wants and comforts. I request Indian labor to take up the cause of their
comrades in Persia particularly those employed by the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company, whose agents are the Shaw Wallace & Co., Bombay.70

Following Dr. Ghore statement, Mudliar narrates his personal experience

of working for APOC, where “large numbers of workers of all classes
skilled and unskilled are brought up as fast as steamers and trains can carry
them, without the slightest care being given to them on board the ship
causing untold suffering on the way. From Mohammareh, batches of men
are sent up to the oilfields in steamers on open deck, through second-class
passengers, to suffer in the biting cold and chill weather of the cruel Persian
winter.” On arrival, “they are not given any accommodation in such a
dreary place as this, and even if any is given, it is without latrine, without
210 T. ATABAKI

cookhouse.” Mudliar testified as “there is no certainty of working hours,

which are sometimes as long as 10 and 12 h in a day in all weathers.” The
working environment, according to Mudliar, was nothing but “humiliat-
ing” and “unbearable.” He confirmed Dr. Ghore’s reference to “men
dying of sunstroke and pneumonia” as true.71
In Mudliar’s testimony, there is also reference to extremely poor living
conditions for Indian workers:

Living accommodation provided is inadequate and a large number of people

are huddled tighter in small room, incompletely furnished, by way of furni-
ture and lights, nothing to say of cookhouses and latrines, thus making life
extremely hard.72

Added to these “unbearable” working and living conditions were the

steady increase of the prices of essential commodities and high living costs.
According to Mudliar, prices were as a rule high and were “on the increase
daily,” making it “impossible” for Indian workers to “command even the
necessaries of life” in Persia, let alone “to support their dependents in
India.”73
APOC responded through the British Consul in Mohammareh by
characterizing all the public allegations of Dr. Ghore and Mudliar as
“groundless fabrication” intended only to justify a salary increase.74 When
the 1922 strike broke out, APOC immediately called on Sheikh Khaz‘al to
“deal with the native” employees, while “after careful consideration,” the
company decided that the “only course open was to repatriate nearly 2000
skilled Indian workmen.”75 When the strike leaders refused to board the
ship, unless all strikers could leave Persia at once, APOC reluctantly con-
ceded their demand. In doing so, the company lost a large part of its skilled
workforce, the majority of them being Sikhs, although “Indian clerical staff,
orderlies, process staff, and cooks were still employed.”76
Later, in 1924, the British Legation in the Persian Gulf reported the
activity of an Indian mechanic in Masjed Suleiman, named Muhammad
Khan, who tried to form a workers’ union.77 However, the May 1922
strike is the last known collective action by Indian migrant workers in the
Persian oil industry. Because Indian employees were thereafter gradually
replaced with Persians, the position of the remaining Indian workforce was
weakened.
The Iranization of the workforce accelerated after 1920–1922 strikes
and paved the way for the gradual reduction of Indian labor.78 This
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 211

Fig. 6 Foundry, Abadan, 1921. Source British Petroleum Archive, Warwick, Britain.

development went hand in hand with the rise of Persian territorial-state

nationalism stimulated by the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–
1909) and the emergence of a new political society after the First World
War, supported by new institutions intending to create a modern cen-
tralized state. Along with the consolidation of such a political society, there
was also the reemergence of a new anticolonial nationalism, supported by
noncoercive institutions, such as political parties, guilds and labor unions,
cultural associations, and private schools.
With the making of the workers in the oil industry, organized and
non-organized Iranian workers began to engage in mass activities. Not only
did they demand better working and living conditions, but also wanted
recognition of their autonomous status as citizens of the country. On May 1,
1929 (International Labor Day), when about 9000 workers at the Abadan
Refinery launched a mass strike, their demands included an increase in wages
by 15%; recognition of the workers’ union and May Day as a legitimate
holiday; reduction of the working day from 10 to 7 h in the summer,
and to 8 h in the winter; and complete equality between Indian and
212 T. ATABAKI

Iranian employees.79 The strike was initiated mainly by Iranian workers, and
Indians workers did not participate in it. Indeed, protected by the com-
pany’s security guards, a group of “Rangoony workers” unsuccessfully tried
to cross the picket line and proceed to the refinery.80
APOC claimed that the strike of May 1929 was nothing but a
“Bolshevik plot,” to “foment intense labor trouble” in the oil industry and
“ultimately ablaze in the southern Persian.”81 However, the national press
accused the oil company of downplaying the true cause of the labor
discontent:

There seems to be two factors for the strike among the workmen of the
Company; first, the times have changed and workmen in all parts think more
of their personal comfort than they did formally desiring easier work and
more wages, particularly as individual and social expenses have now naturally
been greatly increased. … Second, [it is] the bad treatment by Company
officials of the Persian workmen. It is true that the workmen are not edu-
cated, but still they have human sense and natural intelligence and they
notice that the Company favours the Indian and the Iraqis and treats them
better. … We can assure the Company’ authorities that should they change
their treatment of the Persians and treat them as to the Indian and Iraqis and
rank them on the same level of pay, then the Persian element would never
create trouble, and as they pay no attention to the Bolshevik propaganda.82

The issue of inequality between Indians and Persian workers was raised
many times from the early years of APOC operation onward. In the
petitions sent by Persian workers to the national parliament, or to local or
national authorities, there are often references to the discriminatory policies
adopted by APOC, segregating Indian and Persian employees with regard
to wages, housing, provision of drinking water, sanitation, medical care,
and leisure.83

Why should be there differences between Indians and Persians, while they are
both workers? The Indian hospital located in the neighbourhood called
company is well equipped, while the Persian hospital in the dirty and
malodorous neighbourhood of Sheikh is nothing [and] lacks all essential
equipment.84
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 213

After Reza Khan (later Reza Shah) rose to power in the 1920s, his new
government promoted territorial-state nationalism, to glorify the authori-
tarian modernization program and the new state-building project.
According to APOC authorities, when Reza Khan visited the oil industry in
southern Persia in 1924 as Prime Minister, he was deeply disappointed
when “he did not see a single Persian employed in the Abadan Refinery.”85
The Iranization of labor in the oil industry was juxtaposed with Iranian
endeavors to build a centralized modern state after the First World War.86
After a brief military operation led by Reza Khan (both Prime Minister and
Commander-in-Chief) in 1924–1925, the central government ended the
era of local autonomy for Sheikh Khaza‘al in Khuzestan. The Sheikh was
known as a long-standing British protégé in the Persian Gulf. His arrest
and move to Tehran reinforced Iranian territorial nationalism and helped
to clear the way for Reza Khan to be crowned as Reza Shah Pahlavi,
founder of the Pahlavi royal dynasty.
One of the major effects of state-sponsored Iranian nationalism on the
oil industry was that pressure was put on the APOC to improve working
and living conditions in the oil industry, and accelerate the process of
Iranization by training up indigenous workers and replacing Indians by
Iranians. On a second visit to Khuzestan in 1928, Reza Shah declined to
visit the oil installation, despite APOC’s welcome. According to Shafaq-e
Sorkh, a national newspaper, it was “popular dislike” that induced the King
not to visit:

The Company does not deal fairly with people and only has its own interests
in mind. The Company’s officials do not see themselves as mere represen-
tatives of a commercial enterprise, they prefer to meddle in all affairs and they
even have a political office. … That acts as the embassy of a powerful nation
in a weak country. … Generally speaking, the attitude of the Company before
the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty was akin to the East India
Company’s stance in the India of two centuries earlier. It is for this reason
and for hundreds of other minor issues that the people here [in Khuzestan]
do not like the Company. Consequently, the public opinion was not in
favour of seeing their King as a guest of the Company.87

The prevalence of such bitter anticolonial sentiment among Iranian workers

vis-à-vis APOC translated into a more confrontational stance toward Indian
employees. In response, Indian employees tried to secure better protection
from APOC, disassociated more from the local community, and in fact
214 T. ATABAKI

began to identify themselves more with the European staff in the oil industry
than with the Persian community. For example, when on March 11, 1928
rumors spread about APOC’s intention to “fire 10,000 Iranians, while
thousands of Indian and Iraqis are still working for the Oil Company,” the
Indian working community in Abadan was harassed. The following day, a
crowd of Iranian workers “congregated in front of the Company’s Labor
Office in Abadan and stoned the Office.”88
However, the most explicit example of the prevailing nationalist senti-
ments was during the course of 1929 strike. As mentioned earlier, one of
the demands of the strikers was total equality between Indian and Persian
employees. In the capital Tehran, the press supported the strike. APOC
was accused of practicing racial discrimination, and there were complaints
that its Indian employees ruled over Iranians. In a nocturnal handout
(shabnameh) distributed during this period addressing “Our Crowned
father, Government and Court Officials,” the Iranian worker was described
as the “glorious and noble son of Darius,” who had to “suffer under the
tutelage of the British and particularly their Indian clerks and middlemen,
sacrificing everything for the interest of the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company.”89 Such propaganda literature, according to James Bamberg,
was “prominent, a ritual prophylactic incantation against malign foreign
influence.”90
The new Agreement of 1933 between the Iranian government and
APOC, which annulled the D’Arcy concession of 1901, emphasized the
earlier demand that APOC should recruit its artisans, technicians, and
commercial staff among Persians. In the opinion of the Persian press,
canceling the D’Arcy concession was an act of “political emancipation” and
a “new page to Persian honour”—not only did it return the “national
wealth” to the country, but also ended a lengthy era of “favouritism
towards Indian employees.”91
The Second World War reached Iran in August 1941. On August 25,
1941, the British and Soviet Forces simultaneously launched their military
offense against Iran. British troops comprising a large number of Indian
combatants invaded Khuzestan and Soviet Forces occupied the Iranian
Northern provinces from Azerbaijan to Khorasan. During the British and
Soviet military presence in Iran, every effort was made by the Allied Forces
to avoid any disruption in the Allied support for the Soviet fronts. During
the war, some two thirds of Iran’s economy in one way or another were
associated with Allied activities in the country and any possible disruption
of this association could be considered an act of sabotage.92 The oil and its
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 215

supply to the Soviet Union was a hallowed sector where the labor agitation
was strictly prohibited. Abstaining from open agitation among the labor of
the oil and the transport industries, chiefly rail workers during the war, the
labor unions decided to commence activities in the central provinces of the
country, by organizing large sectors of the workers in and launching strikes
and street protests for better working and living conditions. However, it
was only by the end of the war and after the departure of the British troops
from the Iranian soil on March 10, 1946, when the labor movement in the
oil industry decanted their covertly organized army to the street of the
major oil cities in south. Celebrating the Labor Day of May 1946 with a
series of lively and vibrant processions was, indeed, the result of the labor
union 5 years rigorous clandestine activities.
During the British Forces occupation of Khuzestan, the Indian com-
munity in the southern province was comprised of the first cluster of the
migrant workers, a total of 1000 workers and clerks, a cluster of newly
(1942–1946) recruited of 2500 workers and some large but unknown
number of Indian combating forces of the British Army. The British
Command in Khuzestan stationed these Indian combating forces to guard
the oil installation and custody the security of major oil cities. This situation
in due course soured relation between Iranian and Indian community. In
one 1942 episode, known as the Bahmanshir incident, three Indian soldiers
refused to pay a prostitute after enjoying her “service” in the Abadan
Bazaar; another six Indian employees of the oil company engaged in a
“bout of araq-drinking” and abused a local boy and women passing by.
These events triggered major ethnic tension in the city, and ended in
bloody clashes between Indians and Iranians communities, with casualties
and large losses of property.93
Events such as the Bahmanshir incident were irrefutably colored by
sectarian features, and had ethnic and cultural dimensions; however, there
were other dimensions in the Indian labors community, and not the cluster
of Indian soldiers at the service of British Army, interaction with the
Iranian workers. A vibrant example of such class interaction occurred
during the 1946 strike in the Iranian oil industry. The strike broke out
among the workers in the Abadan Oil Refinery in the early hours of a
summer day, July 14, 1946. Within hours, it spread throughout the
Province of Khuzestan, engulfing the oil industry as a whole. During the
60 h, it was held; the general strike mobilized some 70,000 Iranian and
Indian manual and clerical workers and broke, by a considerable margin,
the record of any labor walkout convened hitherto in Iranian history.
216 T. ATABAKI

However, with some fourthly seven deaths and hundred seventy casualties,
it was recorded as the bloodiest labor protest in Middle East labor
history.94
Revisiting the chronology and outcome of the strike exposes that from
the early days, following the British Forces evacuation from Khuzestan, the
Indian workers joined the labor protest both in the oilfields as well as the
refinery; however, what became alarming for the oil company was the
solidarity some of the Indian workers proudly displayed with one of the
labor unions, the Central Council of Federated Trade Union (CCFTU)
which was associated with the communist leaning, the Tudeh Party of Iran.
During the May Day demonstration of 1946, some 80,000 demonstrators,
including Indian workers, rallied through the old town of Abadan. The
March exuded a carnivalesque atmosphere as national anthems blared and
workers chanted slogans in Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Armenian, and Assyrian.
Later, according to a report signed by the Consul for Indian Affairs at the
British Embassy in Tehran, one of the Indian workers by the name of
Mohamad Ahmad Farooqi, with a “very pronounced communistic ten-
dencies, managed to secure the leadership of the Indian artisans, who
number about 1400–1500 and appealed [to] Tudeh [Party] leaders to help
the Indians.” The report continues by arguing that “this contact between
the Indian community and the Tudeh and Mohammad Ahmad Farooqi’s
leadership was the beginning of the trouble amongst the Indian
workers.”95
On July 5, about 1000 Indian workers marched to the British Consul in
Khoramshahr, sitting in front of the Consulate, demanding to meet the
British Consul in order to convey their grievances. In their meeting with
the Consul, the Indian workers confirmed that they have come from all
over the province. During the meeting, a number of their leaders such as
Kabul Singh and Shamsher Khan called for the removal of the Indian
Assistant Labor Officer, Asghar Ali, Welfare Officer, Alaf Shah, and his
Quarter Master, Mohamad Ismail. On the following day, the protestors
stated their grievances in a petition signed by 1135 Indian workers and
delivered it to the British Consulate through a committee of 17 men. The
grievances included the zealous exercise of power by the Labor Officer
laying off workers without providing compensation to workers for their
return travel costs, which according to the company’s own rules had to
cover their return to Bombay. Additional complaints against the Welfare
Officer included poor accommodation or lack of sports facilities.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 217

The petitioners demanded the immediate removal of both the Assistant

Labor as well as the Welfare Officers.
In a meeting that the Labor Officer had with the British Counsel, he
rejected the complaints of the protesters and accused the petitioners of
committing subversive activities. According to an intelligence report
compiled by the British Consul in Khoramshahr, the Labor Officer dis-
closed the emergent solidarity between the Indian and Iranian workers
during the past years. According to the Labor Officers’ account, “the
Indian artisans came in contact with some prominent members of the
CCFTU, specially Husain Muradi, Jahangir, Safa, and Torabi, when they
visited the artisans club frequently and addressed the Indian artisans several
times in their club. On one occasion, he [Asghar Ali] was also present, and
Torabi, a prominent Iranian CCFTU labor activist, told the artisans in a
forceful speech that the Tudeh is willing to help the Indians who were their
brothers, and that they must unite and should get rid of their Labor and
Welfare Officers and that these officers should be selected from amongst
the members of the labor class.”96
In the early June 1946, the empathetic reciprocity of Indian workers
with their Iranian counterparts had reached such levels that on one occa-
sion on 16 June when the CCFTU was holding one of its sequential
meetings in South Ahmadabad district of Abadan, a group of 200 Indian
workers marched from their quarters and attended the meeting, shouting
pro-CCFTU slogans.97 By this time, there were 700 Indian workers who
had joined the CCFTU.98 Together with the Deputy General Manager of
the Oil Company, the Consul for Indian Affairs at the British Embassy in
Tehran compiled a list of 41 Indian labor activists and “revolutionary
speakers,” 10 with communist leanings. All of the workers named in this
list were nominally Muslim, except for two Sikhs.
There are no records of casualties of Indian worker during the bloody
strike of July 1946. However, we know that, in the following months and
years, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company along with conducting other anti-
labor coercive policies steadily reduced the number of Indian workers in
the oil industry. The 5 years following the July strike of 1946 coincides
with termination of the British Raj and independence of India in August
1947 and the movement for nationalization of the Iranian oil industry
which finally was celebrated in March 1951. The nationalization of Iranian
oil industry was not solely the result of tenacious performance of some
political elite, as has been largely noted in the historiography of
218 T. ATABAKI

nationalization of Iranian oil, but, also and equally the outcome of

enduring pressure from below, chiefly by oil workers.99 On March 20,
1951, the Iranian both parliaments ratified the bill nationalizing the Iranian
oil industry, and 6 months later, on October 4, 1951, all European and
majority of Indian employees of the AIOC left Abadan.100
Some Indian employees of the AIOC petitioned the Iranian parliament
with a request to stay. The parliament responded favorably to the
appeal.101 Although the exact number of Indian workers who remained in
Iran is unknown, there must have been quite a few. Even today, senior
Abadanis can recall the presence of Indians workers community in everyday
life within the city.

CONCLUSION
Following the discovery of oil in southern Persia in the early twentieth
century, a massive recruitment campaign was launched for employing
Indian skilled and semiskilled workers for the newborn Persian oil industry.
These newcomers were engine drivers, marine signalmen, boilermakers,
pipe fitters, butlers, cooks, and dhobis. They constituted a new army of
labor on the March, bringing technical knowledge and industrial skills to
Persia. In the new networks of human interaction, foreign workers grad-
ually replaced foreign soldiers. Both Indian soldiers and Indian civilians fell
under the discipline of colonial rule and were subjected to its priorities. The
new international networks, which were established, proved to be essential
and extremely lucrative for the emerging oil capitalism. Yet, they had also a
subversive dimension, once they associated with new political ideas from
elsewhere and were globally linked to experiences of labor activism in other
places. Indian migrant workers not only played an important role in the
founding, development, and eventual consolidation of the Persian/Iranian
oil industry, they also contributed to the formation of a labor movement in
Iran.

NOTES
1. Kenneth L. Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants: A History to the End of
Indenture in 1920 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962); Hugh
Tinker, New System of Slavery 1830–1929 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1974); Brij V. Lal, Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians
(Journal of Pacific History: 1983); P.C. Emmer, ed., Colonialism and
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 219

Migration: Indentured Labor before and after Slavery (Dordrecht: M.

Nijhoff, 1986); Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in
Mauritius, 1834–1874 (London: Oxford University Press, 1995); and
Prabhu Mohapatra, “Following Custom? Representations of Community
among Indian Immigrant Labor in the West Indies, 1880–1920,” in
India’s Laboring Poor: Historical Studies, c.1600–c.2000, ed. Behal P. Rana
and Marcel van der Linden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 173–202.
2. Radhika Singha, “Finding Labor from India for the War in Iraq: The Jail
Porter and Labor Corps, 1916–1920,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 49, no. 2 (2007): 412–445; Stefan Tetzlaff, “The Turn of the Gulf
Tide: Empire, Nationalism, and South Asian Labor Migration to Iraq, c.
1900–1935,” International Labor and Working-Class History no.
79 (2011): 7–27; and I.J. Seccombe and R.I. Lawless, “Foreign Worker
Dependence in the Gulf, and the International Oil Companies: 1910–
1950,” International Migration Review 20, no. 3 (1986): 548–574.
3. Arnold T. Wilson, S.W. Persia. Letters and Diary of a Young Political
Officer. 1907–1914 (London: Readers Union, 1942), 22.
4. The name of the company changed from “Anglo Persian Oil Company” to
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company” after the government in Tehran decided on
21 March 1935 to change the name of the country from Persia to Iran.
5. J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near East and Middle East: A
Documentary Record, vol. 1 (New York: D. van Nostrand and Company,
1956), 251.
6. For a detailed study of early labor recruitment in the oil industry, see:
Touraj Atabaki, “From ‘Amaleh (Labor) to Kargar (Worker): Recruitment,
Work Discipline and Making of the Working Class in the Persian/Iranian
Oil Industry,” International Labor and Working-Class History 84 (2013):
159–175.
7. Archive of Anglo-Persian Oil Company (British Petroleum Archive), ARC
176326, George Thomson, “Abadan in Its Early Days,” Naft 7,
no. 4 (1931): 15.
8. I.J. Seccombe and R.I. Lawless, “Foreign Worker Dependence in the Gulf,
and the International Oil Companies: 1910–1950,” International
Migration Review 20, no. 3 (1986): 549.
9. J.B. Backhouse, “Oil-1904-1928,” in A History of Shaw Wallace & Co.
and Shaw Wallace & Co. Ltd, ed. Harry Townsend (Calcutta, 1965), 46.
10. R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 1, the Developing
Years 1901–1932 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 12; J.H.
Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 2, the Anglo-Iranian
Years, 1928–1954 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11.
220 T. ATABAKI

11. Willem van Schendel, “Spatial Moments: Chittagong in Four Scenes,” in

Asia Inside Out: Connected Places, ed. Helen Siu and Eric Tagliacozzo
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). I am grateful to
Willem van Schendel for providing me with valuable information on the
categorization of the Chittagonian workforce.
12. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 68877.
13. Ibid.
14. During the war period, the average salary of Indian workers was between
80 and 100 rupees per month. In the same period, the salary of Iranian
workers was on average about one third of the salary of Indian workers.
Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia,
2002), 274–304.
17. Marian (Kent) Jack, “The Purchase of the British Government’s Shares in
the British Petroleum Company 1912–1914,” Past and Present
no. 39 (1968): 139–168.
18. Agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Limited: Navy.
Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty. London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1914, Cd. 7419.
19. Indian Emigrations Act of 1883. In: Royal Commission on Labor. Foreign
Reports. Vol. II. The Colonies and the Indian Empire. House of
Commons Parliamentary Papers, C. 6795-XI, 1892, 234. Stefan Tetzlaff,
Entangled Boundaries: British India and the Persian Gulf Region During
the Transition from Empires to Nation States, c. 1880–1935, Magisterarbeit
(Berlin, 2009), 30.
20. National Archive of India, ARC. 332-12. 1915. Stefan Tetzlaff, Entangled
Boundaries: British India and the Persian Gulf Region during the
Transition from Empires to Nation States, c. 1880–1935, Magisterarbeit
(Berlin, 2009), 68–70.
21. Ibid.
22. For the Anglo-Russian 1907 Convention see: Firouz Kazemzadeh, Russia
and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1968), chap. 7; For a detailed study of this convention, and the reaction of
the Iranians, see: Mahmoud Mahmoud, Traikh Ravabet-e Siyasi Iran va
Engelis dar Qarn Nouzdahom Miladi, vol. 8 (Tehran: Eqbal, 1954), 2228–
2266.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Stefan Tetzlaff, op. cit., 72.
26. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 71754; Works Manager, Abadan to
Strick, Scott & Co., May 12, 1916.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 221

27. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 176338; George Thomson, “Abadan

During the World War,” Naft 8, no. 5 (September 1932), 9.
28. For an eyewitness account of the famine and epidemic spreading over Iran
during the First World war see: Movarrekh al-Dowleh Sepehr, Iran dar
Jang-e Bozorg 1914–1918 (Tehran: Adib, 1957).
29. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 68779, Strick, Scott & Co. to Wilson, 7
October 1916.
30. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 176338, George Thomson, “Abadan
During the World War,” Naft 8, no. 5 (September 1932), 9.
31. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 68799, Strick, Scott & Co. to Civil
Commissioner, Basra, 24 Oct 1917.
32. Radhika Singha, “The Great War and a ‘Proper’ Passport for the Colony:
Border-Crossing in British India, c. 1882–1922,” The Indian Economic
and Social History Review 50, no. 3 (2013): 311.
33. Michael Edward Dobe, A Long Slow Tutelage in Western Ways of Work:
Industrial Education and the Containment of Nationalism in Anglo-
Iranian and ARAMCO, 1923–1963 (Ph.D. thesis, Graduate School-New
Brunswick, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 2008), 62;
Rasmus Christian Elling, “On Lines and Fences: Labor, Community and
Violence in an Oil City,” in Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing
Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State, ed. Ulrike
Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Cludia Ghrawi, and Nora Lafi (New York, 2015),
197–221; and Henry Longhurst, Adventure in Oil (London, 1959), 72–
73.
34. National Archive of Iran, File no. 240017531, 17 December 1927.
35. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 54506. Letter Book ARC. 9, H.E.
Nichols to R.I. Watson, May 9, 1921.
36. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 54499. Letter nos. 209–210, H.E.
Nicolas to Shaw Wallace & Co., December 3, 1925.
37. J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near East and Middle East: A
Documentary Record (New Haven: Literary Licensing, 1975), 249.
38. National Library and Archive of Iran, ARC 240014788, Sadiq al-Saltaneh
to the Persian Charge d’Affaire in London, December 11, 1910.
39. National Library and Archive of Iran, ARC 297/34982, Ministry of
Finance to the Ministry Endowment and Education 9 August 1927.
40. Michael Edward Dobe, A Long Slow Tutelage in Western Ways of Work:
Industrial Education and the Containment of Nationalism in Anglo-
Iranian and ARAMCO, 1923–1963 (Ph.D. thesis, Graduate School-New
Brunswick, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 2008), 52; J.W.
Williamson, In a Persian Oil Field. A Study in Scientific and Industrial
Development (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), 156. For more on the
Iranization of labor in APOC see: Stefan Tetzlaff, Entangled Boundaries:
222 T. ATABAKI

British India and the Persian Gulf Region During the Transition from
Empires to Nation States, c. 1880–1935, Magisterarbeit (Berlin, 2009), 75–
87.
41. British Petroleum Archive, ARC133277, January 1938. Laurence
Lockhart, Unpublished Record of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,
Relations Between Persian (Iranian) Government 1918–1946.
42. Ibid., 77–78.
43. Ibid., 81.
44. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 72614, December 4, 1932.
45. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 54374, ARC 54375.
46. Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat, Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981), 374. For more study on colonial urban
development see: Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development:
Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 2010);
Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of
Bombay City, 1845–1875 (London: Oxford University Press, 1991).
47. Nezar AlSayyad and Mrinalini Rajagopalan, “Colonial City,” in
Encyclopaedia of Urban Studies, ed. Ray Hutchison (Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publications, 2010), 166–171. See also: Eva T. van Kempen, “The Dual
City and the Poor: Social Polarisation, Social Segregation and Life
Chances,” Urban Studies 31, no. 7 (1994): 99–105.
48. British National Archive, FO 371/7818.
49. H.A., “Angloprsian Oil Kompany va Joziyat an,” Setareh Sorkh 2, nos. 7–8
(April 1930): 87; Reidar Visser, The Gibraltar That Never Was (www.
historiae.org), 6.
50. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 71879.
51. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 176326, George Thomson, “Abadan in
Its Early Days,” Naft 7, no. 4 (July 1931), 17.
52. Naft, ibid., 16.
53. J.W. Williamson, In a Persian Oil Field. A Study in Scientific and
Industrial Development (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), 14.
54. Abdolali Lahsaiizadeh, Jameh‘shenasi Abadan (Tehran: Kiyan-Mehr,
2005), 289.
55. For the city planning of Abadan, see: Mark Crinson, “Abadan:
Architecture and Planning under the Anglo-Persian Oil Company,”
Planning Perspectives 12, no. 3 (1997): 341–360. See also: Kaveh Ehsani,
“Social Engineering and the Contradiction of Modernization in
Khuzestan’s Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed Soleyman,”
International Review of Social History 48, no. 3 (2003): 361–390.
56. APOC Magazine, 4, no. 2 (1928).
57. Reidar Visser, The Gibraltar That Never Was (www.historiae.org), 9.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 223

58. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 71183. “Item 21; Social Activities,”
March 18, 1926; “Item 5; Conference at Fields Manager’s Office,” April 2,
1926; “Dossier 12; Social Services Department-Fields,” April 2, 1926.
Also: Naft 2, no. 3 (1926). British Petroleum Archive, ARC 71183, 1926.
59. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 68723, M.Y. Young to Strick & Co.,
March 3, 1921.
60. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 71183, “Social Services Department
Fields,” April 2, 1926. Michael Edward Dobe, A Long Slow Tutelage in
Western Ways of Work: Industrial Education and the Containment of
Nationalism in Anglo-Iranian and ARAMCO, 1923–1963 (Ph.D. thesis,
Graduate School-New Brunswick, Rutgers, the State University of New
Jersey, 2008), 45.
61. See Fredrick Cooper, “The Dialectics of Decolonization: Nationalism and
Labor Movements in Postwar Africa,” CSST Working Paper 884, May
1992, http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/51246/
480.pdf?sequence=1.
62. Touraj Atabaki, “Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subalterns on the Margin of
the Tsarist Empire,” in The State and the Subaltern. Society and Politics in
Turkey and Iran, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 31–52.
63. Touraj Atabaki, “From ‘Amaleh’ (Labor) to ‘Kargar’ (Worker):
Recruitment, Work Discipline and the Making of the Working Class in the
Persian/Iranian Oil Industry,” International Labor and Working Class
History, no. 84 (2013): 159–175.
64. Willem M. Floor, Labor Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941
(Durham: University of Durham, 1985), 28.
65. R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 1, The Developing
Years 1901–1932 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 432.
66. For example see: Willem M. Floor, Labor Unions, Law and Conditions in
Iran, 1900–1941 (Durham: University of Durham, 1985), 28.
67. National Archive of Iran, File no. 240025870.
68. R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 1, The Developing
Years 1901–1932 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 432.
69. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 176338, George Thomson, “Abadan
during the World War,” Naft 8, no. 5 (1932): 10.
70. Dr. Ghore, “Indian Workers in Persia. Miserable Condition,” Bombay
Chronicle January 10, 1922. British National Archive, F.O. 371/781.
C. Chaqueri, ed., The Condition of the Working Class in Iran (Florence:
European Committee for the Defence of Democratic Rights of Workers
in Iran, 1978), 196–198, 218; Willem M. Floor, Labor Unions, Law
and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941 (Durham: University of Durham,
1985), 29.
224 T. ATABAKI

71. Bombay Chronicle, January 10, 1922.

72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. British National Archive, FO 371/7819.
75. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 176338, George Thomson, “Abadan
during the World War,” Naft 8, no. 5 (1932): 10.
76. British National Archive, FO 371/7836. R.W. Ferrier, The History of the
British Petroleum, Vol. 1, The Developing Years 1901–1932 (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), 433.
77. Willem M. Floor, Labor Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941
(Durham: University of Durham, 1985), 32.
78. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 54499, November 5, 1925.
79. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 59010. Abadan to London, Telegram
May 6, 1929. Ardeshir Avanesian, Safahati chand az Jonbesh Karigari va
Komonisti da Dowran Avval Saltanat Reza Shah (1922–1933), op. cit.,
75–83. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, 68–69. For a detailed study of labor
activities aiming to reduce the working day in Iran, see Touraj Atabaki,
“The Comintern, the Soviet Union and Labor Militancy in Interwar Iran,”
in Iranian-Russian Encounters. Empires and Revolutions since 1800, ed.
Stephanie Cronin (London: Routledge, 2014). For recent studies of the
workers’ strike in the oil industry in 1929, see: Kaveh Bayat, “With or
Without Workers in Reza Shah’s Iran,” in The State and the Subaltern.
Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran, ed. Touraj
Atabaki (London & New York: IB Tauris, 2007), 111–122; Stephanie
Cronin, “Popular Politics and the Birth of Iranian Working Class: The
1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike,” Middle Eastern Studies no. 5 (2010):
699–732.
80. Archive of the Islamic Republic of Iran President Office, no. 117. Report
by the Head of Khoramshahr Office of Post and Telegraph on Abadan
strike (May 6, 1929), Naft dar doreh Reza Shah (Tehran: Vezarat Farhang
va Ershad Eslami, 1999), 101–102.
81. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 59010. Abadan to London, Telegram of
May 6, 1929.
82. Habl al Matin no. 21 (June 4, 1929). British Petroleum Archive, ARC
59010.
83. Archive of the National Parliament of Iran, Fifth Session, Ref.
5/146/35/13, the Petition Commission, 1924, 1–4.
84. Ibid., 6.
85. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 54499, October 8, 1925.
86. For the emergence of the political community in Iran during the First
World War, see: Touraj Atabaki, Iran and the First World War. Battle of
the Great Powers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 1–7.
 INDIAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE IRANIAN … 225

87. Shafaq-e Sorkh, 12 Azar 1307 (December 3, 1929). Quoted in Kaveh

Bayat, “With or Without Workers in Reza Shah’s Iran: Abadan May
1929,” in The State and the Subaltern: Society and Politics in Turkey and
Iran, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 116.
88. Archive of the Islamic Republic of Iran President Office, No. 930, Letter
from the Consulate of the Imperial Iran in Basreh to Tehran, March 11,
1928. Naft dar doreh Reza Shah (Tehran: Vezarat Farhang va Ershad
Eslami, 1999), 35–38.
89. British Petroleum Archive, ARC 59010, Labor Affairs, June 15, 1929.
90. J.H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum, Vol. 2, The Anglo-
Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (London: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 78.
91. Ibid., 34.
92. Abdolsamad Kambakhsh, “Tashkil Hezb Tudeh Iran [History of Tudeh
Party of Iran],” Donya 2–3 (1966), 30–31.
93. For a detailed study of this incident, see: Rasmus Christian Elling, “On
Lines and Fences: Labor, Community and Violence in an Oil City,” in
Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition
from Empire to Nation State, ed. Ulrike Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Cludia
Ghrawi, and Nora Lafi (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 197–221.
94. For an inclusive study of the 1946 strike in the Iranian oil industry see:
Touraj Atabaki, “Chronicle of a Calamitous Strike Foretold: Abadan, July
1946,” in On the Road to Global Labour History, ed. Karl Heinz Roth
(Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2017), 93–128.
95. Indian Office, L/PS/12/3490A. British Consulate, Khoramshahr, June
26, 1946. Farooqi’s earlier career was in the British Air Force where he was
dismissed due to his communist proclivities. On the termination of
Farooqi’s employment by the AIOC, from the two proposed options of
transferring him to Baghdad and then dismissing him there or asking the
Governor of Abadan to issue an order for his internment, the Oil Company
opted for the latter option.
96. Indian Office, L/PS/12/3490A. Additional Consul for Indian Affairs,
British Embassy Tehran, July 17, 1946.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. Some example of historiography of nationalization of the oil to be added.
100. Norman Kemp, Abadan. A First-hand Account of the Persian Oil Crisis
(London: Allan Wingate, 1953), 239.
101. Iranian Parliament Archive, Parliamentary session 164, July 5, 1951.
226 T. ATABAKI

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Stefan Tetzlaff, Robabeh Motaghedi,

and Radhika Singha who shared their thoughts and sources with me.
Through interviews, Nasim Khaksar, Mansour Khaksar, Homayoun
Mehrani and Yaddulah Basht Bavi helped me to imagine the old Abadan.
I am very much indebted to them for their support. Finally, I would like to
thank my friends in India, Reza Masoom, Kathinka Sinha Kerkhoff for their
valued assistance.
 Cat Crackers and Picket Lines:
Organized Labor in US Gulf Coast Oil
Refining

Tyler Priest

INTRODUCTION
“The true majesty of the oil industry is best seen in a modern refinery,”
wrote American oil journalist Harvey O’Connor in 1955. Few monuments
of industrial architecture could compare to a refinery’s giant crude oil
tanks, topping plants, distilling columns, fractionating towers, platformers,
extraction plants, lubricating oil units, and de-waxing facilities. The cen-
terpiece of the modern refinery, however, was that “sublime industrial
cathedral known as a ‘cat cracker’,” where petroleum molecules were
broken down and rearranged to form high-octane motor gasoline and
other fuels. “By night,” mused O’Connor, “with a thousand lights pricking
the darkness along soaring platforms, catwalks, and ladders, the catalytic
cracking unit affords one of the magic sights of twentieth-century
technology.”1

Portions of this essay were published previously in Tyler Priest and Michael Botson,
“Bucking the Odds: Organized Labor in Gulf Coast Oil Refining,” Journal of
American History 9, no. 1 (2012): 100–110; Tyler Priest, “Labor’s Last Stand in the
Refinery: The Shell Oil Strike of 1962–1963,” Houston History 4, no. 2 (2008): 5–13.

T. Priest (&)
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 227

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_9
228 T. PRIEST

Fig. 1 Catalytic Cracking Units, Standard Oil of New Jersey Baytown Refinery,
1946. Credit Standard Oil of New Jersey Collection, Image Number 43680,
Archives and Special Collections, University of Louisville.

As Harvey O’Connor, who was once a publicity director for the Oil
Workers International Union (OWIU), clearly understood, a large modern
refinery was not just an assemblage of tanks, towers, pipes, and valves, but
also a place where, in the United States, more than 2000 workers earned
their living. Although petroleum refining was a relatively capital-intensive
industry, it depended, from inception, on a large and stable workforce—
more than 200,000 people nationwide by 1955, in nearly 300 refineries of
all sizes across 39 states—to keep the units running smoothly, around the
clock. One third of these workers were employed on the Gulf Coast, most
of them in 13 major refineries on the Upper Texas Coast and in Louisiana,
the largest concentration of refineries and chemical plants in the United
States. Shortly after the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop, Texas, the
region’s first large refineries, owned by Gulf Oil and Texaco, sprang up in
nearby Port Arthur and Beaumont. With subsequent discoveries along the
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 229

Gulf Coast, refineries spread southwest to Houston and Corpus Christi,

and east to Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, Louisiana. By
1941, the Gulf Coast accounted for 28% of national refining capacity,
rising to 32% by 1956, and 36% by 1976.2
During the early decades of the century, oil company management
enjoyed unchecked authority over their refineries and the people they
employed. Across the region, they exerted their influence in both subtle
and strong-armed ways, dominating the civic life of refinery communities,
fiercely resisting unionization, and dividing workers against each other,
often along racial lines. Working-class people of all races in the Gulf region
nevertheless coveted refinery jobs, which were equivalent to those in
northern automobile or steel plants. Almost all the higher paying skilled
work was reserved for whites, which along the Upper Gulf Coast included
both Anglos and Cajuns. The jobs paid well, included generous benefits
after the First World War, and offered a means of upward socioeconomic
mobility. Minorities, too, including African-Americans as well as Mexican
nationals and Mexican-Americans,3 found desirable wage-labor work at
refineries, albeit in segregated classifications. Job losses in the oil industry
during the Great Depression, however, forced white and minority workers
alike to organize. The union movement in oil targeted refining, the least
isolated and geographically dispersed sector of the industry.4 As was the
case across the racially segregated, “Jim Crow” South, labor organizing in
refining consisted of a dual struggle, by all workers for dignity, job security,
and workplace control, and by racial minorities for workplace equality.
Explaining the failure of unionization in the US South has long pre-
occupied labor historians, who debate the relative importance of southern
laborers’ cultural opposition to unions, the racism of southern whites, and
management hostility to unions in small-firm industries.5 The pioneering
work of F. Ray Marshall inspired a wealth of scholarship on labor and race
in the South. Unlike Marshall, however, labor historians have paid little
attention to Gulf Coast petroleum refining, which developed into one of
the largest industries in the southern United States.6 By 1945, the
Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) oil workers union, the OWIU,
bucked the odds against organized labor in the South by winning repre-
sentation in nearly all major Gulf Coast refineries. Union organizing in the
South, in other words, was not quite the abject failure southern labor
historians have portrayed it to be.
230 T. PRIEST

Successful labor organizing in the US oil industry was really only pos-
sible in the refining sector. Oil field workers—the drillers, roughnecks,
roustabouts, and pipeliners—were widely scattered across the
oil-producing regions. They also moved from community to community,
from field to field, and from drilling rig to drilling rig, never remaining in
one place long enough, or in large enough numbers, to sustain collective
action against employers. Refineries, on the other hand, were fixed and
permanent installations that brought together large numbers of workers in
one place. They were also the choke point in the flow of oil from wells to
consumers. If workers were to shut down a series of wells or even an entire
field, production would likely be found elsewhere to make up for the
shortfall. Large refineries, by contrast, processed crude oil from many
different fields and regions. The cessation of operations at just one of them
could sharply pinch company profits and disrupt oil markets. By the 1930s,
the Gulf Coast had become the region with the most large refineries,
making them the prime target for union organizing.
Several other factors enabled the CIO oil workers’ union to “challenge
the giants”7 along the Gulf Coast. The legacy of populism in East Texas,
with its distrust of big business, especially Standard Oil, helped override
rural whites’ suspicions of outside unions. The role of “independent”
unions in early refining provided workers with nominal representation and
elevated their expectations. The strategic importance of oil during the First
World War, Second World War, and Korean War, along with persistent
labor shortages as refining expanded, gave the refinery unions’ bargaining
leverage. Federal intervention to protect workers’ collective bargaining
rights during these crises bolstered CIO victories. The unusual autonomy
that the oil workers’ union afforded its local chapters helped them adapt to
changing circumstances. Finally, minority workers provided critical support
in organizing some key plants.
Through a series of strikes during 1945–1955, the OWIU and its
successor, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union, built
on organizing successes to obtain concessions on wages and job security in
most of the major Gulf Coast plants. Although a political backlash against
organized labor in the United States constrained worker power beginning
in the late 1940s, the OWIU-OCAW nevertheless strengthened its hand
within the refineries and won greater say over workplace rules, enforced by
the union’s ability to strike and shut down refineries. Louisiana and East
Texas became the union’s largest district in the nation. Although Gulf
Coast refineries remained segregated and simmered with racial tensions,
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 231

they also had lower racial barriers to employment than in other southern
industries, thanks in part to the union movement. As F. Ray Marshall
observed in 1963, they were the places where “one of the most systematic
efforts has been made to provide better employment opportunities for
Negroes.”8
OCAW was not able to cling to industrial power long. In the 1950s,
management discovered another way to divide and conquer workers, not
so much through the manipulation of racial divisions, but through the
contracting out of jobs and other manpower reductions made possible by
advances in “twentieth-century technology” that so awed Harvey
O’Connor. These developments undermined organized labor’s main
source of workplace control: the strike. OCAW retained a large member-
ship and national clout through the 1970s, but the focus of bargaining
narrowed to compensation and occupational health and safety issues.
Meanwhile, oil companies resolutely affirmed management prerogatives in
the organization of work in refineries, and automation further diminished
the role of workers and thus the negotiating leverage of OCAW. By the
time minorities won something close to equality in the refineries, with
assistance from federal desegregation measures in the 1960s, the refinery
labor market had begun to shrink and union membership had started to
plummet. The transformation of refinery work thus foreshadowed labor
market trends not only in the South but also across the United States.

REFINERY JOBS IN A POOR FARMING REGION, 1910–1935

As Gulf Coast refineries mushroomed during the first two decades of the
century, they attracted migrants from eastern Texas and western Louisiana
into the plants by offering better wages, shorter hours, and more job
security than other industries in the region. Employers paid a premium
wage in order to maintain a stable, nonunion shop, rather than suffer a
shutdown if discontented employees walked off the job. The wage pre-
mium also gave employees the incentive to endure the dangers of refinery
work, where explosions and fires were all-too-common hazards.
It also bought their deference to the rigidly hierarchical organization of
plants. Managers wielded tremendous authority over everything that
happened in a refinery.9 They retained substantial power well into the
mid-twentieth century, even after the rise of organized labor. The chain of
command typically began with the plant manager, ran through an opera-
tions superintendent directly under him, and on down to assistant
232 T. PRIEST

superintendents and managers of the various refinery departments. The

lower an individual was on the organizational chart, the less authority he
had to make decisions and the fewer duties he had to perform. Plant
managers maintained control by virtue of these narrowly defined positions
and tasks, but they also reserved the right to alter job duties at any time,
not to mention hire and fire at will. They treated refinery work as a priv-
ilege, not a right.
Refineries were also racially segregated. Most Gulf Coast refinery
workers were Anglos and people of European descent from East Texas or
Cajuns from Southwest Louisiana who worked in two basic job categories:
(1) process or production operations, running various kinds of equipment;
or (2) mechanical operations or maintenance, as carpenters, welders,
electricians, boilermakers, machinists, pipefitters, etc. The third and lowest-
paid category of jobs, “laborers,” chiefly employed African-Americans, and
later ethnic Mexicans, at menial tasks with no opportunities for advance-
ment. Rather than setting formal rules that segregated the workforce,
refineries followed the example set by the local construction industry,
creating an informal “two-pool” system that channeled racial minorities
into labor gangs, while reserving skilled operating and maintenance work
for whites. Refineries typically had separate and inferior wage schedules for
“Colored” or “Colored and Mexican” workers, as well as segregated
facilities.10 Some plants, like Shell Oil’s Deer Park in Houston, hired whites
with a high school education and African-Americans without a high school
education, and then followed a policy of promoting only high school
graduates to skilled jobs. For minorities faced with limited options in a
declining sharecropper system, a job in the refinery gang nonetheless
offered the best wage around.11
During the production boom of the First World War, refinery workers,
assisted by federal mediators, asserted claims to even better compensation
and a voice in the organization of work. A wave of wildcat strikes for higher
wages, an 8-hour work day, and job security in the oil fields of California,
Texas, and Louisiana, and at four of the nation’s major refineries—Standard
Oil of New Jersey’s Bayonne, New Jersey plant in 1915; Gulf Oil’s Port
Arthur, Texas refinery in 1916; Magnolia Oil’s Beaumont, Texas plant in
1919; and Jersey Standard’s Baton Rouge, Louisiana plant in 1920—re-
sulted in the introduction of “non-union employee representation plans”
(NERPs).12 These were designed not only to accommodate workers’
demands, but also to fend off outside unions, such as the American
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 233

Federation of Labor’s (AFL) International Association of Oil Field, Gas Well,

and Refinery Workers of America (IAOFGW & RWA), chartered in 1918.13
Suspicions of Standard Oil ran deep in the former Populist stronghold of
East Texas, generating sympathy for oil strikers. In 1919, when Jersey
Standard bought a controlling interest in the Texas firm, Humble Oil and
Refining Company, and built a giant refinery at Baytown, east of Houston,
the company aimed to mollify these suspicions with the most compre-
hensive NERP in the industry. Modeled on the “Industrial Representation
Plan” instituted at John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel & Iron Company
after the notorious 1914 massacre of workers at the Ludlow, Colorado coal
mine, Humble’s plan provided contractual language on work rules, wages,
and working conditions (e.g., safety devices and protocols), along with
workers’ election of their own representatives to a joint labor-management
conference, where grievances could be settled.14 Refinery owners also
introduced “welfare capitalist” programs, including pensions, paid vaca-
tions, death and injury benefits, and low-cost housing.15
Management’s assertion of paternalistic authority in Gulf Coast petro-
leum refining brought concrete benefits to white workers. During the
1920s, refinery wages did decline in relation to some other Gulf Coast
occupations, but nonwage benefits extended by NERPs, which were
available only in the large refineries and only to white workers, helped to
produce an unprecedented improvement in those workers’ standard of
living. NERPs also gave white workers a voice, however small, in the
organization of refinery workplaces, fostering a conviction that a steady job
with good wages and benefits was a right to be defended.16

THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM, 1935–1945

As was the case in so many manufacturing industries, the labor bargain
broke down in the Great Depression of the early 1930s, when thousands of
refinery workers were fired or suffered reduced wages and benefits. The loss
of job security stoked festering grievances against management and created
an opening for outside union organizing in Gulf Coast refineries.17
The passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933
inspired organizing campaigns for company representation by national
unions such as the IAOFGW & RWA. The union won a critical victory in
1934 when it signed a national agreement with Sinclair Oil, covering all the
company’s field production, pipeline, and refinery operations. The agree-
ment had glaring weaknesses, but it provided the membership base for
234 T. PRIEST

organizing other refineries on the Gulf Coast. The early efforts to expand
beyond Sinclair, however, were stymied by competition from AFL craft
unions, labor-management councils such as Humble Oil’s Baytown NERP,
and the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the NIRA. After the National
Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) of 1935 finally gave federal recognition
to the rights of workers to bargain collectively, the IAOFGW & RWA was
emboldened to leave the AFL for the insurgent CIO, which sought to
organize workers in mass production industries under one big union, as
opposed to the craft distinctions that characterized the unionism of the
AFL. The CIO believed that dividing workers by craft into separate
organizations within a single plant weakened the bargaining power of all
workers and left the majority, who had few craft skills, unrepresented. Two
years later, the CIO’s IAOFGW & RWA simplified its name, mercifully, to
the Oil Workers’ International Union (OWIU).18
Refinery managers resisted the OWIU with the full range of tactics used
by employers all over the country—threats, spies, red smears, police dep-
utations of nonunion employees, and racist jeremiads.19 After the Supreme
Court upheld the Wagner Act in the spring of 1937, oil companies recast
their management-dominated labor organizations as so-called “indepen-
dent unions,” usually with separate African-American auxiliaries. The
Baytown Joint Conference became the Baytown Employees Federation,
and the Industrial Relations Plan at Jersey Standard’s Baton Rouge plant,
the largest on the Gulf Coast at the time, morphed into the Independent
Industrial Workers Association (IIWA). Combined with the internal
weakness of the OWIU, these tactics kept the CIO at bay along the Gulf
Coast for several years. By the beginning of the Second World War, the
AFL and CIO unions together had organized only 3,000 employees in six
refineries nationwide, whereas independent unions represented 34,100
workers in 53 refineries.20
“Independent” was a euphemism for management control. Managers at
Baytown, for example, orchestrated the election of the Employees
Federation as the workers’ bargaining agent in 1937. A subsequent
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing collected testimony that
the balloting had been conducted without secrecy and that supervisors had
coerced employees to vote in favor of the Federation. A white supervisor
reportedly ordered Mexican and African-American employees to the poll-
ing station to cast their votes for the Federation. In 1939, the NLRB
upheld the CIO’s challenge to the election results, concluding that man-
agement not only had organized and dominated the Employees
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 235

Federation, but that it had also intimidated and discharged CIO members
and sympathizers, all violations of the Wagner Act. As a result, the NLRB
ordered the Federation to be dissolved. Upon appeal in 1940, however, the
Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans, populated by business-friendly con-
servatives, overturned the ruling, finding that the Employees Federation
qualified as a legal labor union.21
During the war, the national interest in defense production gave greater
urgency and legitimacy to federal intervention in labor relations. This was
true for unions in many manufacturing industries, but above all, in
southern ones. The NLRB opened plants to fair elections, curbed
union-busting tactics, and forced reforms to company-dominated unions.
Beginning in 1942, the War Labor Board (WLB) tied defense contracts to
union elections. In return for unions’ pledge not to strike, the WLB also
authorized “maintenance of membership” provisions in union contracts,
which required employees to remain members of the union until a col-
lective bargaining agreement expired. The NLRB and WLB thus helped
fuel the OWIU’s growth from 27,000 members in 1939 to 65,000
members in 1945.22
A large part of that growth took place along the Gulf Coast. Many
Louisiana refineries and Humble’s Baytown elected AFL or independent
unions, but the OWIU became the dominant labor organization in the
Upper Texas Gulf Coast refineries. By the end of the war, the OWIU had
12,000 members in Jefferson County, Texas (home to Port Arthur and
Beaumont) alone, the largest concentration of OWIU workers in the
nation.23 One reason for the OWIU’s growth was the union’s newfound
internal stability and resolve, backed by the CIO’s Oil Workers Organizing
Campaign (OWOC), established in 1941. A year earlier, at its national
convention in Fort Worth, Texas, the union elected a new generation of
officers, led by president O. A. “Jack” Knight, who had been an effective
organizer in California and who would remain president for the next
25 years. The convention also revised its constitution to enhance the
decision-making autonomy of locals, establishing the OWIU as one of the
most democratically organized CIO unions. Although local autonomy
hampered efforts to launch national campaigns against an oil company or
group of companies, forcing unionists to organize each plant individually,
it nevertheless boosted the esprit de corps of rank-and-file workers, with
demonstrable effects on the Gulf Coast.24
Race was a critical factor in the OWIU-OWOC campaign. In 1939,
African-Americans working in Gulf Coast refineries numbered about 1450,
236 T. PRIEST

Fig. 2 Cover art, Harvey O’Connor, History of Oil Workers International Union-
CIO (Denver, CO: Oil Workers International Union, 1950).

or 4% of the total workforce of approximately 36,000, and Mexicans about

750, or 2% of the total. Because nearly 90% of these minorities were
concentrated in refineries on the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, there they
comprised as much as 12% of the workforce.25 Therefore, it is not sur-
prising that the OWIU, with its commitment to the CIO’s policy of
interracial unionism, had its greatest appeal in East Texas.
Houston-Pasadena OWIU Locals 227 and 367 integrated minorities into
their membership, helping the union win representation at the Sinclair,
Shell, and Pan-American refineries. Although racial discrimination persisted
in promotional ladders and in other informal ways, union contracts in these
integrated locals formally eliminated separate wage scales, thus granting
black and Mexican workers significant wage increases. A separate pattern
emerged in Beaumont and Port Arthur. During the First World War, black
workers in these communities had formed their own all-black locals (229
and 254, respectively), which endured and later proved crucial to OWIU’s
victories at the Texaco and Gulf refineries.26
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 237

The Beaumont and Port Arthur victories, in particular, were hard won.
The OWIU’s organizing of minority workers stirred up white supremacist
reaction. Port Arthur police chief, Hardie F. Baker, a former refinery
supervisor at Gulf Oil, and a “notorious Negro-beater” and harasser of
CIO “agitators,” infamously led a group of policemen through black
neighborhoods on the eve of a 1938 NLRB election at the Gulf refinery,
threatening African-Americans who intended to vote.27 The intimidation
worked. Members of the all-black Local 254 stayed home, and the OWIU
narrowly lost. Four years later, however, newly vitalized unionists stood up
to the intimidation. In February 1942, Baker and two deputies brutalized
OWIU organizer F.H. Mitchell, a Native American from Oklahoma who
was assigned to recruit Port Arthur’s black refinery workers. Afterward,
those black workers defiantly showed up in large numbers to give the
OWIU a crucial victory in the second Gulf Oil election.28
Union advances and community-based organizing in Gulf Coast
refineries turned the local political tide in Port Arthur, Beaumont, Texas
City, and Pasadena. Activism by OWIU leaders, along with the work by
their women’s auxiliaries, helped to elect union-friendly city officials and
garner support from local businesses, civic organizations, and churches. In
Jefferson County, unionists pressured the Port Arthur city government to
fire Police Chief Baker in 1943, and they took credit for forcing oil
companies to withdraw their support for the anti-CIO crusader and zeal-
ous red hunter, Martin Dies, who, in 1944, chose not to seek reelection to
Congress. At the state level, oil workers and CIO unionists formed the
nucleus of a new liberal faction of the Texas Democratic Party.29
The OWIU still came up short in extending industrial democracy to
racial minorities. The Wagner Act did not name race discrimination as an
unfair labor practice, and so federal intervention to guarantee all workers’
rights was limited. Despite the CIO’s and OWIU’s egalitarian position on
race, most rank-and-file white unionists opposed any alteration of the
two-tier, segregated job system. “The Negro was at a disadvantage,”
admitted John Crossland, a white unionist with Shell Refinery Local 367 in
Pasadena. “A lot of white membership… did not want them to have a line
of progression.”30
Where “independent” unions had a strong presence, racist appeals held
off the CIO. Jersey Standard, one of the most anti-union oil companies,
stubbornly fought the OWIU at its Baytown and Baton Rouge refineries.31
At Baytown in 1942, Humble hired a former newspaper publisher to cir-
culate hundreds of bulletins for the Employees Federation assailing the
238 T. PRIEST

CIO, often by inflaming the racial prejudices of rank-and-file white

workers. “The CIO already has a large block of votes in this refinery in
almost 100% of the Negro workers, whom they have blinded with promises
of complete social and industrial equality with white people, both men and
women,” stated one of the bulletins in 1943, insinuating that the CIO was
promising black men sexual access to white women.32 At election time, a
group of well-dressed white women appeared at the refinery gate handing
out a pamphlet entitled, “CIO Promises Negroes Equality with Whites,”
and telling white workers that unionized black workers in other plants were
earning so much that their wives and daughters refused work as maids.33
Baytown’s white workers overwhelmingly voted for the Federation, to
protect what had become their racially defined job security, as well as,
perhaps, the gendered social order of Jim Crow.
Still, federal officials and minority workers made determined efforts to
challenge this system. During the war, the Texas office of the Fair
Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), the agency charged with
enforcing President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order banning racial
discrimination in defense plants, targeted three refineries—
Humble-Baytown, Sinclair, and Shell-Deer Park—for discriminatory
practices, hoping to force changes across the entire industry. Anticipating
white opposition to upgrading African-Americans, the FEPC focused on
complaints by ethnic Mexican workers, whose numbers were growing as
refineries staffed up to meet defense needs. Ultimately, however, this
strategy failed. Both Anglo workers and refinery management resisted any
nondiscrimination directives from the FEPC, whose lack of enforcement
powers and brief existence in Texas hobbled efforts to reform the two-tier
job system.34

THE ZENITH OF UNION POWER, 1945–1959

The unionization of most Gulf Coast refineries by the OWIU did not
dismantle workplace segregation, but it did alter the balance of power
between labor and management. It gave white workers, and to a lesser
extent, minority workers, enforceable guarantees on wages, expanded
benefits (vacations, sick leave, paid mealtimes, etc.), and seniority and
grievance procedures. The most potent weapon of enforcement in the
union arsenal was the strike—or the threat of a strike. Shutting down and
restarting a refinery were time-consuming and potentially dangerous pro-
cesses. Any sustained interruption in the commercial conversion of crude
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 239

oil to marketable products also strained an oil company’s bottom line. The
first-ever industry-wide strike, initiated by the OWIU in 1945, shut down
refineries in the region and provoked President Harry Truman to authorize
the Navy to seize the refineries and to appoint a government panel to
mediate the strike. In the end, OWIU workers received an 18% wage
increase. With this settlement, the OWIU surpassed Jersey Standard and its
independent unions as the industry leader in setting wage rates. By backing
up their negotiating positions with a strike, OWIU locals also obtained
more generous fringe benefits and pressed their advantage to shape con-
tractual guidelines on tenure, promotion, seniority, and job
classifications.35
Securing this advantage remained an uphill battle. After the war, the
OWIU, and organized labor in general, operated in an increasingly hostile
political environment. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, over
President Truman’s veto, permitted states to outlaw closed union shops
(which Texas did immediately), prohibited some of the practices unions
had employed to shut down plants, required advance-notice of strikes, and
banned sympathy or solidarity strikes. Taft-Hartley also allowed companies
to reduce the size of union bargaining units by classifying more employees
as “supervisors,” a provision of which oil companies took great advantage
in refineries. The act’s requirement of anti-communist affidavits from union
officers led to the purging of radicals, more so in other CIO unions than in
the OWIU, which had never leaned far to the left. However, this did not
prevent the red-baiting of the OWIU and its leadership. Beginning in
1951, OWIU president Jack Knight, who served part-time on the National
Production Authority, which advised government officials on defense
mobilization for the Korean War, endured a nasty investigation by the
Loyalty Board of the Department of Commerce into charges that Knight
had been a member of the Communist party or at least a sympathizer.
Although the charges were eventually dropped, the investigation had a
chilling effect on Knight and perhaps the union itself.36 In all, Taft-Hartley
and the crusade to root out leftists from the ranks of labor narrowed the
scope of union action from broader based political organizing in the quest
for greater social democracy to a focus on collective bargaining,
“cost-of-living” wage increases, and workplace control issues.37
After the humiliating 1948 defeat of a campaign to organize California
refineries, the OWIU learned lessons about planning and carrying out
strikes, which it then applied to the Gulf Coast region with noticeably
greater success than the CIO’s “Operation Dixie” efforts in southern
240 T. PRIEST

textile mills. The OWIU began shifting greater resources and power to the
national office to coordinate collective bargaining and establish national
patterns in contract language. The OWIU also began forming alliances
with non-OWIU unions, obtaining in the early 1950s cooperation from
some AFL unions and even many independent unions to carry out a
month-long strike in 1952, during the Korean War, that shut down one
third of the nation’s refining capacity (excluding California plants that
directly supplied the war effort) and won a 15% wage increase.38
In 1953, the OWIU and the independent unions explored the notion of
forming a single, powerful refining union. Oil companies responded with a
negative press campaign branding the merger talk “a development of
fearsome portents.”39 The campaign worked, discouraging the indepen-
dents from consolidating with the OWIU. However, in 1955, the OWIU
aligned with workers in burgeoning petrochemical plants by joining with
the United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers to form the Oil, Chemical
and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), shortly before the grand merger
between the AFL and CIO. At the same time, independents, such as the
Employees Federation and IIWA at the two large Jersey Standard plants,
pursued coordinated actions that reinforced their bargaining leverage.40
By the mid-1950s, operators and maintenance workers in Gulf Coast
refineries enjoyed enhanced job security, power to shape workplace rules,
and steadily rising wages that far exceeded those of all other workers in the
region.41 As demand for oil and chemical products soared during the
1950s, oil companies seemed to accept, grudgingly, the new labor
arrangement as a way to force issues at the bargaining table and maintain a
stable labor supply to staff expanding refinery operations. Strikes had
become more predictable than in the past, and companies could make
preparations to deal with them. “When our local union met with Shell,”
recalled Roy Barnes, a union official at Shell and later president of OCAW
Local 4-367, “there were two givens: one was we would give them a strike,
and the other, they’d take a strike.”42
The growing privileges of the refinery jobs that were reserved for whites
generated rising aspirations among minority employees, who stepped up
their challenge to the two-tier labor system. Beginning in the mid-1950s,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed
numerous complaints with the President’s Committee on Government
Contracts against companies and OCAW locals. These efforts won pro-
motions for some minority workers and produced various contractual
settlements, such as those ensuring that minorities who possessed high
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 241

school diplomas could move into line for skilled jobs. Companies and locals
still found ways to defend racial barriers, for example, by hiring only
African-Americans who lacked high school diplomas or by making unit
seniority, as opposed to plant seniority, a prerequisite for advancement. By
the late 1950s, segregation and racist attitudes remained entrenched in
many refineries. Yet, in a growing number of them, thanks to federal
intervention and grassroots activism by African-Americans and
Mexican-Americans, the color barrier was beginning to break down.43

“THE QUIET REVOLUTION”

Just when OCAW and other refinery unions were consolidating their
power and minority workers were gaining some access to skilled positions,
the effects of a “quiet revolution” in refinery operations began to under-
mine that very strength. Improvements in refinery technology, such as
remote controls, automatic controls, digital computers, and new kinds of
sensors and instrumentation, meant that operations that previously
required a human hand could now be automated; the number of gauges
and valves to be checked manually could be greatly reduced. This substi-
tution of capital for labor, or the deskilling of the workforce, was not
necessarily a direct response to the unionization of the refineries, but rather
a long, steady transformation dating back to the First World War. Only in
the late-1950s did this transformation begin to produce results dramatic
enough to convince refinery managers that technology was making many
operational workers redundant.44
Technology, in other words, gave them an opportunity to redress the
balance of power in the industry. Oil companies had long viewed union-
enforced job definitions as “featherbedding,” the practice of adopting
make-work rules and retaining surplus employees. If repairs or routine
maintenance was needed in an operator’s area, for example, contractual
work rules required him to call in a maintenance man—carpenter, welder,
pipefitter, electrician, etc. Refinery management saw this as an inefficient
way to deploy labor, especially as technology reduced the number of tasks
assigned to operators, who had time and skills to perform work not
included in their contractual job description. From the perspective of some
workers, on the other hand, operators could not always do a tradesman’s
job.45
In 1958, faced with declining profits due to intensified competition in
oil products, and armed with ideas from a new generation of engineers,
242 T. PRIEST

Fig. 3 Cat Cracker Control Room, Shell Oil Deer Park Refinery. Credit United
Steelworkers Local 13-1, Pasadena, Texas.

refinery managers began trimming costs by eliminating jobs through

attrition and layoffs. When they required large maintenance or “workover”
jobs, they brought in cheaper outside contractors—usually white workers
recruited from AFL-CIO building trades hiring halls. Managers also altered
work rules to combine craft jobs (i.e., welder and pipefitter) and require
operators to perform more maintenance duties. Most controversially, many
refineries introduced a new job called a “universal mechanic” who per-
formed multiple tasks previously done by several tradesmen.46
These job losses affected both white and minority workers, closing the
narrow avenues of promotion the latter had begun to find in some
refineries. Beginning in 1958, labor unrest spread throughout the industry,
increasing OCAW’s attractiveness to hitherto independent unionists. In
1959, facing demotions and disappearing jobs, workers at Baytown finally
elected OCAW to represent them, a seemingly momentous victory after
years of struggle. However, few other victories followed. The national
union was forced to cut back on organizing in order to defend its repre-
sentation in existing OCAW refineries, where management was reasserting
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 243

prerogatives to reorganize work, reclassify assignments, and contract out

jobs.47
OCAW could always file grievances to test management actions, and if
that failed, go on strike to resist changes in contract language. In 1959,
OCAW workers struck Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco/BP) refineries in
Texas City, Port Arthur, and El Dorado, Arkansas to protest cross-crafting.
In pre-strike negotiations, company officials indicated that they wanted a
pipefitter to undertake routine tasks like rewiring an electrical panel. The
union countered that if the pipefitter did not complete the work satisfac-
torily, he could be fired for incompetence, thus setting him up for dis-
charge. After workers walked off the job, management experimented with a
new tactic. The company brought several refinery units back on line using
engineers, clerks, and supervisors—those who were exempted from the
bargaining unit by Taft-Hartley. Union workers came back after 191 days
and signed a new contract that included a “work incidental” clause, which
allowed the company to assign work that crossed craft lines.48
By operating part of the plant without workers, Standard of Indiana not
only weakened the union’s bargaining leverage in its own plants, but it also
emboldened other companies to take harder lines in negotiations with
OCAW. At its Port Arthur refinery in 1961–1962, Gulf Oil deployed 600
supervisors and technical staff to keep part of its plant running, forcing
OCAW’s striking workers, after 6 weeks on the picket line, to agree to
management’s terms, which included Gulf’s use of contract workers for
many maintenance jobs. “Management has a right to run its business,”
company spokesmen increasingly declared. According to an official OCAW
history, “employers kept pressing for broader ‘management rights’ to
tinker with work assignments, manipulate overtime, and otherwise weaken
contract terms.”49
While oil companies exercised their newfound muscle to alter postwar
arrangements with organized labor in refining, OCAW sensed its ability to
protect jobs and deliver the goods to its members slipping away. By the
summer of 1962, the stage was set for a major confrontation.

THE WATERSHED
In 1961, during a period of slumping corporate profitability in the oil
industry, a new president, Monroe “Monty” Spaght, took command at
Shell Oil Company, the partially owned US subsidiary of the Royal Dutch
244 T. PRIEST

Shell Group, and launched a cost-cutting campaign that included the

company’s first significant layoffs since the Second World War. He ordered
some salaried employees into early retirement and terminated others. In his
first 2 years, he reduced the workforce by more than 11%, saving $21
million in wages and benefits.50
Spaght targeted manufacturing (oil products and chemicals) for
streamlining and cutbacks. Top management believed that Shell refineries
were burdened by underemployed workers, outmoded operating practices,
and the growing power of unions to block changes in workforce assign-
ments. In 1957, Shell had begun a policy of workforce reduction by
attrition, not hiring replacements for employees who were reassigned,
discharged, retired, or promoted. Then, in March 1961, the company
began laying off workers. During the 1962 contract negotiations, as pink
slips were issued, Shell refineries submitted proposals to remove
long-standing contract clauses regarding work assignments. In response to
the escalating challenge to their job security, Shell refinery workers resorted
to dramatic action. On 19 August 1962, some 5200 unionists simultane-
ously struck Shell Oil’s three major East-of-the-Rockies refineries and
chemical plants at Wood River, Illinois, Norco, Louisiana, and
Houston-Deer Park.51
Shell management was surprised that the three different unions at the
three refineries could pull off a coordinated strike. A loose federation of 13
AFL building trades unions represented workers at Shell’s largest refinery,
Wood River; OCAW represented the Houston-Deer Park refinery and
chemical plant; and Norco had an independent union. There were no
natural lines of communications or necessarily the same problems among
the three. In 1959, however, the unions representing major Shell oil and
chemical installations East-of-the-Rockies found enough common ground
to pursue a joint and coordinated program of bargaining. Their contracts
all expired at the same time, so they could legally call simultaneous local
strikes in all three places. The West Coast unions were still under contract,
had not suffered the layoffs that the other plants did, and thus did not join
in the strike. Nevertheless, the East-of-the-Rockies unions felt that their
alliance could defend the gains that they had made during the 1950s.
The main job security issues were the amalgamation of job assignments
or cross-crafting, as in the 1959 Standard of Indiana strike, and contracting
out, the main source of conflict in the 1961 Gulf Oil strike. “They’ve cut
out several jobs and combined them,” complained Jack Cooke, a striking
chemical plant operator at Houston. “The combined jobs are too much;
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 245

they have not lessened the responsibility—you just have to work more
things, do more things.”52 As workers from maintenance crafts were
reassigned to fill vacated operating jobs, Shell had begun to contract out
some plant maintenance tasks, such as cat cracker turnarounds, to outside
specialists. Since one out of every two employees in Shell’s refineries and
chemical plants was engaged in some kind of maintenance, the threat to
the workers’ job security was real.53 Furthermore, when a maintenance
employee was transferred to the operations department, he maintained his
total company seniority, but his seniority in operations was zero. He also
received a reduction in pay and was required to work shifts rather than
straight days as in the maintenance department.54 Such changes created ill
will toward the company among a growing number of workers. “It had to
stop,” said Johnny Garrison, vice president of the OCAW refinery workers
at Houston. “We had hit a brick wall.”55
Several other issues concerned the unions. One was advance notification
and consultation before layoffs. The unions wanted longer notices and
detailed explanations for why layoffs were needed, which would allow
union representatives to present counterproposals to management.
Increased wages and severance pay, the biggest concerns at Wood River,
also came under discussion. Still, compensation was not the main issue in
the 1962 strike. The differences between Shell labor and management went
beyond wages and benefits. OCAW accused Shell of seeking to establish
“unilateral control” over all working conditions.56 Shell sought to reclaim a
measure of the authority that it had enjoyed before the rise in union power
after the Second World War. Monty Spaght took an uncompromising
stand on this. He condemned management’s laxity and the union leaders’
shortsightedness in permitting the rise of practices that left workers
underemployed. “He ran the flag up to the mast and nailed it hard,” said
John Quilty, vice president for personnel and industrial relations and Shell’s
chief negotiator during the strike.57
When the battle was joined, Shell unleashed the same weapon tested by
Standard of Indiana and Gulf, maintaining operations with supervisory and
technical employees. Rather than bringing the plants back into partial
operation, as in the previous strikes, Shell announced that it would bring all
three back into full production. Shell sent staff to occupy the plants and
obtained court injunctions at Wood River to assure entry past the mass
pickets. Supervisors, engineers, researchers, clerical workers, accountants,
secretaries, and stenographers all contributed to getting the plants running
again. After intensive safety training, they worked 12-hour shifts, 7 days a
246 T. PRIEST

week, some even sleeping in the plants in the beginning. Within 3 months,
the refineries were operating at close to capacity with only one-half the
usual complement of people.
Although union officials suspected that Shell exaggerated the degree to
which the refineries were brought back on line, the strikers gradually
realized that they were fighting a losing battle. Tensions mounted on the
picket lines and in the communities as workers and their families stretched
incomes, savings, and patience to the limit. The company now had the
power, and management the resolve, to outlast the strike. Roy Barnes
remembered one co-worker exclaiming: “Damn it, if we stay out any
longer, all we are going to do is to make scabs out of some darned good
men.”58 Fortunately, there were only a couple of minor confrontations and
isolated incidents of violence between strikers and picket-line crossers. The
Wood River unions settled first, based on a 5% general wage increase
obtained by unions at other plants. Contracting out was not the central
issue with them, and Shell had not proposed new contract language there.
This settlement undermined the tripartite labor alliance, and 2 weeks later,
Norco’s independent union settled on similar terms, plus “contract revi-
sions to permit better utilization of manpower.”59
Houston endured another five and a half months. Both sides were
strongly committed to their positions. Shell was not happy with the OCAW
contract at Houston and took a hard line, demanding new language to
relax restrictions on job practices, particularly in the area of cross-crafting.60
OCAW appealed to the International Federation of Petroleum Workers
(IFPW), a worldwide alliance of 120 oil unions, to mobilize pressure
against Shell around the world. The IFPW threatened sympathy strikes in
Venezuela and Trinidad, ostensibly to cut off crude oil supplies to
Houston. But these strikes did not happen, and even if they had, the
Houston refinery’s crude supply, most of which came from Texas and
Louisiana, would not have been affected. After marathon negotiations
mediated by William Simkin, director of the Federal Mediation and
Conciliation Service, the Houston workers returned to work in early
August 1963. Lasting 11 months and 20 days, the Houston strike was the
longest in the history of OCAW.61
In the end, Shell management extracted significant concessions from the
unions. Offering severance pay and early retirement bonuses, the company
reduced the workforce at all three locations, by about 400 people at
Houston, 240 at Norco, and 250 at Wood River. New contract language
enabled operators to do routine maintenance and provided for greater
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 247

Fig. 4 OCAW Local 4-367 Picketers, Shell Oil 1962 Strike. Credit United
Steelworkers Local 13-1, Pasadena, Texas.

flexibility in revising job and work rules. Hearings before the National
Labor Relations Board upheld Shell’s right to contract out some tasks.
Assured of limits on the minor maintenance required of operators, OCAW
called the agreement an “honorable settlement.”62 Employees who kept
their jobs were relieved to return to work. Although the bitterness built up
during the year-long strike still lingered, as Garrison points out, “both the
company and the union saw that they had to sit down and try to work out
their differences without a strike.”63
The 1962–1963 Shell strike was a watershed for organized labor in US
refineries and chemical plants. The OWIU-OCAW union had emerged
victorious in the 1940s and had asserted increasing influence over wages
and working conditions in the 1950s. The Shell showdown, however,
starkly revealed the limits of the union’s power. OCAW lost its most
248 T. PRIEST

effective bargaining tool: the strike. In the dawning age of automation, the
threat to shut down plants with strikes was shown to be hollow, and the
unions entered a new era of gradual decline. Meanwhile, technical and
supervisory personnel grew proficient at operating refineries during strikes,
limiting labor’s bargaining power on all issues. As other refineries reduced
their workforces, OCAW’s national membership declined from its 1957
peak of 186,000 to 161,000 in 1965.64

THE LONG RETRENCHMENT

In the aftermath of the devastating defeat in the Shell strike, OCAW
regrouped. In 1965, Alvin F. Grospiron, a long-time Texas City unionist,
was elected OCAW president, a position which he held for the next
14 years. Grospiron improved coordination among the locals across the
nation and mobilized the union to pursue a national oil bargaining strat-
egy. In 1966, OCAW succeeded in fixing a common expiration date for all
oil contracts, which put the union in a position to bargain industry-wide,
rather than continue the plant-by-plant practice that allowed oil companies
to play one set of negotiations off against another. In 1969, unsatisfied with
wage and benefits proposals from management, Grospiron called for the
first industry-wide strike since 1952, ushering more than 50,000 workers
off the job. Lasting 38 days, the strike won a concession from the oil
companies to eliminate employee contributions to pension plans and
established a precedent for “pattern” bargaining, whereby OCAW would
come to a settlement with a lead company (usually Gulf or Amoco during
the 1970s) that would establish a pattern for settlements with other
companies.65
Beginning with the 1969 strike, labor-management confrontations
shifted from workplace control issues, which had dominated the relation-
ship in the 1950s and 1960s, to a more narrow focus on wages, benefits,
and occupational health and safety matters. In fact, during the 1969 strike,
companies successfully operated plants again with supervisory and technical
staff, and Shell obtained revisions to contract language at its California
refineries pertaining to work practices that were similar to those achieved at
the East-of-the-Rockies plants in 1963. The union, in effect, had submitted
to formal management control over job assignments.
Workplace safety emerged as an issue that might improve working
conditions in the plants while also changing the rules of engagement in
what had become a losing battle for OCAW. In 1971, the union put
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 249

forward strong new language on health and safety in its contract proposals
to oil and chemical companies. Central to these proposals was OCAW’s call
for the creation of joint committees on health and safety that would include
workers, managers, and industrial health specialists chosen with union
approval. Such committees would exercise broad powers in identifying and
rectifying problems that might affect workers’ health and safety. Under the
union’s proposal, workers would be compensated for time spent serving on
these committees. In addition, a small tax on the throughput of refineries
would be put aside to create a joint union-industry fund for research on
health hazards in the industry.
The oil companies dismissed this proposal with a little discussion.
Undeterred, OCAW reintroduced the same proposal to more receptive
ears when the next round of bargaining began in 1973. This time around,
numerous major oil companies opted to accept the language of the union’s
proposal on health and safety. With declining profits and great economic
uncertainty in refining, these companies decided that the issues at stake
were not worth the threat of an extended and costly strike. Nearing a
much-needed victory in establishing a new bargaining pattern with the
industry, OCAW bore down on holdout companies. The most prominent
was Shell Oil, which stood as one of only two major firms that rejected the
union’s call for joint committees. These not only would have given workers
real power to shape decisions about health and safety in the workplace, but
also would have empowered labor arbitrators to determine staffing levels
on generating units that they judged to be required for safety reasons. Shell
leaders felt strongly that such committees represented an unacceptable
infringement on the firm’s authority to determine staffing levels and crew
sizes. They insisted that these demands merely masked an effort by the
union to control manpower levels and operating methods. “So, in reality,”
spoke corporate publicity, “the issue is not ‘health and safety,’ but feath-
erbedding [deliberate overstaffing] in disguise.”66
In January 1973, confident that it could force Shell to fall in line and
accept the industry pattern, the union called a nationwide strike targeted at
Shell alone. OCAW mounted an aggressive public relations campaign with
the aid of 11 major environmental groups, many of which had seldom if
ever become involved in labor-related issues. The centerpiece of the
campaign was a national boycott of Shell gasoline and pesticides under the
slogan, “Shell? No!” The union drove home its message with billboards,
newspaper ads, radio spots, and millions of pamphlets and leaflets.67
250 T. PRIEST

As the strike wore on, Shell negotiators concentrated their efforts on the
large local at Houston-Deer Park. There, rank-and-file union members
seemed increasingly skeptical of staying out for a long period over some-
what abstract health and safety issues. In May 1973, fearing that the Deer
Park local might actually move to decertify the union, OCAW agreed to
accept a local agreement that included a greatly watered down version of
the original proposal for a joint health and safety committee that would
have the authority to impose decisions on management. Once this agree-
ment was signed, other Shell locals quickly accepted similar contracts, and
the strike ended. In essence, the new committees would invite worker
input, but they would vest final authority to act in the hands of
management.68
Organized labor in refining continued to give ground. OCAW orches-
trated another national strike in 1980, which achieved, in addition to a wage
increase to match galloping inflation, a dental plan and vacation leave. Soon
after the strike ended, the union was in desperate retreat. During the
recession of 1980–1981, employers closed down smaller, less profitable
refineries, and reduced workforces elsewhere. The election of anti-union
political conservatives pushed labor supporters out of office. Ongoing
improvements to refining and processing technology, further small refinery
closures, and drastic staff reductions through mergers continued to shrink
the workforce. The slow decrease in OCAW membership accelerated,
dropping from 140,000 in mid-1980 to under 100,000 by 1986.69
The decline continued, year after year, into the 1990s. OCAW even-
tually had to combine with other unions that faced the same trend. In
1999, OCAW merged with the United Paperworkers Union to form the
Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy (PACE) International
Union, and in 2005, PACE merged with the United Steelworkers Union
to form the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing,
Energy, Allied-Industrial and Service Workers International Union—or
United Steelworkers (USW) for short.70

THE LEGACY OF THE PAST

The possibilities looked so different many years earlier. For a time, refinery
workers overcame the hurdles that frustrated the industrial union move-
ment in the South. In the early twentieth century, the giant, expanding
refining complexes on the upper Gulf Coast provided a pathway out of
rural poverty for wave after wave of white and minority migrants.
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 251

Beginning in the late 1930s, grassroots organizing assisted by federal

intervention led to union victories that secured workers’ access to
well-paying refinery jobs for many years. By the mid-1950s, labor had won
a voice in the organization of refinery workforces. The crucial support of
racial minorities, despite their subordinate status, in the organizing victo-
ries of OCAW on the Gulf Coast signaled at least some incremental pro-
gress toward interracial solidarity in the workplace and even held out hope
for greater social equality in refinery communities.
Starting in the late 1950s, broad-based upward mobility for the working
class in refining stalled. Technological change and the reassertion of
managerial authority chipped away at union power until the workers’ chief
weapon, the strike, was rendered ineffective. Organized labor’s loss of
control in the workplace after the pivotal Shell Oil strike and the erosion of
its membership in the years that followed narrowed the route to socioe-
conomic advancement for the working class along the Gulf Coast and
elsewhere. OCAW steadily ceded ground until it eventually fell victim to
trends that weakened organized labor across the nation.
Although, in its heyday, the OWIU-OCAW had accommodated white
supremacy, the union’s decline offset some of the gains that minorities
finally achieved in their struggle for workplace equality. In the late 1960s,
presidential orders prohibiting discrimination in federal projects forced
refinery management to dismantle what remained of the two-tier labor
system. When minorities and women finally won full access to refinery
jobs, however, those jobs no longer provided the economic benefits and
job security that working-class white men had enjoyed in unionized
refineries along the Gulf Coast a generation before. As in many other US
industries, the shrinking of refinery employment since the 1970s has
worked against anti-discrimination measures. With fewer jobs available,
racial polarization increased, and many white workers began to view unions
as part of a “liberal establishment” whose affirmative action programs were
giving minorities “unfair” advantages.71
The legacy of the past endures into the present. The United
Steelworkers, which now represents some 30,000 US refinery workers, a
fraction of the former strength of organized labor in this sector, continues
to struggle over the very same issues that proved so divisive in the 1960s
and 1970s. In February 2015, the USW initiated the first nationwide
refinery strike since 1980 after the collapse of negotiations with oil com-
panies led by Shell over a nationwide contract covering hourly workers at
63 US refineries. The sticking point for the USW was not wages and
252 T. PRIEST

benefits, but its concern about contractors performing routine mainte-

nance, echoing the 1962 strike, and serious safety issues stemming from
worker fatigue, reminiscent of 1973.72
By 2015, these two issues had become closely joined. The union believed
that the increasing practice of contracting out maintenance to workers with
no lasting stake in, or knowledge of, the refineries that they were brought
into maintain was not only eroding union job security but also compro-
mising safety. For the 6,550 members who went on strike at 15 facilities,
memories of deadly refinery accidents from the past decade were all too
vivid, especially the March 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery (the one
formerly owned by Standard of Indiana) that killed 15 contractors housed
in a trailer close to the blast site and wounded dozens more. This disaster led
to the largest criminal fine ever up to that point against BP for felony
violations of safety regulations under the Clean Air Act.
As it had in the past, Shell announced a start up of the Houston-Deer
Park refinery without USW labor, undercutting union bargaining leverage
and hastening a national settlement, again with mainly toothless language
that addressed union demands about maintenance and fatigue manage-
ment. For the first time in 35 years, organized labor in refining tried to
make stand over what have become intolerable conditions in aging
refineries, only to discover that their ability to shift the balance of power
had changed very little, if it had not diminished beyond repair. Where once
a refinery worker could gaze at lights of a massive cat cracker at night with
wondrous pride, as Harvey O’Connor did in 1955, a common emotion
that such a sight elicited 60 years later was one of fear.

NOTES
1. Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1962), 94.
2. Joseph A. Pratt, The Growth of a Refining Region (Greenwich, CT: JAI
Press, 1980), 93.
3. Mexican and Mexican-American workers were mainly in Texas. According
to a 1943 Fair Employment Practices Commission survey, 59% of Mexican
refinery workers in Texas were born outside the United States. Cited in
Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican
Workers and Job Politics During World War II (College Station: Texas
A&M Press, 2009), 161.
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 253

4. See the discussion of the union organizing potential of different sectors of

the industry in Melvin Rothbaum, The Government of the Oil, Chemical,
and Atomic Workers Union (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962), 4–10.
5. See, for example, Timothy J. Minchin, Fighting Against the Odds: A History
of Southern Labor Since World War II (Gainseville: University Press of
Florida, 2005), 2–3.
6. F. Ray Marshall, “Independent Unions in the Gulf Coast Petroleum
Refining Industry,” Labor Law Journal 12, no. 9 (1961): 823–840;
Marshall, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes in the
Southern Petroleum Refining Industry,” Social Forces 42, no. 2 (1963):
186–195; and F. Ray Marshall, Labor in the South (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 194–201.
7. This is the title of the official history of the oil workers’ union, Ray
Davidson, Challenging the Giants: A History of Oil, Chemical, and Atomic
Workers International Union (Denver: OCAW, 1988).
8. Marshall, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes,” 187.
9. Pratt, The Growth of a Refining Region, 153–162.
10. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 267.
11. Sethuraman Srinivasan, Jr., “The Struggle for Control: Technology and
Organized Labor in Gulf Coast Refineries, 1913–1973” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Houston, 2001), 30–31; Ray Davidson, Turmoil and
Triumph: The First 50 Years of Local 4-367 (Pasadena, TX: Local 4-367,
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, 1983),
81; Herbert Northup, Negro Employment in Basic Industry—A Study of
Racial Policies in Six Industries (Pennsylvania: Trustees of the University of
Pennsylvania, 1970), 535.
12. Jersey Standard would later become Exxon. For years, its Texas subsidiary
retained the name Humble Oil. Magnolia was the Texas subsidiary of
Standard Oil of New York, later called Mobil Oil. For more on NERPs, see
Bruce E. Kaufman, “The Case for Company Unions,” Labor History 41,
no. 3 (2000): 321–335.
13. Harvey O’Connor, History of Oil Workers International Union (CIO)
(Denver: Oil Workers International Union, 1950), 1–17.
14. On the Employees Federation at Baytown, see Henrietta M. Larson and
Kenneth Wiggins Porter, History Of Humble Oil & Refining Company: A
Study in Industrial Growth (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 94–
104, 350–389.
15. Marshall, “Independent Unions,” 824; Herbert Werner, “Labor
Organizations in the American Petroleum Industry,” in The American
Petroleum Industry: The Age of Energy, 1899–1959, ed. Harold F.
Williamson, Ralph L. Andreano, Arnold R. Daum, and Gilbert C. Klose
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963), 831–832.
254 T. PRIEST

16. Pratt, The Growth of a Refining Region, 170.

17. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 55–59.
18. O’Connor, History of the Oil Workers International Union, 29–39;
Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 61–91.
19. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 103–120; Srinivasan, “The Struggle for
Control,” 45–67.
20. Marshall, “Independent Unions,” 827.
21. Michael Botson, “We’re Sticking by Our Union: The Battle for Baytown,
1942–1943,” Houston History 8, no. 2 (2011): 8–14.
22. Ibid.
23. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 151.
24. Ibid., 121–127.
25. Figures from Ernest Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial
South (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), 79–80;
Marshall, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes,” 188.
26. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 150–151, 267; Marshall, “Some Factors
Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes,” 189, 192–193.
27. Quoted in Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism, 77. Pratt, Growth of a Refining
Region, 93.
28. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 109; O’Connor, History of the Oil
Workers International Union, 314–315. A month later, a white mob des-
cended on a black section of shipyard workers in neighboring Beaumont,
burning buildings and attacking residents before Beaumont officials
declared martial law.
29. Srinivasan, “The Struggle for Control,” 50–53.
30. Quoted in Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism, 76.
31. In 1942, a smaller Humble refinery in Ingleside, Texas, near Corpus
Christi, had chosen the OWIU over the Federation, giving the CIO a
foothold in Jersey Standard. But in 1945, the company shut down and
dismantled the plant, putting employees at its other refineries on notice
about the Jersey Standard’s determination to keep its operations free of
outside unions. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 174.
32. Case File 5945, Employees Federation Bulletin No. 11, Record Group 25,
Records of the National Labor Relations Board, National Archives and
Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
33. Clyde Johnson, The Battle for Baytown (Berkeley: Clyde Johnson, 1984),
169. Johnson led the CIO organizing campaign at Baytown in 1942.
34. Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, 159–180.
35. O’Connor, History of the Oil Workers International Union, 52–57.
36. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 163–173; 234–239. For analysis of the
political targeting and effects of federal loyalty investigations at this time,
 CAT CRACKERS AND PICKET LINES: ORGANIZED LABOR … 255

see Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the
New Deal Left (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
37. Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining:
Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,”
in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, eds. Steve Fraser
and Gary Gerstle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 122–152.
38. Davidson, Turmoil and Triumph, 61, 74, 82–83; Werner, “Labor
Organizations in the American Petroleum Industry,” 842–844.
39. Editorial from National Petroleum News quoted in Davidson, Challenging
the Giants, 223.
40. Marshall, “Independent Unions,” 827; Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region,
177–178.
41. Srinivasan, “The Struggle for Control,” 45–67; Pratt, Growth of a Refining
Region, 178–179.
42. Roy Barnes interview by Sethuraman Srinivasan, February 18, 2000,
Houston, Texas. All interview cited in author’s possession.
43. See discussion in Marshall, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of
Negroes,” based on field interviews conducted during 1960–1962.
44. Edward J. Williams, “The Impact of Technology on Employment in the
Refining Industry in Texas, 1947–1966” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Texas–Austin, 1971).
45. Barnes interview.
46. Marshall, “Independent Unions,” 828–832.
47. Ibid., 829; Milden J. Fox, Jr., “The Impact of Work Assignments on
Collective Bargaining in the Petroleum Refining Industry on the Texas
Gulf Coast” (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, 1969).
48. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 273.
49. Ibid., 278.
50. “Monty Spaght’s Royal Dutch Treat,” Fortune, June 1966, 191.
51. Fox, “The Impact of Work Assignments,” 87–90.
52. “Why Strike Hell?” Union News 19, no. 2 (1963): 9.
53. “Maintenance—The “Man Behind the Man,” Shell News 17, no. 11
(1949): 18–20.
54. Fox, “The Impact of Work Assignments,” 88.
55. Johnny Garrison interview by Tom Stewart, 10 June 1999, Houston, TX.
56. “Shell Strikers 100 percent Solid in 8th Month,” Union News 19, no. 2
(1963), 8.
57. John Quilty interview by Jim Cox, 1973, Houston, TX.
58. Barnes interview.
59. Shell Oil, Annual Report, 1963.
60. John Sheehan interview by Jim Cox, 1973, Houston, TX.
61. “Oil Strikers Get Global Support,” Business Week, May 25, 1963, 62.
256 T. PRIEST

62. “Honorable Settlement at Shell,” Union News 19, no. 3 (1963): 3.

63. Garrison interview.
64. Data from Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 282, 292, 317; Pratt, Growth
of a Refining Region, 180–183.
65. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 309–312.
66. Letter from Shell Oil Company to All Shell Dealers, All Shell Jobbers,
February 7, 1973, OCAW Records, University Libraries, Archives
Department, University of Colorado at Boulder.
67. For a discussion of this strike from the perspective of the union, see Robert
Gordon, “‘Shell No!’ OCAW and the Labor-Environmental Alliance,”
Environmental History 3, no. 4 (1998): 460–487.
68. OCAW Strike Bulletin No. 21, OCAW Records; Mac MacIver interview by
Tom Stewart, September 24, 1998, Houston, TX. MacIver was a Shell
industrial relations official involved in labor negotiations.
69. Davidson, Challenging the Giants, 345–350.
70. OCAW Local 4-367 changed to PACE 4-367, then to PACE 4-1, and
finally to USW 13-1.
71. For a discussion of how this problem has affected American labor in gen-
eral, see Robert H. Zieger, American Workers, American Unions, 2nd ed.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1994).
72. Lydia DePillis, “Why Oil Refinery Workers are Striking for the First Time
in Decades,” Washington Post, February 13, 2015.
 White-Collar Wildcatters and Wildcat
Strikes: Oil Experts, Global Contracts,
and the Transformation of Labor
in Postwar Houston

Betsy A. Beasley

INTRODUCTION
On February 25, 1946, the streets of Houston overflowed with garbage.1
A thousand municipal employees, trash collectors among them, declared a
citywide strike. As in other cities in the US and throughout Europe,
Houston’s workers greeted the end of the Second World War intent on
securing and extending wartime labor gains for the post-Depression,
postwar future. Houston’s municipal workers left their posts and took to
the streets to demand wage increases and improved working conditions.
Inescapable and putrid, the uncollected trash evoked both the workers’
discontent and their centrality to the city’s functioning.
Far from being outraged by the inconvenience of overflowing garbage
cans, Houston’s non-municipal workers quickly declared their solidarity.
The city’s American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions called a citywide
labor holiday. As many as 10,000 people marched on City Hall to demand
justice for the striking municipal workers.2 The general strike brought
together a diverse alliance: municipal repair workers, taxi drivers, long-
shoremen, bakers, musicians, and office employees all joined the march.3

B.A. Beasley (&)

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 257

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_10
258 B.A. BEASLEY

Ultimately, the city agreed to investigate its wage rates and to bring
wages in line with those in the private sector. It was not a resounding
victory, to be sure. But this strike, the largest in Texas history, made clear
that workers in Houston embraced their identities as workers. The strike
united garbage collectors, dock and oil industry workers, and white-collar
employees as part of a common class determined to forge the city’s future.
Sixteen years later, the city’s labor landscape had fractured. In August
1962, workers at Shell refineries across Texas struck to protest automa-
tion’s impact on blue-collar workers and the company’s contracting tem-
porary maintenance workers in lieu of retaining a maintenance department.
This time, the strike backfired. Shell appealed to its white-collar engineers,
administrators, and managers to keep the plant open during the strike.
Staffed by white-collar employees working around the clock, the refineries
remained open during the strike and operated almost at capacity.4 If the
general strike of 1946 demonstrated solidarity, the Shell strike of 1962
made clear that blue-collar workers could no longer count on white-collar
workers to identify with them. The Shell refinery strike ended in massive
layoffs and no substantive change in the company’s contracting policy.5
The transformation of the city’s most important industry, oil, from a
primarily blue-collar to a largely white-collar workforce lay at the heart of this
tremendous shift in Houston’s labor landscape. After the Second World War,
Houston transitioned from a city organized around the extraction and re-
fining of oil into the urban headquarters of the global oil industry. In the
20 years after the war, the city’s working class, and especially its oilfield tools
manufacturing workers and oilfield and refinery workers orchestrated almost
1700 strikes in Houston, an unprecedented high of labor activism for the
historically conservative city.6 In response to these strikes, manufacturers,
international oilfield contractors, and oilfield services companies launched a
fervent anti-labor campaign, most visibly through their vehement support for
right-to-work legislation.7 At the same time, corporate interests pursued new
strategies for overcoming labor unrest, including the international out-
sourcing of oil refineries and replacing manufacturing workers with profes-
sional employees exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. By the
beginning of the 1960s, two shifts had been effected: culturally, corporate
interests had drawn a firm distinction between the blue- and white-collar
workers; and materially, Houston’s oil industry boasted fewer blue-collar
jobs and more white-collar jobs than it had in 1945.
Houston’s transition from a blue-collar to a white-collar city is not singular in
postwar history; many cities in the US, the UK, and Europe experienced similar
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 259

shifts during this period. However, taking Houston as a case study—and

focusing in particular on the city’s oil industry—make two points clear.
First, Houston’s shift from a predominately blue-collar to a white-collar
workforce was not merely an accident of history; rather, it was a deliberate
strategy pursued by oil and oilfield services company executives who
sought to rein in unruly blue-collar workers. Crucially, oil refineries relied
upon third-party oilfield services contractors to provide them both with
flexible white-collar experts and with nonunion labor to perform any
remaining blue-collar work. Second, Houston’s shifting reliance on
white-collar labor carried transnational resonances. Increasingly, the work
of the production of oil took place outside the United States—in countries
with varying level of US and Western corporate influence—while the
logistical and consulting functions of producing oil remained in the US,
especially in Houston. This transnational division of labor reshaped pro-
spects for US workers, labor conditions for workers overseas, and the
cultural idea of the role of the US in the global oil industry.
Domestic consequences amounted to an end run around equal
employment opportunity legislation. Battles among unions, management,
the state, blue- and white-collar workers, and African-American and
Mexican-American oil employees threatened the gains that
African-American and Mexican-American oil workers had made in over-
coming workplace discrimination. At the same time, the export of
blue-collar labor remade the relationship between Houston and
oil-producing nations outside the United States, as Houston executives
increasingly managed blue-collar workers across the globe. Houston’s local
labor struggles carried dramatic consequences, both at home and abroad.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOUSTON’S OIL INDUSTRY

Oil lay at the center of the city’s economy and identity throughout the
twentieth century. In 1901, wildcatters discovered oil at Spindletop, 145 km
from Houston. The Texas economy revolved around oil by the 1920s, with
almost 70 million barrels extracted during the first quarter of 1929 alone.8
With more nearby oil strikes to follow, Houston boasted forty oil company
headquarters and quickly became the regional headquarters for the
Southwest’s oil industry.9 High levels of production drove down prices,
however, and oil production outpaced demand until after the Depression. The
Texas Railroad Commission made repeated attempts throughout the 1930s to
curb oil production in the state to manage supply and maintain prices.10
The war solidified the importance of oil to Texas and Houston’s cen-
trality in the state’s extractive economy. The astonishing demand for
260 B.A. BEASLEY

petroleum worldwide buoyed Texas oil production, especially when federal

wartime regulation ceased in 1946. Prices rose from $.92 per gallon of
crude during the war to $2.32 in December 1947, and the US oil industry
was at peak production in 1948.11 A booming population in Houston
supplied the oilfields and refineries with labor. The Texas oil business had
never been stronger.
Although commentators routinely referred to a unified “Texas oil
industry,” the industry itself comprised several related but distinct com-
ponents. Oil extraction was the most iconic and the most dominant cul-
tural image of the industry in Texas. During the first half of the twentieth
century, Texas produced millions of barrels of oil per year, rising from 375
million in 1935 to 992 million in 1951, then over a trillion in 1952 before
beginning to decline in 1957.12 The wildcatter—a tough, rugged indi-
vidual who struck out on his own to go broke or strike it rich in the search
for oil—emerged in popular culture as the central figure of the Texas oil
industry. The lone wildcatter was more apocryphal than real, but, the
wildcat oilman occupied a prime location in the national idea of Texas.13
Refinery output in Houston continued to increase even as extraction
declined in Texas. Refining was not new to the city at mid-century. By the
end of the First World War, Texaco, Gulf, Humble, and Sinclair had all
built refineries along the Houston Ship Channel.14 Petroleum refining had
become the top manufacturing industry in Texas in 1939.15 After the war
ended, the United States began importing oil at an increasing rate, from 74
million barrels in 1945 to 153 million by 1949.16 Increasing oil imports
from abroad and declining rates of production in domestic oilfields made
refining an even more important segment of the Texas oil industry than
extraction. Whereas oil drilling could be best compared with similar energy
extraction industries like mining, refining was much more akin to industrial
production. Working in large refineries in teams on a line to finish a pro-
duct, refinery workers labored as assembly line employees working in an
industrial setting not too dissimilar from a Ford plant.
In addition to the major oil companies, the refineries, and the inde-
pendent wildcatters, Houston hosted another class of companies growing
more quickly than any of the others: the oilfield services industry. Oilfield
equipment companies like Hughes Tool, Brown Oil Tools, Baker Oil
Tools, Halliburton, Schlumberger, and the Byron Jackson Company
originated in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana during the early twentieth
century to manage the oil rush that had accompanied the discovery of oil at
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 261

Spindletop. In their earliest years of operation, these companies either sold

oilfield tools or patented specific processes to extract oil more efficiently.
Before the war, these companies primarily partnered with domestic oil-
producers and rarely ventured beyond the Gulf Coast.
During the Second World War, the oil and oil-related companies in
Houston boomed because of the government spending on war materials.
After the Second World War, Hughes—and other oilfield services com-
panies like it—employed industrial workers in its Houston factories,
manufacturing oil tools to be shipped abroad. But, increasingly, oilfield
services companies turned their attention away from the actual manu-
facture of oil tools and toward the marketing of less tangible products.
Before the war, their operations had focused on selling tools domestically,
but after the war they turned their business strategy towards exporting
tools to international markets. Even more crucially, they began to con-
tract with international oil companies, American and non-American alike,
to sell their expertise as consultants and logisticians on oilfields world-
wide. Unlike the major oil corporations based in the US and Western
Europe, oilfield equipment and services companies did not depend on
their control of oil reserves.17 Instead, their expertise and services were
the product.”18
At the end of the war, then, the oil industry encompassed three very
different segments. The domestic extraction industry was becoming less
important as the easy-to-reach oil wells in the state grew exhausted and
imports from abroad grew. The refining industry was bustling, but it
relied on industrial labor that managers struggled to control, particularly
in the wake of the 1946 general strike. And the burgeoning oilfield
services industry, which once consisted of predominately industrial
workers, increasingly relied primarily on white-collar engineers and
managers selling expertise to international oilfields instead. But as troops
returned home to Houston and the war drew to a close, how these
macroeconomic industry changes would affect the city’s labor dynamics
remained unclear.
Houston’s status as the central node in Texas’ oil economy seemed well
established, but precisely what that status meant remained in question.
Months before the war’s end, the city’s Chamber of Commerce confidently
pronounced Houston “the Petroleum Center of the World.” Importantly,
262 B.A. BEASLEY

they defined that title by the city’s postwar strengths—its crucial role in the
extraction and refining of oil. The United States was the world’s largest oil
source in 1945, and Texas was by far the country’s largest oil producer.
Moreover, Texas boasted 56% of the nation’s proven oil reserves, making
the future seem bright. And Texas also could claim the largest number of
refineries in the nation, with an operating capacity of 1.5 million barrels per
day. Clearly, the Chamber classified the “petroleum center of the world” as
the world’s leader in producing oil for market—as a competitor in a global
industry, not the facilitator of an integrated network of producers.19
This understanding of Houston’s place in the world of oil carried with it a
specific imagined geography. For most Houstonians in the 1940s, Houston
was an oil city because of its location within a region that was the greatest oil
producer in the world. “Within 100 miles [161 km] of Houston, 268 oil
fields produced 193,667,589 barrels in 1944, and within 200 miles [322
km] of Houston nearly 65 per cent of all Texas oil is produced,” the
Chamber explained. Richard Gonzalez, an economist employed by Humble
Oil and Refining Company, echoed this sentiment: “The 19 counties in the
Houston territory have 6% of the area in Texas but account for 21% of the
state’s crude oil production and 40% of its refinery operations.”20
The “Houston territory”—a stretch of land encompassing both the
refinery-heavy city and its oil-producing hinterland—embodied the idea
that Houston’s importance lay in its role as a producer of petroleum. In
these statements, Houston elites made clear that oil’s geography was
regional. Houston could best be imagined as a central node in a broader
region dotted by oilfields, refineries, and ports shipping Texas oil to mar-
ket. Indeed, they imagined Houston itself as primarily relevant to its
immediate surrounding geography, the rural lands that had given birth to
the mythic wildcatter cowboys who struck out on their own in search of oil
riches.
If this geographic imaginary prioritized extraction and refining in
determining “petroleum city” status, a subtle challenge to that narrative
emerged at war’s end. In its analysis of the city’s oil industry, the Chamber
of Commerce mentioned that “[i]n addition to the fact that Houston is the
leading petroleum center of the world, it also manufactures more oil
equipment, oil tools, and accessories than any other city.” In fact, one
Houston company had recently “prepared to export shipments to
Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Egypt, machinery that when created,
totaled more than twelve million pounds.”21 The presence of this segment
of Houston oil—the oilfield services industry—would help change not only
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 263

the geography of oil in Houston but also the city’s labor structure in the
years to come.

HOUSTON’S LABOR LANDSCAPE

Houston’s power elite, in particular its oilfield services companies, had a
long history of anti-union sentiment and action. During the First World
War, for instance, Hughes Tool refused to honor the eight hour day
standard. Its employees worked nine hours per day and earned less than
their counterparts in other regions of the country. When the National War
Labor Board (NWLB) decreed that employers in the defense industry,
including Hughes Tool, had to pay their workers a standard national wage
and employ them for no more than eight hours per day, Hughes Tool
refused to follow the directive. Skilled workers struck in response. When
the NWLB sent a representative to Houston to settle the dispute, Houston
manufacturers joined forces to refuse to raise pay under any circumstances.
Another strike followed, but the company ultimately triumphed.22
The Second World War—and especially the federal government’s
increasing role in regulating business—changed the ways in which com-
panies could resist labor’s demands. Even as Hughes Tool was transi-
tioning from primarily a manufacturer of drill bits to a services company,
African-American blue-collar workers at Hughes launched a crucially
important civil rights campaign. In 1940, 25% of Hughes Tool’s employees
were African-American. Yet black workers’ hourly wages ranged from
$0.48 to $0.62, while whites earned between $0.65 and $1.30. Jobs for
black workers included “common laborers pulling metal chips, handling
material, doing all the heavy lifting, fetching and carrying, and cleaning,
while whites operated all machines.”23 In 1943, CIO Local 2457, the
segregated black local, filed an FEPC complaint against Hughes, alleging
discriminatory hiring and promotion practices. Simultaneously, the local
filed against the CIO on account of its contract, which continued to seg-
regate job classifications by race.24 As CIO member N.H. Shepherd put it,
“It [is] unfortunate that the Hughes Tool Company sees fit to operate on
the money of the United States Government on war contracts and could
not see fit to abide by the laws of the United States.”25
But the US government seemed more reluctant to challenge dis-
crimination at Hughes Tool than Shepherd hoped. CIO rank-and-file
members launched a wildcat strike in June 1944 to protest Hughes Tools’
violation of a NWLB order that the company had to recognize the CIO as
264 B.A. BEASLEY

the company’s collective bargaining agent. To the CIO leadership’s dis-

may, workers violated the wartime no-strike pledge to join the fray.
The CIO and management were both unable to convince the three
thousand strikers to return to work until a week had passed. Even at the
strike’s conclusion, however, Hughes Tool continued to ignore NWLB
orders, hoping that the federal government’s need for the company’s help
would stop the president from intervening. Hughes executives were not so
lucky. In response to the NWLB’s plea for federal intervention, President
Roosevelt sent the army to seize Hughes in September. The army managed
to negotiate a maintenance of membership agreement between the CIO
and management, but they failed to address discrimination in hiring
practices. Since the army remained segregated, army officials reasoned that
forcing desegregation at Hughes would prove to be nothing but an
embarrassment. At the beginning, black CIO staffer Robert Grovey had
boasted, “In the old days every time there was trouble and white men
walked off the job the boss would sidle up to the Negro. If they hang us
this time they will have to hang us together.” Clearly, that solidarity
extended only so far for white workers.26 Formalized workplace discrimi-
nation would not end at Hughes Tool until black workers won a National
Labor Relations Board (NLRB) case in 1964.27
It was in this context that the 1946 general strike took the city by storm.
In February, almost a quarter of Houston’s four thousand total municipal
workers were on strike.28 City trash collectors and street, sewer, and water
main repair workers complained that their wages remained far lower than
their counterparts’ in private industry and did not keep pace with the rising
cost of living. Beyond bread-and-butter issues, workers protested the
“‘caustic and insulting remarks and threats’ made by city officials.”
Through their local chapters of the AFL City-County Workers Union,
workers demanded raises ranging from 12 to 25%. When the city refused to
negotiate, workers voted 179 to 41 to go on strike—the first municipal
strike Houston had ever seen.29
A casual observer in 1946 would have been surprised by this demon-
stration of labor militancy. Among city residents, trade unions members, or
business leaders, Houston hardly had a reputation as a bastion of
working-class radicalism. Before the war, the union presence in the city was
moderate, heavily segregated along racial lines, and concentrated among
blue-collar workers.30 The labor-backed mayoral candidate in the 1942
election, for instance, finished dead last.31 As one in a wave of postwar
strikes across the country and internationally in 1946, Houston stood out
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 265

as an unlikely site among cities with histories of more vibrant union activity,
such as, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Oakland.32
In Houston as in these other cities with stronger labor histories, the war
had transformed urban political culture, making the general strike a cause
to support for workers citywide. During the war, workers had seen the
federal government increase its support of unionized workers facing
anti-union employers, especially in Houston where the city’s oil industry
was heavily entwined with the nation’s war effort. And as the privation of
the Depression and wartime lifted and the postwar United States promised
broadly shared prosperity, workers saw unions—newly legitimated through
the federal government’s defense of them during the New Deal and war-
time—as a pathway to a share of the pie. As historian Robert Self explains,
“The unprecedented growth in union membership between 1935 and
1945, the incorporation of both AFL and CIO leaders into wartime
planning, and the institutionalization of labor relations within the New
Deal state had in the space of a decade transformed organized labor in the
United States into an influential axis of political and economic power.”33
And this was true even in Houston.
Convinced that the labor upsurge would not last long, the city’s political
leadership held a hard line at the beginning of the strike. Mayor Otis
Massey and the City Council refused to negotiate with strikers until they
returned to work and rebuffed union representatives altogether.34 Acting
City Manager J.M. Nagle argued that the city had simply fired employees
who “had resigned by failing to report for work.” “These workers actually
quit voluntarily,” he claimed. “We are issuing their final checks and they
have lost all their Civil Service, seniority and pension rights.”35 Mayor
Massey agreed: “So far as I’m concerned, those who are off the job are no
longer in a position to bargain with us. They are simply former city
employes [sic].”36 The city council planned to call on state officials and the
Texas Rangers to declare martial law. Massey encouraged Houstonians to
weather the strike by volunteering to pick up garbage and clean streets.37
Yet the strikers did not fold quickly, as city officials predicted. Houston
workers’ support for the strike grew as the fight wore on. After 6 days,
several thousand more AFL sympathizers declared a citywide work holiday
on February 26. “Taxi drivers, bakers, barbers, longshoremen, musicians,
office employees, packinghouse workers and railroad clerks” swelled the
ranks of the striking workers, with twelve hundred dockworkers and seven
hundred taxi drivers, for instance, joining the original thousand striking
266 B.A. BEASLEY

municipal employees in an overwhelming demonstration of solidarity.38

Spurred by the solidarity strikers, Houston Labor and Trades Council
secretary George A. Wilson called on sixty-five AFL locals in the city to
March on City Hall in support of the fired workers to respond to “the
arrogance and utter lack of consideration of the mayor and city council of
the welfare of the city employees and citizens of Houston.”39 By some
estimates, as many as ten thousand workers marched on City Hall. As
Building Trades Council president L.E. Patrick put it, “It’s not only a city
employee fight now, but it concerns all labor.”40
The citywide work holiday and mass march on City Hall made city
officials’ position untenable. The Houston Chronicle, hardly a friend to
labor, declared the march and work stoppage “the greatest mass demon-
stration of organized labor’s strength in Houston’s history, or for that
matter in Texas’s history.”41 In the face of such clear opposition, Massey
relented and agreed to meet with AFL representatives. Before the crowd
amassed in front of City Hall, Massey and an AFL representative embraced,
announcing that the fired workers would be reinstated and wages would be
studied.42 The city’s Civil Service Commission agreed to compare city
wage rates with rates in private industry, to bring municipal employees’
wages in line with the private sector.43 The strike’s momentum lasted
through the end of 1946, when Massey was ousted in favor of
labor-friendly Mayor Oscar Holcombe.44
The emerging political climate of the Cold War complicated this labor
triumph, in Houston and elsewhere. Prominent anti-communist political
figures like Joseph McCarthy leveraged the Cold War fears of communist
encroachment into the United States to launch witch hunts against sus-
pected communists, particularly in trade unions. Moreover, following the
passage of the Taft–Hartley Act in 1947, many states passed the so-called
right-to-work laws in the postwar years, which “prohibited collective
bargaining and striking by public employees” and limited the ability of
unions to gain members.45 Texas passed its right-to-work law in 1947, an
unprecedented move for the state which had had little labor legislation on
the books in Texas before the 1940s.46
Houston’s general strike constituted the largest, most vivid example of
labor power in the postwar city, but it was hardly the only one. In the same
year, unionized construction workers went on a 77-day strike and won a
closed shop on all construction jobs in the city. The next year, workers
threatened another citywide construction shutdown after the Associated
General Contractors and Houston Building Trades Council announced a
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 267

plan to draft a contract banning the closed shop.47 In March 1950, a

thousand AFL dockworkers in Houston went on strike demanding higher
wages, with another thousand striking in Galveston.48 And in November
1950, 1200 CIO bus drivers and mechanics went on strike to demand “a
25-cent hourly wage increase, better working conditions and pensions.”49
African-American workers continued the prewar and wartime fights to
end racial discrimination in the oil industry. Workers at Houston’s Shell
plant launched another fight in 1953. In Shell’s 57 departments, only one
—the labor department—hired African-Americans, at a wage of $1.69 per
hour. Whites hired in similar positions started at a wage of $1.98 per
hour.50 Black workers appealed to the CIO Oil Workers International
(OWIU), but found that the union contract actually codified this dis-
crimination. They visited Roberson King, an African-American Texas
Southern University law professor, who filed suit against the OWIU in the
Texas courts.51 Black workers simultaneously filed a case against Shell with
the President’s Committee on Government Contracts. Army officials
stepped in to work with management at Shell’s offices in New York. In the
eventual agreement, the company pledged to open all job categories to
African-Americans if they had a high school diploma and could pass a
qualification test.52
Beyond these localized struggles, the NAACP placed oil workers at the
center of a highly visible national campaign for workplace civil rights. In
1955, the NAACP represented black workers at Esso, a Carbide Chemicals
Company plant in Texas City, and the Lion Oil Company in Arkansas in a
joint suit filed with the President’s Committee on Government Contracts
and with the NLRB. The complainants argued that both the company and
their unions discriminated against black workers in hiring practices. As
government contractors, Robert L. Carter of the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund argued, these discriminatory companies “deprived complainants and
all other Negroes employed of rights and privileges guaranteed to them by
the Constitution and laws of the United States.” The NLRB denied pur-
suing the case, but the President’s Committee on Government Contracts
(PCGC) pursued it to great effect. At the PCGC’s urging, Esso “opened all
but professional and clerical jobs to African-Americans and promised to
promote twenty-five black workers to newly opened jobs.” However, the
PCGC had little enforcement power, and its officials favored a
company-by-company tactic that “left cooperative unions vulnerable to
raids by competitors who promised to restore the discriminatory status quo
268 B.A. BEASLEY

ante.” Meanwhile, employers could blame white workers’ resistance for

their reluctance to implement change.53
By the mid-1950s, African-American workers could trace a long line of
wins in oil workers’ civil rights cases beginning during the war. And like
African-American workers, Mexican-American workers were able to
mobilize the state to intervene on their behalf in the wartime and postwar
period, most dramatically in a wartime FEPC case at a Shell refinery.
Ultimately, continued FEPC pressure led the union to broker a compro-
mise: a few skilled jobs for African-American and Mexican and
Mexican-American workers would be set aside in segregated depart-
ments.54 Although workers remained stymied by resistant companies, the
1940s and 1950s seemed to offer hope for progress in the future.

CORPORATE RESPONSES
Workers’ hopes notwithstanding, companies were finding new ways to
resist laborers’ power. In the refineries and at oilfield services factories like
Hughes Tool, African-American and Mexican and Mexican-American
workers won concessions, albeit limited ones, during the 1940s and 1950s.
Despite these limited successes, capital flight and automation undermined
workers’ hard-won gains. The peak of domestic refinery employment in the
US came in 1953, when 206,000 Americans worked in refineries. 142,000,
or about 70%, of these workers, worked in production rather than man-
agement or engineering-related functions. Just 5 years later, total
employment declined to 6.8%, but production workers declined at a rate of
14.8%.55 Meanwhile, production increased to 9.8% during these years.56
Generally speaking, blue-collar oil industry workers worked on an oil field
or in a refinery, doing the manual labor of extracting and refining oil.
Blue-collar workers also worked in ports and on ships transporting oil from
one city to another. White-collar workers, on the other hand, managed
these workers and the manufacturing processes they operated. The
blue-collar employment for which black and Latino Gulf Coast workers
had fought was actively disappearing.
This labor shift was not merely an unfortunate coincidence of history; in
many cases, it was a deliberate management strategy. Employers actively
countered labor and civil rights gains by shifting their employment struc-
ture. When three Mexican workers brought a wage discrimination case
against Humble Oil’s refinery, for instance, Humble responded by raising
the complainants’ wages, but they also pursued a strategy of “rid[ding]
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 269

[the company] of its minority workforce by contracting out to the [the

oilfield services firm] Brown and Root Company for all of its laboring
work.”57 In the process, the company avoided conflict with white workers
while seeming to obey federal mandates.58
Other companies cut their workforce as well. In just 1 year, from 1948
to 1949, Hughes Tool’s employee base shrunk from 4000 to 2600. Ten
years later, only 2000–1600 white and 400 black—remained—even
though production had increased. The total number of employees at Gulf
declined throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Despite black employees’
organizing successes, Gulf employed 883 black workers in 1957 but only
741 by 1959.59 And at Shell, the company’s agreement to open all job
categories to African-Americans with a high school diploma had little actual
effect. Only 11 of the plant’s 250 black employees had high school
diplomas. As one onlooker pointed out, in the future, “the company could
avoid Negroes from being upgraded by refusing to hire Negro high school
graduates.”60
At Hughes, Gulf, and Shell, the 1940s and 1950s witnessed the
beginning of a decline in blue-collar as opposed to white-collar oil industry
jobs.61 This development undermined the gains of African-American and
Mexican and Mexican-American workers in two ways: first, by reducing the
number of jobs that blue-collar workers (disproportionately
Mexican-American and African-American) were eligible for; and by
cementing the relationship between whiteness and white collar. During the
1940s and 1950s, challenges to the dual-wage and dual-tier labor system in
the blue-collar oil industry had sought to challenge cultural associations
between white masculinity and unionized, blue-collar work in refineries
and oil tools plants. As one observer commented, the “sentiment among
white workers [was] that mechanized jobs are automatically white jobs”—
and workers’ successes in advocating for African-American and
Mexican-American access to these jobs had succeeded, at least provision-
ally, in undoing that association.62 Esso, for instance, had “set aside
twenty-five skilled jobs for African-Americans” in the wake of the PCGC
case, a coup for black workers. However, the industry’s—and Houston’s—
increasing reliance on white-collar labor, which had not seen the same
legislative victories in civil rights organizing, essentially evaded this chal-
lenge by claiming white, white-collar workers as the true agents of the
modern Houston oil industry. At Esso, after the original twenty-five
positions were filled, the company ceased promoting African-Americans
and, in fact, laid off a third of its employees in 1957, spurred by a recession
270 B.A. BEASLEY

and automation. Yet as Esso’s white-collar workforce expanded, the

company refused to hire African-Americans to these positions.63 The
material and cultural decentering of blue-collar labor in the domestic oil
industry undermined the civil rights gains of African-Americans and
Mexican-Americans.
Houston-based companies augmented automation and promoted
white-collar labor with another union-busting strategy: moving blue-collar
labor overseas. Houston’s Brown & Root, an international construction
company specializing in oil-related projects, is perhaps the starkest exam-
ple. The company, best known for its domestic and international con-
tracting work constructing oilfields, pipelines, military bases, and
government buildings, was a key proponent of right-to-work legislation in
Texas. Texas passed a right-to-work law in 1947, which “prohibited col-
lective bargaining and striking by public employees.”64
Herman Brown, president and co-founder of Brown & Root, sought to
make sure that the law would be enforced as strictly as possible. After
campaigning in support of right-to-work legislation in the 1940s, Brown
helped launch a landmark case to extend the law in the 1950s. In 1950,
Brown & Root sued the AFL Building Trades Council under the state’s
right-to-work law. The company’s case alleged that the Council had vio-
lated state laws prohibiting the closed shop and secondary boycotts and the
state’s antitrust act. The controversy had begun when Brown & Root won
a contract to work on the Bull Shoal Dam in Arkansas. Eight other con-
tractors from across the country were collaborators on the project, and all
eight operated with a closed shop. An AFL union official pointed this out
to Brown & Root executives and requested a meeting. The AFL repre-
sentatives demanded that Brown & Root operate a closed shop at Bull
Shoals, use only union members on its Texas highway projects, and sign an
agreement that the company would hire only union members at all of its
projects nationwide. Brown & Root executives refused.65
The AFL would not be thwarted so easily. In the 10 months that fol-
lowed, AFL union members protested at Brown & Root construction sites
across the country. At an oil pipeline compressor station site outside
Beaumont, Texas, union members unaffiliated with the job picketed the
project site, drawing crowds of up to one hundred and fifty. The company
alleged the union members used violence and harassment against the work
crews. Union members picketed at two different Houston construction
sites. According to company officials, the Houston Lighting & Power
Company refused to connect electricity to Brown & Root job sites out of
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 271

fear of retribution from the electrical workers’ union. These kinds of

protests followed the company to Austin, with more threats of pickets and
boycotts springing up nationwide. According to company officials, the
chief of police in Beaumont sided with the workers: “There is another
epidemic here of Brown & Root, and we are doing all we can to exter-
minate that terrible dreaded disease,” he said. “You boys have helped
exterminate that disease, and with your help, we will eventually get rid of
all those festered sores in Beaumont.”66
Outraged, Brown & Root executives and supporters appealed for
sympathy. “Our company has been in business over 30 years and have
worked on an open shop basis all of this time,” Herman Brown explained.
“It is an arduous and expensive task” to sue the union, he continued, “but
we intend going through with it with the idea that it will help the
employees as well as the employers in this State in the future.”67 The
company’s lawyer was even more livid in his address to the Texas State Bar.
“Not once have Brown & Root employees engaged in a strike. Not once in
a period of nearly 40 years have Brown & Root workers walked off the job
for so much as a single hour because of dissatisfaction with wage, hour, or
other policies of the company,” he exclaimed. “Brown & Root employees
have no union and have sought no union… [This] is the story of a Texas
contractor ensnared in the fetters of a giant labor conspiracy and compelled
to fight for the right to obey the law and stay in business.”68
The company claimed that their resistance to the closed shop was about
liberty rather than the bottom-line, but in private, executives suggested
otherwise. Herman Brown explained to another contractor on the Bull
Shoal Dam project that if the project was not “operated on an open shop
basis… it would probably cost us from a million to two million dollars extra
in the increase in labor rates.” Brown went on to assure him that the AFL’s
arguments against Brown & Root were “a pure bluff” and that the labor
leader already knew that “they have lost the battle at Bull Shoals.”69 The
Houston Building Trades Council estimated that Brown & Root’s wages
in Houston ranged from $0.50 to $0.75 per hour lower than the union
rate, and argued that “working conditions are also far below the stan-
dards in like employment in this community established by years of work,
sacrifice and organizational endeavor.”70
These facts notwithstanding, Brown & Root won its suit. Courts ruled
against the AFL and enjoined the union from picketing Brown & Root in
Texas, although the court made a point to say that “legal picketing”
(left relatively undefined) would still be allowed.71 Brown & Root’s
272 B.A. BEASLEY

legislative victory, and its staunch anti-union stance, reverberated across the
industry. At Humble Oil Refinery, for instance, workers complained that 300
Brown & Root contract workers had replaced the unionized maintenance
workers, all of whom had been laid off.72 In other words, “the battle of Bull
Shoals” mattered beyond Brown & Root’s worksites. It enabled companies
to evade worker demands by contracting out jobs to anti-union companies.
Using right-to-work laws at home represented only one anti-union
strategy. In fact, in the 1950s, Brown & Root increasingly operated
overseas. The company repaired war damage in Guam and built new air
bases for NATO and the US Air Force in France and Spain. But Brown &
Root’s primary expertise lay in oilfield construction. The company was
among the first to develop offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico
in the 1950s and soon moved on to the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, and
Peru.73 The company continued its overseas work, consulting with the
Turkish government to construct a pipeline spanning Turkey, Syria, Israel,
Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.74 Based in Houston, but performing work
elsewhere, Brown & Root was everywhere and nowhere, giving a double
meaning to the term “offshore.”
Oilfield services company Halliburton, Brown & Root’s parent com-
pany, also invested an increasing amount of its resources—and gained an
increasing percentage of its profits—abroad. By 1960, Halliburton oper-
ated in 26 countries outside the US, “serving all the principal drilling areas
of the free world.” This strategy proved extensively useful when political
upheaval, declining oil reserves, or labor unrest threatened a particular
drilling site; in 1960, for instance, “expanded drilling programs in
Argentina and Libya, as well as increased activity in Mexico, Peru, and the
European countries, offset the further decline of operations, and resulted in
an increase in Halliburton’s foreign business.”75 By 1959, Halliburton
employed over 200 US employees who had been in foreign service to the
company, averaging 5 years each working abroad. The company also
employed over 1,000 non-US citizens internationally.76
The fact that Brown & Root promoted right-to-work legislation at home
and benefitted from international construction abroad was hardly coinci-
dental. The Cold War constituted the zenith of government-sponsored
corporate growth, as construction contractors like Brown & Root negotiated
federal contracts at home and abroad that boosted their bottom lines.
International projects made good business sense as the Cold War chilled
during the 1950s and 1960s.
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 273

In addition to this federal largesse, the unruliness of blue-collar labor at

home encouraged the company to focus its efforts abroad, often in loca-
tions where government regulation protected labor less thoroughly.
Moreover, the company and those like it benefited directly from the
expansion of manufacturing overseas, often at the expense of US manu-
facturing. From the 1950s onward, Brown & Root built factories and oil
refineries in countries as diverse as Japan, Botswana, Mexico, Nicaragua,
and Spain, and fought for a contract in Syria that they lost to a
Czechoslovakian construction company.77 At the same time, the per-
centage of global oil refining performed in the US declined while refining
abroad increased.78
This shift of manufacturing overseas corresponded with an emphasis on
white-collar labor in the domestic oil industry. For staunch anti-union
companies like Brown & Root, this constituted a deliberate strategy of
sorts, since many white-collar workers were not protected under existing
labor legislation. Furthermore, white-collar workers like engineers had
largely been unsuccessful at organizing unions. At oilfield services company
Sperry Gyroscope, an engineers’ union was decertified, demoralizing
engineering union members across the country. In 1960, observers pre-
dicted, “the Engineers and Scientists of America, a professionals-only
national union, ‘will fade out of existence this month’”. They worried that
“there have been no new units of any significance formed within the past
several years… Even the AFL-CIO, with all its resources, has been com-
pletely unable to record any real progress.” TVA Engineers Association
President Gene M. Wilhoite worried that “each group [has] made the same
mistake, they underestimated the power of the non-member, and allowed
their membership to drop so low that the non-member voted them out.”79
Although US companies like Brown & Root began building refineries
overseas during the postwar years, moving existing refineries offshore often
proved challenging. The fixed cost of refinery equipment was high, making
automation and replacing blue-collar workers with white-collar workers
more profitable for many companies.80 By 1958, professional, managerial,
and technical refinery workers outnumbered unskilled workers. Of the
refineries’ 13,000 Houston workers, 3300 were management, technicians,
clerical and sales workers, or services employees; the majority of the
remaining numbers were skilled and semi-skilled workers.81 It was this new
balance of labor in the refineries that would factor into the labor defeat at
Shell.
274 B.A. BEASLEY

THE STRIKE AT SHELL

These industry developments—the oil industry’s investment in union
busting, its shift toward white-collar employment, and its relocation of the
blue-collar labor of extraction and refining abroad—culminated in the Shell
strike of 1962. On August 18, 1962, 2200 workers at the Shell Oil
Refinery in Houston went on strike to protest unfair work assignments,
problems with seniority and employment security, and the increase in
contract workers at the expense of unionized employees at the refinery.82
The plant, which boasted more than two thousand blue-collar workers
producing 135,000 barrels of oil every day, was the Gulf Coast’s largest.83
The company responded to the strike by replacing the blue-collar
workers with 1170 white-collar staff members. As the strike wore on, Shell
argued that the refinery “continued operating at better than pre-strike
levels with 1000 less workers” with “the only cutbacks… in engineering
work, research and technical studies, and some maintenance” because
“those normally engaged in work in these areas are manning the produc-
tion equipment.”84 Nonunion “supervisory, clerical and technical per-
sonnel” operating the refinery proved embarrassing to the union fighting
for the right of workers to having a say in the plant while it also under-
scored Shell’s case.85
For Shell, the strike was “an opportunity to try new methods of oper-
ating.” “Supervisors, engineers, researchers, clerical workers, accountants,
secretaries and stenographers” took charge of the plant, working 12-hour
shifts seven days a week. Shell vice president for personnel and industrial
relations John Quilty explained the white-collar workers’ enthusiasm this
way: “The supervisors, the engineers, they’d been wanting to get their
hands on those units for years… They’d been wanting to show these
operators that they could run them.”86 Shell’s strong resistance was
unprecedented. Union representatives claimed that it was “the most
extreme position [in bargaining] by a major oil company” and was an
attempt to “force contract retrogression.”
Fundamentally, what was at stake was the question of whether the oil
industry in the US would be a blue-collar or white-collar one. Workers
protested the impact of automation in replacing them, as well as the
company’s policy of contracting out for maintenance and other blue-collar
workers rather than hiring union-eligible employees. The company argued
that it should have “the right to determine whether plant work should be
done by its own employees or by those of outside contractors,” and said
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 275

that the strike had demonstrated that the plant could run on fewer workers.
The company announced plans to lay off almost 400 workers at the strike’s
end. Strikers pointed to the fact that Shell had already laid off 600 workers
in the past 5 years, making a tremendous impact on the Houston
economy.87
The strike lasted almost a year, making it the longest in the oil industry’s
history.88 The settlement was a tremendous blow for organized labor in
Houston. Shell reduced the workforce by 400 while offering a 5% wage
increase for employees who kept their jobs. The union’s biggest fears,
concerning automation and management prerogative, were decided in
favor of the company.89 The new contract “allow[ed] the company to
continue contracting out construction work” to anti-union companies like
Brown & Root and “g[a]ve the company more flexibility in using workers
for several duties.”90 In other words, the strike served as a boon to rather
than a check on the anti-labor politics Brown & Root represented.

WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATS
The popular image of Texas oil traditionally focused on the wildcatter, the
fiercely independent, virile (and white) oilman who struck out on his own
to strike it rich. Blue-collar oil workers sought to reframe that image to
celebrate an unionized collective of workers who were more likely to call a
wildcat strike than to identify as wildcatters. But the Shell strike cemented a
different image of the oil industry employee, one that would be increasingly
important in Houston in the coming decades. This worker combined the
fierce autonomy of the wildcatter with the shrewd expertise of the engi-
neer. It was this worker—not the refinery worker or oilfield tool manu-
facturer—who would represent the future of the US oil industry.
Houstonian Will Wilson evoked this slippage between the wildcatter
and the engineer-manager eloquently in a speech he gave to the General
Press Club opposing Democrat John Connally’s bid for Governor of Texas
in 1962. “John Connally’s career in the oil business was not on the Horatio
Alger formula of the poor but proud boy who, by hard work and saving his
money, became successful,” Wilson told the crowd. He went on to explain:
“[Connally] is not a geologist, an engineer, a landman, a roughneck, or a
production man. He did not work his way up in the oil business,” Wilson
noted with disdain. By contrast, Wilson bragged, “I have a degree in
geology, have rough necked on drilling rigs, have been a land surveyor in
the oil fields, and have practiced oil and gas law.” Connally was nothing
276 B.A. BEASLEY

more than an “‘aide’ to a big rich man,” famed only for being Lyndon
Johnson’s campaign manager. “I respect a lot more the man who stands on
his own feet and makes his way,” he concluded.91
Blue-collar roughneck or production man, white-collar geologist,
engineer, or lawyer—these occupied the same realm of masculine oilfield
authenticity for Wilson. But this slippage ignored the displacement of
blue-collar labor that white-collar workers had wrought in the Houston oil
industry while bestowing the engineer or manager with the
rough-and-tumble Texas oilfield spirit. In an impressive sleight of hand, the
engineer who replaced the “production man” in the Shell refinery became
equivalent to him, enchanted with the wildcat spirit. The wildcat strike was
nowhere to be seen; the enemy, instead, was the effete “aide,” a political
elite. The production man and the engineer, the manager and the worker,
it seemed, could stand together against this decidedly non-wildcat figure.
At the same time, the geographical imaginary of oil in Houston had
shifted decidedly. Increasingly, Houston as an oil city was understood as a
sprawling metropolitan area that carried important financial functions for a
global oil market. In this new mental map of the city, Houston was no
longer a central node in a regional system, but a large urbanized area with
connections extending nationally and globally. Now, the role of oilfield
services was central: “Houston [has] 43.3% of the nation’s petroleum
equipment and suppliers,” the Chamber of Commerce boasted.92 And
even beyond the city, Houston’s reputation as an oil city had spread. In
1965, Pennzoil relocated its headquarters to Houston after 75 years in
Pennsylvania in an “attempt,” as one company spokesperson put it, “to be
more centrally located in domestic and foreign oil operations.”93
Now, Houston was the center of a metropolitan region, which “sustain
[ed] an expanding population in the seven contiguous counties” but also
“support[ed] population growth and prosperity in the second—and even
in the third—tier of surrounding counties.” Houston was no longer a
central node in an oil network, but a shopping center where “consumers
within the wholesale trade territory of Metropolitan Houston” could come
to exert their “expanding purchasing power.”94 In this new calculus, the
white-collar suburb was a central part of what made Houston an oil city. In
fact, Houston had embarked on a tenacious annexation campaign that had
made it, by 1960, “the largest incorporated urban area in the world.” In a
span of 12 years, the city had “increased its land area by about five and
one-half times.”95 And this process of annexation further established the
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 277

city as a sprawling metropolitan area rather than an urban center bound to

its rural hinterlands.
Moreover, one of the city’s fastest growing sectors was petrochemical
manufacture, an industry that involved industrial manufacturing along with
large investments in research and development. “In a mere 20 years the
Houston area has become the principal center of petrochemical manu-
facture in the United States,” du Pont plant manager Thomas Chase
proclaimed, and one of the main reasons he noted was “access to skilled
employees.”96 As Executive Vice-President of the Houston Chamber of
Commerce, Marvin Hurley, explained, “We are now in an era of
technologically-based, science-oriented industry, and our continued eco-
nomic development will depend increasingly upon the application of the
fruits of science and technology to our natural resources… The face of
Houston has been remade, as the urbanized area has reached into the
countryside in every direction.”97
And the imagined future of oil involved as few blue-collar workers as
possible. A.W. Rose, president of the Houston-based Petroleum
Equipment Suppliers Association, predicted that “substantially before the
year 2000 it is conceivable that an automated oil well drilling rig will be
operated at a control console in an air-conditioned cab; information and
instructions will be fed back and forth by computers located at an infor-
mation center miles from the drilling site; [and] robots on the ocean floor
will do underwater drilling and well completion.” In fact, a prototype for
an automated drilling rig was slated to be shown at the 1966 International
Petroleum Exposition.98

CONCLUSION
If the 1946 general strike announced Houston’s emergence as a
self-conscious working-class city, the Shell strike symbolized the strategic
and cultural importance of white-collar labor to the city’s image by the
early 1960s. Whereas white-collar employees had joined in the general
strike after the war, by 1962 they were being relied upon as strikebreakers,
with engineers and managers stepping in enthusiastically to prove that they
could operate a refinery—indeed, to demonstrate that the modern,
high-tech refinery should be the realm of white-collar experts rather than
blue-collar industrial workers. This development signified a new division in
the oil industry, as well as a new imaginary of what the domestic oil
industry was and who its workers were. Not coincidentally, the Shell strike
278 B.A. BEASLEY

dovetailed with the rising importance of the white-collar oilfield services

industry and the transfer of much oil extraction and refining outside the
United States.
The transformation of Houston from an extraction- and
manufacturing-based municipality to a metropolis driven by corporate
headquarters and oilfield services firms effected a transnational renegotia-
tion of labor power. Materially, blue-collar jobs moved overseas, while a
greater proportion of Houston’s oil workers were in white-collar occupa-
tions with fewer bargaining rights. At the same time, for oil industry
executives to promote a corporate vision in which extraction and pro-
ductive activity like refining occurred abroad, with management the only
industry function occurring onshore, they would have to transform man-
ufacturing from the symbolic birthright of the white middle class to a job
category that was understood to be performed most efficiently by workers
of color outside the United States.
This transition occurred at the same moment when African-American
and Mexican and Mexican-American oil workers were making unprece-
dented gains in reducing workplace discrimination, particularly in refiner-
ies. However, the rebranding of oil in Houston as a white-collar rather than
blue-collar industry both undermined blue-collar civil rights advances at
home and cemented the relationship between whiteness and white-collar
job categories. Outsourcing and the championing of expertise were both
responses to domestic labor unrest and imperial strategies. The relocation
of oil refining overseas reduced domestic workers’ power while promoting
a new ideology of American imperialism that imagined the US as a man-
ager of integrated global production rather than as a producer or exporter
in its own right.
This local story carried profound transnational consequences. Centering
the white-collar oil employee, both materially and imaginatively, in
Houston reracialized the American oil worker as white and male in a
moment when African-American and Mexican-American workers were
making unprecedented gains. At the same time, the relocation of the
blue-collar labor of oil production abroad—to countries including
Venezuela, Brazil, Nigeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—helped to forge an
association between productive labor and “elsewhere.” In this formulation,
the US was the home of oil experts and expertise, responsible for teaching
those elsewhere to do the dirty productive labor. This transition helped to
displace a producerist vision of American empire—one which imagined the
US as a Fordist land of production engineering material goods for export
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 279

to the rest of the world—to a service vision. This new vision of US global
power celebrated the engineer, the manager, the expert as the central
figure of American capitalism. While the oil industry would increasingly
send its extraction and production work abroad, US experts would con-
tinue to oversee the increasingly global assembly line.

NOTES
1. “End Threat to Shut Houston Utilities,” New York Times, February 25, 1946.
2. George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s
(Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 137.
3. “40,000 Workers Plan March on Houston’s City Hall Today,” The
Washington Post, February 26, 1946; “700 City Workers End 7-Day
Houston Tie Up,” New York Times, February 27, 1946.
4. Tyler Priest, “Labor’s Last Stand in the Refinery: The Shell Oil Strike of
1962–1963,” Houston History 5, no. 2 (2008): 12. Priest also identifies the
strike at Shell as a crucial turning point in Houston’s labor history and in
the labor history of oil more broadly.
5. Priest, “Labor’s Last Stand,” 13.
6. Ruth A. Allen, George N. Green, and James V. Reese, “Strikes,” Handbook
of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/
oes02), accessed July 31, 2015. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by
the Texas State Historical Association.
7. See Sophia Lee, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New
Right (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
8. Roger M. Olien, “Oil and Gas Industry,” Handbook of Texas Online
(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/doogz), acces-
sed October 7, 2014. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas
State Historical Association; David G. McComb, “Houston, Texas,”
Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/
online/articles/hdh03), accessed October 7, 2014. Uploaded on June
15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
9. Michael R. Botson, Jr., Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 12; McComb,
“Houston, Texas,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/
handbook/online/articles/hdh03), accessed October 7, 2014. Uploaded on
June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
10. Olien, “Oil and Gas Industry,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.
tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/doogz), accessed July 31,
2015. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical
Association.
11. Ibid.
280 B.A. BEASLEY

12. Railroad Commission of Texas, “Crude Oil Production and Well Counts
(since 1935),” available at http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/research-
and-statistics/production-data/historical-production-data/crude-oil-
production-and-well-counts-since-1935/.
13. Karen R. Merrill, “Texas Metropole: Oil, the American West, and US
Power in the Postwar Years,” Journal of American History 99, no.
1 (2012): 197–207.
14. McComb, “Houston, Texas”; Botson, Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes
Tool Company, 37.
15. Clara H. Lewis and John R. Stockton, “Manufacturing Industries,”
Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/
online/articles/dzm01), accessed October 7, 2014. Uploaded on June
15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
16. US Energy Information Administration, “US Imports of Crude Oil,”
available at http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=
PET&s=MCRIMUS1&f=A. The United States had imported over one
hundred million barrels of oil during the early 1920s, but imports declined
until after the Second World War due to increasing demand. Oil imports
rose steadily until reaching an all-time high of 3.695 trillion barrels in 2005.
17. The Seven Sisters included, “the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later
Exxon), the Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony, later Mobil,
which eventually merged with Exxon), the Standard Oil Company of
California (Socal, later renamed Chevron), the Texas Oil Company (later
renamed Texaco), Gulf Oil (which later merged with Chevron),
Anglo-Persian (later British Petroleum), and Royal Dutch/Shell.” See
“Milestones: 1921–1936,” US Department of State Office of the Historian,
available at http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/RedLine.
18. For a full history of oilfield services companies’ shifting business strategies,
see Betsy A. Beasley, “At Your Service: Houston and the Globalization of
US Global Power” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2016).
19. Houston magazine, April 1945, 8.
20. Houston magazine, September 1945, 63.
21. Houston magazine, April 1945, 8.
22. Botson, Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company, 41–50.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 135–136. Later Local 2457 dropped these charges under pressure
from CIO whites, who promised that they would work with the WLB to
rectify union segregation.
25. Ibid., 136.
26. Ibid., 128–141.
27. Ibid.
28. Marilyn D. Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity: The Houston Municipal
Workers Strike of 1946,” The Houston Review: History and Culture of the
Gulf Coast 4, no. 3 (1982): 137.
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 281

29. “City Workers Strike in Houston,” New York Times, February 21, 1946;
Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 136; Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity,” 137.
30. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 136.
31. Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity,” 139.
32. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 136.
33. Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 35.
34. “Ask Volunteer Workers’ Aid in Houston Strike,” Chicago Daily Tribune,
February 25, 1946.
35. “40,000 Workers Plan March on Houston’s City Hall Today,” The
Washington Post, February 26, 1946.
36. Ibid.
37. “Houston Faces Martial Law in Strike Threat,” Chicago Daily Tribune,
February 23, 1946.
38. “40,000 Workers Plan March on Houston’s City Hall Today”; “700 City
Workers End 7-Day Houston Tie Up,” New York Times, February 27,
1946; Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 137.
39. “40,000 Workers Plan March on Houston’s City Hall Today.”
40. Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity,” 147.
41. Ibid.
42. “Union Leader Hugs Houston Mayor at Municipal Strike End,” Daily
Boston Globe, February 27, 1946.
43. “NY Transit Strike Averted; Houston Walkout Settled,” Washington Post,
February 27, 1946.
44. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 137.
45. Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity,” 137–138.
46. Ibid., 140.
47. “Strike Looms in Houston,” New York Times, June 29, 1947. The planned
strike would have affected more than $150 million in industrial building,
and in response, oil refineries and chemical plants laid off craftsmen and
limited operations.
48. “Houston, Galveston Hit by Docker Strike,” New York Times, March 18,
1950.
49. “Houston Buses Stalled: Strike of 1,200 Halts Traffic in South’s Largest
City,” New York Times, November 5, 1950. Bus drivers were operating
buses for public transportation, but the buses were operated by a private
company rather than the city.
50. Ibid.
51. Sophia Lee, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New
Right, Loc. 1896 (Kindle edition).
282 B.A. BEASLEY

52. Ray Marshall, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes in the
Southerns Peroleum Refining Industry,” Social Forces 42, no. 2 (1963):
186–195.
53. Lee, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right, Loc.
1926–2129 (Kindle edition). Lee shows that the Taft-Hartley Act “had
bifurcated the NLRB,” turning over jurisdiction in this case to a general
counsel “closely allied with the administrations probusiness, anti-New Deal,
and antilabor wing.” Had Taft-Hartley not had this effect, the NLRB likely
would have considered the case.
54. Emilio Zamora, “The Failed Promise of Wartime Opportunity for
Mexicans in the Texas Oil Industry,” in Texas Labor History, ed. James C.
Maroney (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2013), 333.
55. Marshall, “Some Factors,” 187.
56. Ibid.
57. Zamora, “The Failed Promise,” 322–323.
58. Ibid.
59. Marshall, “Some Factors,” 190.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., 187.
62. Ibid., 188.
63. Lee, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right, Loc.
2181 (Kindle edition).
64. Rhinehart, “A Lesson in Unity,” 137–138.
65. Everett L. Looney, “The Issues in the Brown & Root Case from the
Standpoint of Management,” July 6, 1951, in Folder 4, Box 14. Brown &
Root Collection. Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice
University.
66. Ibid.
67. Herman Brown to Fred A. Hartley, Jr., December 5, 1950, in Folder 4,
Box 14. Brown & Root Collection. Woodson Research Center, Fondren
Library, Rice University.
68. Looney, “The Issues in the Brown & Root Case.”
69. Herman Brown to Jack B. Bonny, Morrison-Knudsen Co., Inc., Boise,
Idaho, letter, March 25, 1949, in Folder 6, Box 9. Brown & Root
Collection. Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.
70. Houston Building and Trades Council, “Please Put Brown & Root, Inc. on
Your Personal Unfair List,” in Folder 4, Box 14. Brown & Root
Collection. Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.
71. A.R. Johnson to J.E. Tyson, September 11, 1951, in Folder 4, Box 14.
Brown & Root Collection. Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library,
Rice University; Everett Looney to Herman Brown, February 6, 1952, in
Folder 4, Box 14. Brown & Root Collection. Woodson Research Center,
 WHITE-COLLAR WILDCATTERS AND WILDCAT STRIKES … 283

Fondren Library, Rice University; Ben Powell to L.H. Durst, July 2, 1952,
in Folder 4, Box 14. Brown & Root Collection. Woodson Research
Center, Fondren Library, Rice University; “Brown, Root Plea in Union
Case Refused,” Houston Chronicle, May 21, 1952.
72. Baytown Employees Federation, “The Record Does Speak for Itself,”
November 2, 1960, in Folder 3, Box 14, Brown & Root Collection.
Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.
73. “Company History.” Folder 11, Box 9. Builders: Herman & George R.
Brown Book Research Files, 1898–1989. MS464. Woodson Research
Center. Fondren Library. Rice University. Houston, Texas.
74. “Company History.” Folder 11, Box 9. Builders: Herman & George R.
Brown Book Research Files, 1898–1989.
75. 1960 Halliburton Annual Report.
76. 1959 Halliburton Annual Report, 9.
77. D. Moreno to Ben Powell, Jr., Herman Brown, George Brown, L.T. Colin,
L.H. Durst, and C.J. Rollo on Middle East projects, February 24, 1956,
Folder 3, Box 24, Brown & Root Collection.
78. “A Summary of Brown & Root, Inc. for Chamber of Commerce of the
United States.” Folder 11, Box 9. Builders: Herman & George R. Brown
Book Research Files, 1898–1989.
79. “Unions Fear Bog-Down in Drive for Engineers,” Engineering
Employment Practices Newsletter, November 11, 1960.
80. Werner, “Labor Organizations in the American Petroleum Industry,” 828–
830.
81. Kenneth E. Gray, A Report on the Politics of Houston (Cambridge, MA:
Joint Center for Urban Studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and Harvard University, 1960), I–21.
82. “Year-Long Shell Oil Strike Ends on Vote of 1,500 to 40,” New York
Times, August 7, 1963; “Shell’s Strike Talks Recessed,” The Austin
Statesman, July 25, 1963.
83. Ed Townsend, “People at Work: Union Gets Foreign Aid,” Christian
Science Monitor, June 8, 1963; Priest, “Labor’s Last Stand,” 8.
84. Townsend, “People at Work.”
85. “Strike at Shell Oil Refinery in Houston Settled after a Year,” Wall Street
Journal, August 5, 1963; “Strikes and Automation,” New York Times,
August 12, 1963.
86. Priest, “Labor’s Last Stand,” 12.
87. Townsend, “People at Work.”
88. “Year-Long Shell Oil Strike Ends on Vote of 1,500 to 40.”
89. “Strike at Shell Oil Refinery in Houston Settled after a Year.”
284 B.A. BEASLEY

90. “Shell Oil Workers Return to Jobs,” The Christian Science Monitor, August
8, 1963.
91. Will Wilson, “Speech before Fort Worth General Press Club Luncheon,”
January 16, 1962, 4–5. In Folder 13, Box 4, Frankie Carter Randolph
Papers.
92. Houston magazine, May 1965, 58.
93. Houston magazine, July 1965, 46.
94. Houston magazine, March 1965, 114.
95. Gray, A Report on the Politics of Houston, I-2, I-3.
96. Houston magazine, February 1965, 25.
97. Marvin Hurley, “As I Recall It…,” Houston magazine, October 1965, 27.
98. Houston magazine, March 1965, 38.
 Heroic “Black Gold”? Working for Oil
and Gas in the Western Siberian Oil
and Gas Complex of the 1960–1970s

Dunja Krempin

INTRODUCTION
The development of the Western Siberian oil and gas complex as the last
mega-energy project of the Soviet Union in the 1960s to 1980s could draw
upon a rich history of Soviet energy projects. The definite industrialization
and electrification of the Soviet Union under Stalin forced masses of peasants
into all kinds of industries and industrial mega projects. Workers and spe-
cialists were needed in many branches of the energy industry, such as the
construction of giant water-power stations since the 1930s1 or the restruc-
turing of the Baku oil region as the main oil basis of the country before the
Second World War. It was in this region that masses of unskilled Muslim
workers and Russian specialists could be hired.2 The new vast oil and gas
regions after the Second World War represented a significant change
according to its climate. Out of these at least, the Volga–Urals were still a
populated and more industrialized part of the Soviet Union. The oil and gas
industry of less developed and unsettled Western Siberia, the “Third Baku”,
could neither rely on local population nor on migrants willing to work in this
remote and harsh area. As a result, the Western Siberian oil and gas complex

D. Krempin (&)
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

© The Author(s) 2018 285

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_11
286 D. KREMPIN

formed a special case regarding the challenging exploitation of arctic

resources and the mobilization of workers in the late Soviet planned economy
under Brezhnev.3
The allocation of resources in the Eastern and Northern parts of the
country forced the Soviet planners to think about workers’ mobilization.
Under Stalin, forced settlement was used to exploit and develop similar
areas of Northern European Russia and Siberia.4 The process of
Dekulakization involved the collectivization campaign and forced labor
within the Gulag system, during which former peasants were directed into
industrial production and industrial megaprojects. Several immense
mobilization campaigns such as Stakhanovism,5 shock work or socialist
competitions aimed at increasing productivity, allowed the establishment
of “new proletarian forces” and showing the superiority of the Soviet
system. Later, in Khrushchev’s “Thaw” such forced labor was abolished
and work relations “normalized”. Wage reforms and a “democratization
process” created the image of a higher participation of workers at their
workplaces6 and established consumerist attitudes among the Soviet citi-
zens.7 As a result, work conditions including extremely cold temperatures,
work on permafrost grounds in winter and swamplands in summer,8 did
not seem to be attractive to the average Soviet worker of the 1970s.
Moreover, such conditions meant an immense technological challenge and
demanded specialized oilmen (neftianiki) and gasmen (gazoviki). In
addition, there was great demand for blue-collar workers to build up a
reliable infrastructure who still had to be mobilized for work within the
region.
This essay provides a case study of labor and labor relations within the
Western Siberian oil and gas complex in the 1960s and 1970s. First, the
essay focuses on recruitment, working and living conditions, labor relations
and social impacts. Second, it examines the “Siberian” media campaign as a
mobilization campaign of the late Soviet Union. I argue that oil labor in
Siberia well reflected Brezhnev’s welfare promises9 of “developed social-
ism” and a changing status of Siberia from a provincial periphery to a
promising economic and military future region with a global perspective.
Lastly the paper discusses the relevance of continuing labor shortage, over-
bureaucratization of the planning system and full employment that caused
social problems and missing technological and social inputs to the late
Soviet Unions planned economy.
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 287

MOBILIZING WORKERS: RECRUITMENT AND MOTIVATION

Until the mid-1960s the Northern part of the Western Siberian lowlands
east of the Ural Mountains was one of the most remote areas of the Soviet
Union, hosting only forest, agriculture and fishing industries. Since the
1930s, geologists assumed that huge amounts of oil and gas were situated
in the region, though it was only after the Second World War that geo-
logical works were intensified. Despite this, even after promising deposits
were found, the political and economic leadership hesitated to take a great
leap into Siberia. Although the first decrees on industrial development were
issued in the early 1960s, decision-makers only discussed the feasibility of
exploiting Arctic resources. The Soviet oil industry still seemed to be well
based on the “Second Baku” in the Volga–Ural oil province which was
located in the densely settled and industrially developed Western part of
the country.10 After a trip by Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin and the head
of the state planning organization (Gosplan) and former oilman, Nikolai
Baibakov, to the Tiumen’ region in January 1968,11 did Western Siberian
oil and gas gain in importance. Kosygin gave a speech on the 24th party
congress in 1971, establishing the Western Siberian oil and gas complex as
the most important base (“krupneishaia baza”) of oil and gas in the East.12
During the 1970s, the region’s importance continued to grow because of
decreasing production in the older oil regions and rising export obliga-
tions13 called for an increasing output in the first Tiumen’ oil fields and
later in Northern Tiumen’ gas fields.14
Soviet planners to some extent could revert to former experiences of
recruiting workforce for the oil and gas industry. The Baku oil industries of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century mostly attracted young,
unbound and unskilled Muslim workers which caused high fluctuation,
and in the 1920s even provoked political rebellion due to nationality
conflicts, an imbalance of supply and demand in specialists and low
working and living standards.15 During the Second World War, the Soviet
oil industry moved in a rushed campaign with all its technical equipment to
the Volga–Ural region to prohibit the Caucasian oil fields from falling
under German control.16 Whole working collectives were, therefore,
moved to the East to develop the new oil region as fast as possible. The
demand for specialists in that situation even became so important that oil
specialists were demobilized from the Soviet army.17 Regardless, up to the
1960s all Soviet oil or gas production fields as well as important educational
288 D. KREMPIN

centers were still located in the Western and Southern part of the country,
which were densely populated and of moderate climate.
Therefore, it was a challenge for Soviet planners to attract workforce to
Northern Siberia. Not only were specialists needed but huge numbers of
blue-collar workers and construction units were necessary to convert set-
tlements such as Surgut, Nizhnevartovsk, Nadym and Novyi Urengoi,
pipelines, transport infrastructure, communal facilities, into real towns.
Others were to be employed in food production, medical services, schools,
and canteens. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet workers had freedom of
movement and of occupational choice, and this caused certain difficulties
for the planners since the workers did not move in the desired patterns. In
1965, 90% of the workers were recruited from the older oil and gas regions
with the help of media campaigns, which announced and promoted the
work in the media (radio, newspapers).18 The CPSS took the lead in this
policy, which not only appealed to single specialists but to whole working
collectives. Workers were then employed in regional trusts (glavki) which
were the sub-units of the Federal Ministries in each region.19 After the first
workers were hired the news about the Tiumen’ region mostly spread via
word-to-mouth recommendation to former colleagues and friends all over
the country.20
The transfer of personnel (perevod) from other trusts of the same min-
istry or other construction projects was a form of recruiting the leading
cadres, specialist engineers and geologists from older oil and gas regions.
The newly formed regional oil and gas trust Glavtiumenneftegaz21 was
provided with specialists from Bashkiria, Tatarstan and Kuybyshev, the
so-called Second Baku, in the late 1960s22 when the region’s important
status was officially supported. It underlined the significance of the project
that there were not only young enthusiastic workers sent to Western
Siberia but also specialists with long-term experience. Other oil and gas
specialists came from the Tiumen’ Industrial Institute, and from 1973 on
some were recruited from a reserve23 which every industrial enterprises in
the Soviet Union ought to provide.24 The demand for specialists steadily
rose: The first period of Western Siberian development was characterized
by accessible resources that could be developed fast, but the late 1970s
were characterized by a setback of oil exploitation and the drillers had to
exploit deeper layers. A call-invitation (vyzov-priglashenie) as a form of
recruitment for specialists remained rare in the Tiumen’ region.25 Both
groups included the “fanatics” of the great Tiumen’ explorations, as well as
many specialists who went to Siberia with the credo: “If I have to then I
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 289

have to.”26 This attitude was typically a result of the recommendations of

their scientific supervisors during their studies or after long “educational”
talks with authorities.
Fluctuation, which was an immense problem, was also influenced by
difficulties of the migrants to adapt to the natural conditions and the harsh
climate in Western Siberia. This is why in the beginning of the 1970s
three-fourth of the working force in the Tiumen’ region originated from
Southern Siberia27: It was an attempt to prohibit the long-lasting adaptive
changes of workers from Southern and Western parts of the Soviet Union
to the region’s climate. During the 1970s, workers from Central Asia were
successfully settled in the Tiumen’ region and the planners reached their
goal to keep emigration lower than immigration. In the early 1970s,
technical schools were opened in the region to educate the local youth for
work in the oil and gas industries, mostly in such professions which needed
heavy physical work. The gas trust Tiumengazprom did not have its own
basic educational institutes in the Northern Tiumen’ region for training
their own workers, in contrast to the oil production industries.28 Unskilled
workers for the construction and transport units, however, were directed to
Tiumen’ through the Administration for Organized Recruitment (orgna-
bor). The workers recruited by this institution were in most cases allocated
to the Northern regions.29 Their number rose 2.4 times between 1967 and
1976, but nevertheless only represented 3–8% of all recruitment.30
Moreover, the Soviet Youth Organization Komsomol was one of the
main suppliers of workers in all areas of Western Siberia where the
“Northern fee” (severnaia nadbavka31) was too low, especially in the
Middle-Ob oil region.32 In the 1960s more than 20,000 young workers
were sent to Western Siberia by public call (obshtestvennyi prizyv).33 The
planning bodies for that purpose used a system that had been established
since the Stalinist period: young graduates were obliged by the state to
work at a working place they had been allocated to for a 3-year period. The
young workers were hired in two ways: Through the Komsomol vouchers
(komsomolskie putevki) or through the “student construction brigades”
(studencheskie stroitelnye otriady). The Komsomol vouchers were part of a
system that directed young workers to the army or to top-priority industrial
projects” (udarnye stroiki). The origin of this youth movement goes back
to the late 1950s and was formalized in the early 1960s through a decree
“On the Participation of Komsomol Organizations of Moscow, Saint
Petersburg and Kiev in the industrial construction of the Virgin Lands”.34
The student construction brigades had been deployed since the beginning
290 D. KREMPIN

of the energetic development of Western Siberia. In 1966, the CC CPSU

and the Council of Ministers released a decree “On the Public Call of the
Youth to the Important Construction Projects of the Five-year Period,”
and already in the same year more than 800 Komsomol volunteers arrived
in Western Siberia and started to work for Glavtiumenneftegaz, the local oil
trust. In addition, 1600 students arrived in 1965 for work in construction
brigades.35 The Komsomol was responsible for the building and mainte-
nance of oil and gas objects and for that purpose offered brigades with
young specialists. Simultaneously, it was also responsible for building up an
infrastructure (towns, railways, etc.); for example, Ukrainian students and
students from other major Western Soviet cities worked in Western Siberia
during the summer months.36 The Komsomol youth trusts Shaimgazstroi
and the trusts Severgazstroi und Tiumengazmontazh were responsible for
the quick development of the gas deposit Medvezhe in the Iamalo-Nenets
district and the building of the city Nadym; and among the tasks of the
Komsomol trust Tiumengazmontazh in Tiumen’ was the building of
houses and sanitary facilities.37 Students also delivered medical services and
acted as cultural mediators and agitators of the communist ideology.38
Another possibility to meet the demand for manpower was the re-
cruitment of army reservists. As these were not specialists they were
employed in construction work, but this did not always go smoothly. In
one document from 1980, for example, the officials complained that the
number of reservists remained below the planning targets. They argued
that the public call was organized too late and led to delayed recruitment.
Again, in the same document, the inappropriate living conditions were
named as one reason for workers not to come to Western Siberia.39 Even
now, it remains quite unclear whether prisoners were then forced to work
in Siberia, as mentioned by the German newspaper Der Spiegel.40
Nevertheless, due to the shortage of manpower, trusts had to hire everyone
they could get: Worker brigades even contained former miners, police
officers, peasants and delinquents.41
Mobilization under those circumstances seemed to be quite difficult.
A Russian scholar characterized the motivation of the workers as follows:
“The first [group – annotation D.K.] are romantics … the second group
formed those who have read, and this warrantable, that there will be a lot
of work in all areas and analogous, good payment. These came alone or
with their families. For a short period or for a longer period or forever. The
third group consisted of those who wanted to prove themselves, their skills
and their possibilities.”42
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 291

This shows that material benefits played an important role for the
workers’ motivation. Due to Brezhnev’s ideas of “developed socialism”
and welfare state, the Soviet citizens had developed a consumerist attitude.
This found its roots in the Khrushchev era and let material reasons appear
as one of the main criteria for attractive workplaces. Incomes ought to
provide what was considered to be a “normal life”.43 Therefore, to make
the recruitment more attractive for the second group, the workers obtained
material benefits, for example, the “Northern fee” to their normal wages
for work in the Soviet North. Furthermore, the workers received other
privileges concerning holiday regulation, sick benefits, work benefits,
retirement age, and the reservation of living space and housing coopera-
tives.44 However, the advantage of such benefits has to be doubted. In fact,
the real wages in the region were often lower than in other regions of the
Soviet Union. Food was more expensive than in the Western parts of the
country and natural conditions led to an increase in costs of living. That
caused disapproval among the workers and led to an increase of
emigration.45

WORKING AND LIVING IN THE COLD

In the beginning of the development of the oil and gas complex, the range
of Western Siberian resources was intensively discussed. For those who
argued in favor of their exploitation, the shift system (vakhtovyi metod)
became a main argument of the given economic feasibility of the whole
development project. The method foresaw the flying of specialists to the
region’s oil and gas fields for a shift of several weeks and their accommo-
dation in small temporary settlements. One of the main supporters of that
method was Aleksei Kortunov, the Soviet gas minister, who argued that the
vakhta was keeping the development costs low, and therefore, to fulfill his
hopes to generally exploit Siberian gas resources. He rejected the expensive
building of big cities for whole workers’ families in the “taiga or tundra”.46
On the contrary, he underlined the project’s importance as a (temporally
limited) school for young specialists that were later to be sent to the East
even more.47 Gosplan’s head Baibakov later argued that the vakhta was not
only to be applied in the oil industry but in all industrial branches in
Western Siberia. If workers would live in towns with communal facilities
and would be brought on reliable roads to the remote oil fields where they
were to live in basic accommodations,48 this would probably make a
positive contribution to workers’ motivation. As noted in Baibakov’s
292 D. KREMPIN

memoirs “to a preassigned time […] the helicopter flies in [annotation D.

K.] the next shift. The demoralized, exhausted, frozen drillers looked
forward to homely warmth, their family, recreation.”49 According to a
leading Siberian scholar of that time, the temporary character of workers’
settlement and the great fluctuation had a negative mental impact. The
“psychology of limited temporal presence” led to missing responsibility for
the region’s development, normal living conditions, and environmental
treatment.50
The brigade was the center of everyday work life in the vakhta-system
much like the entire Soviet labor system. Most work relations were limited
to a small “workers’ world” with 84% of blue-collar workers, 12% managers
on different levels and 4% of nonmanagerial staff. The foreman (master) was
the link between the brigadiers (brigadir) and their brigade, with higher
economic and political authorities. In his “one-man-management”
responsibility and authority were concentrated.51 In the Tiumen’ oil and
gas fields, the master and his brigade provided the main working units. The
drilling brigade consisted of workers with different professions as drillers,
motormen, and mechanics. The master’s task in this remote area was the
organization, supervision, control, and even the selection of workers.52
The foreman held responsibility for the whole brigade’s production output
and their teamwork. The masters shared a modest level of education with
their workers, and their authority mostly derived from social and organi-
zational skills that they obtained “in office.”53 Socialist competitions
between working collectives within the Western Siberian oil and gas
complex or between collectives of different oil and gas regions54 were
organized to improve production output.
Everyday life in Siberia suffered from destitution. Living standards were
low due to missing living space, schools, hospitals and recreational facilities.
In the bigger towns families often had to wait very long for a flat and
several people or families had to live in one together. Recreation facilities
were insufficient, too. A decree “On further development of towns and
settlements in the oil and gas regions of the Tiumen’ oblast” was issued in
December 197155 aimed at an overall improvement of living conditions,
housing, local food production, communal and cultural facilities, but the
problem could not be solved for years. The move to Siberia meant poor
living standards, especially for established specialists from the Western part
of the country. Many of them, as the geologist Iurii Erv’e mentions in his
memoirs, had to give up a well-established life with their own flat “in the
best living quarters” of some Western Soviet city and exchange it for “[…]
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 293

minus 53 in Yakutia, minus 45 in Novosibirsk and minus 37 in Sverdlovsk

while in Moldova they are growing wheat, and apricots are blooming”.56
Pictures of the cold and bad housing conditions arose and stood in a strong
contrast to promises of “big oil” that their supervisors had made.
Regardless, in contrast to other workers, specialists and officials could
establish themselves more easily than unskilled workers. For an extra fee,
they managed to maintain high standards in their housing or obtained
additional “benefits” such as parlor cars.57
At the shift-settlements (vakhtovyi poselok) and for most of the unskilled
construction workers, living conditions were even worse. During their
shift, workers mostly lived in settlements consisting only of wagons, close
to the drilling and exploitation spots. These wagons were poorly equipped
with rarely more than a bed and a table.58 Smaller settlements and towns
consisted of barracks and wooden houses, but in the beginning they were
only equipped heating, not water and plumbing. For construction workers,
living standards, even in the towns such as Nefteiugansk, were similar to
the shift-settlements: In some cases, their dormitories had neither table nor
chairs.59 Kosygin during his trip to Western Siberia in 1968 “lost his
temper” and ordered the renovation of the buildings. This, however, could
not hide the fact that such attempts very often remained a drop in the
ocean: The investments in the regions not directed into the oil and gas
industry itself even got smaller during the 1970s; their share was only 19%
—much smaller than in many developed regions.60 Even in the mid-1980s,
a Soviet newspaper mentioned the wagons as big a city as Surgut (over
200,000 inhabitants), in which workers were living without a reliable
heating system.61 Under those circumstances, the gap of material
well-being and social prestige even seemed to widen between leaders in the
oil and gas industry and the blue-collar construction workers.
Concerning the gender of employees, the Western Siberian oil and gas
complex likewise other Siberian megaprojects remained a “man’s world”.62
As work was physically challenging, women had serious difficulties to find
work, making it harder to integrate them in the production process. If
women accompanied their husbands to Western Siberia, they were often
employed in canteens, in schools, medical health services, and offices.63 Only
a few women were employed as specialists or officials: A female mayor of the
city of Surgut in the early 1970s64 and female engineers who specialized on
oil production were listed among various oilmen and officials in an illustrated
publication on the history of Glavtiumenneftegaz.65 Life for women in
Western Siberia was thought to be much harder than in the central and
294 D. KREMPIN

southern regions due to the lack of social institutions such as kindergartens,

schools and domestic appliances.66 Women also worked in the student bri-
gades of the Komsomol but were employed in physically less demanding
sectors such as food production but also in construction industries. The
“Tobolianochki-76,”67 for example, worked in the fishing combine in
Tobolsk, and there were women who finished a dormitory for
Tiumenzhilstroi. Despite this, the number of girls in the student Komsomol
brigades was expected to not exceed 30%.68 Due to a quote from Baibakov,
women ought to create a warm atmosphere for their oilmen-husbands at
home, largely fitting into the official Soviet concept of women’s femininity
(zhenstvennost’) in the late Soviet period.69
Even though the planners tried to improve the regional infrastructure,
surveys showed that the bad living conditions were the number-one-reason
for emigration in most cases. Respectively, the respondents blamed the
insufficient food supply and the insufficient recreational and cultural facil-
ities. Although the workers received material benefits and concessions, the
real wages were lower than in the European part of the Soviet Union,
because costs of living were higher due to costly transportation routes to
the northern regions. Nevertheless, it was due to the bad living conditions
that almost 40% of the workers did not want to stay under any circum-
stances. It should be noted that these survey results may not entirely be
reliable, as respondents might have feared disadvantages at their next
working place if they would have listed low wages and dissatisfaction with
their work as reasons for their emigration.70

THE SIBERIAN CAMPAIGN AS A MOBILIZATION PROJECT

OF THE LATE 1970S
During the 1970s, it became obvious that the range of resources in the
older oil and gas regions was definitely limited. The Volga–Urals region
peaked in the mid-1970s, export obligations rose steadily, while explora-
tory work was well below target and the extensive oil production showed
deficits. This is why at the 26th Party Congress Kosygin announced a
roll-back on atomic energy and even coal.71 However, on this occasion
Brezhnev delivered a speech focusing on the development of Siberian
resources in territorial complexes, which should cut long-transportation
routes through a settlement of processing industries of several sectors close
to the resources.72 Internal voices and a CIA report of 1977 anticipated
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 295

that the Soviet Union would be confronted with decreasing oil production
and a labor shortage in the upcoming years. Since the 1960s, birth rates
dropped and it was only in Central Asia that birth rates increased.73
At the December plenary meeting 1977 Brezhnev announced a focus
on Western Siberian oil and gas. Shortly after Kosygin’s trip to the Western
Siberian oil and gas complex in late March 1978,74 Brezhnev went on a
much-publicized trip to Siberia. The trip was followed by the media to a
greater extent than Kosygin’s and regularly appeared in the headlines of
Pravda75 and in the television program “Time” (Vremia).76 Brezhnev’s
attention was directed at economic and military projects in the region. His
mobilization efforts were represented by meetings with local party com-
mittees, members of the Komsomol and young soldiers who worked on the
Baikal-Amur-Mainline (BAM). The film “Always with the people” (Vsegda
s narodom) was made in 1978 about Brezhnev’s trip to Siberia and
underlines that impression. It displayed the potential of Siberia, its indus-
tries, the commitment of its citizens, the mobilization of the Komsomol
and Siberians towns and military bases.
On the 1st of May 1978 the Literaturnaia Gazeta published an article
under title “The Siberian Might” about various industrial projects in
Siberia shortly after Brezhnev’s trip.77 The article did not only focus on the
economic development of the scientific and coordination program
“Siberia” (Sibir’), but published a picture with masses of Siberian workers.
Pravda also participated in the media campaign: The report “For Eastern
Regions a complex development” (Vostochnym raionam‒kompleksnoe
razvitie) discussed the issue of resource development and underlined the
political intensions.78 The campaign’s main aim, therefore, was to change
the image of Siberia from an underdeveloped province to a pioneering
engine of the economic future.
This campaign also used visual accounts. Pictures and posters generating
“optimistic mental images”79 were of great use to shape the mobilization
campaign as they were present in the everyday life of the workers and
created a link to the presence of political authorities.80 The way the Siberia
and Gas Campaign took after the 26th party conference can be traced
through the posters used. On the propaganda poster for the 26th party
conference in 1976 only three of the ten economic projects shown were to
be realized in Siberia (oil regions in Tiumen’ region, BAM,
Saiano-Shushenskaia GĖS).81 In 1978, however, a poster showed a man on
a plane, waving goodbye and departing to the great projects of Siberia.82 In
1980, it was possible to present some results as can be seen on the poster
296 D. KREMPIN

“The Siberian Might.” This presents countless high-rise buildings,

hydroelectric power stations, bridges, petrochemicals, agriculture, pipelines
and oil derricks widely spread out between the hands of a worker.83
Such pictures were also used in other media as an attempt to change the
image of Siberia as remote area to a seminal region, and in that way to
attract motivated workers. The operation in the Far North was presented as
a “school for life” in which the workers would have the chance to live new
experiences with nature84 as well as experiencing life in community with
their coworkers. The media campaign generated a picture of togetherness
and solidarity of the workers of the Far North and of their “work”: it was
presented as something the workers had pushed forward and that aligned
them to the region.85 Articles kept trying to show progress by providing
figures, such as the length of the newly laid pipeline or the quantity of
transported raw material.86 In addition, there were articles openly dis-
cussing the problems of infrastructural development, for instance, con-
cerning the building of houses, and making suggestions about how to
address these problems.87 This gave the impression of an enterprise to
which everyone could make a personal contribution.88 In contrast to an
aggressive colonization, romantic pictures of Siberian nature and the life of
adventurers were created. This picture was not as contradictory as it was at
the BAM (Baikal-Amur-Mainline) where the “smell of the taiga”89 formed
a strong contrast to the modern and unobstructed construction of the
railway.
Movies were valued by the political membership similarly to pictures and
posters for their mass effectiveness.90 The closeness of the population to
movies was estimated to be very high, and a moral message could be
included in them, generally showing human progression and a change for
the better.91 The life story of Farman K. Salmanov fit well into the picture
as the political leadership was presenting of a typical Soviet hero in the
Western Siberian oil and gas complex. His figure was characterized in the
movie Strategiia Riska (“The Risk Strategy”), which shows the advance-
ment of the head of a geological expedition to the chairman of a trust.
Images in the movie were tightly connected to images published in the
Soviet press, such as a picture that had been published on the front page of
the journal Neftianik.92 It is a representative sketch of a man who at the
beginning of the 1960s revolts against the lethargic position of his supe-
riors and independently prepared the relocation of the geological explo-
ration group under his leadership to the Tiumen’ North, where he
thereafter discovers several giant deposits. The movie precisely defines the
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 297

character of the West Siberian hero: he is persevering, hardened, inde-

pendent—portraying how the developers of the region need to be.
These and other exemplary qualities are also described in the memoir
literature and texts of numerous high-ranking oilmen, geologists, party
officials, and journalists that were published since the 1980s.93 Their
experiences were mostly regarded as “historically significant and socially
important,” having a positive influence on the society (sotium).94 Here—
mostly by using the examples of real living persons—pictures of ideal
superiors and coworkers are presented. Due to Erv’e, the Tiumen’ oilmen
had their own character: “The weak moved to the South, into warm
regions, to the West, to well-equipped flats […]. The most who stayed, did
pass their own Tiumen’ school […]. The school of brave, dedicated and
energetic people who toughened in the fight of overcoming the harsh
nature […]”95. To Viktor Muravlenko, head of Glavtiumenneftegaz,
flexibility appeared to be a character trait as oilmen were proud; they were
always ready to leave the places where they just had arrived in order to find
new oil.96 It even seemed to fit the “normal” idea of a “young, tall and
energetic conqueror of the North” when oilmen had a “domestic”
appearance.97
Nevertheless, the leadership was well aware that due to the hard
working condition most efforts would be undertaken by the Soviet youth.
Attempting to mobilize even more young workers in the late 1970s,
General Secretary Brezhnev on the 18th Komsomol congress in April 1978
summarized the last 10 years in which millions of square kilometers have
been economically developed and settled. Yet, the region would not only
need hands but construction workers, mechanics, drivers, drillers, teachers
and other professions. These ideas were not new.98 Since the 1960s, the
Komsomol was seen as a driving force in the development of the oil and gas
complex. Gas minister Aleksei Kortunov valued the activities of the youth
in the Western Siberian oil and gas complex in the “fight for oil and gas on
the forefront.” He underlined the age of the workers that were younger
than other workers in the forest and fishing industries. Due to the example
of Anatolii Kashaev, who was employed in the building of railways in the
Western part of the Soviet Union and later came as a specialist to Tiumen’,
the youth from all over the country was to be sent to Western Siberia.
There the youngsters would be educated and later sent to regions further
east. At the same time the local youth would be trained for the work in the
oil and gas industry also in the Tomsk region.99
298 D. KREMPIN

Therefore, through the decree of the CC and the Council of Ministers

“Over the measures for the accelerating development of Western Siberian
oil industry” the Komsomol gained the role of a sponsorship (shefstvo) over
the projects, and would expand educational work and organize recreational
time. Additionally, the Komsomol would gain more publicity and present
the different projects in the media, for example in the newspaper
Komsomolskaia Pravda, the radio station Iunost’ (“Youth”), the TV and
the publishing house Molodaia Gvardiia (“The Young Gard”). The media
ought to be used to present the “heroic work of the Komsomol and Youth
within the development of the Western Siberian oil and gas complex”.100
Furthermore, the Tiumen’ local party committee decided to publish a
newspaper called Gorizont (“Horizon”) twice a week with an edition of
3000 that would “start with the arrival […] of the students […] and with
regard to the seasonal character of their work”.101 In that way, students
and Komsomol brigades were to become multipliers to overcome regional
stereotypes among their relatives, friends, and neighbors in the Western
and Southern regions.102
For being successful multipliers, the media tried to create a unique idea
of the Youth’s role, work, and life in the Western Siberian oil and gas
complex. They referred to the geologist’s self-conception to be “colonists”,
“adventurers on treasure hunting” in the cold and remote regions of the
country.103 Posters tried to attract the youth with headlines such as “Your
country—romantic” („Tvoia strana ‒ romantik“).104 The students as well
as the geologists were presented as “Robinsons” that ended in solitude
(gluhoman) and had to start from scratch, but in the meantime lived a
“romantic life” in a “town of tents”.105 The young people from the
Western and Southern parts of the Soviet Union were often attracted by
the idea of Siberian nature and romanticized their natural surroundings in
their reports: “Yesterday we were in the taiga. We walked through the
swamps. That was interesting. The soil felt elastic under our feet. The larch
shimmered bluish. […] The nicest experience was the sauna. A real
Siberian one with birch branches and a steam bath”.106 Everyone who did
not want to live under these circumstances, however, was written off: “We
feel no grievance for those who hide from the difficulties and escaped to
find a warm place”.107
On the other hand, they focused on the industrial development and the
Youth’s contribution to it: “We are no loner-pioneers but a strong orga-
nized division of the Soviet working class and on our shoulders we hold a
giant might, difficult tasks, we do not fear difficulties of the fight against the
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 299

harsh and malicious nature.”108 The construction projects of the

Komsomol should become “laboratories of fast drilling and construction
work, schools for inventing of progressive methods.”109 And they went on:
“We are constructing the Tiumen’ taiga for centuries; we are no guests
here but permanent rulers.”110 The students would have become aware of
the importance of their work through the “numbers” of built houses,
kilometers of pipelines and so on that in the planned economy were an
official measure for productivity in all industrial sectors and for
the administration. These figures were also used for the Komsomol: “When
the working semester has ended we are able to see the tangible results — the
apartment houses and public buildings that had been built by students, the
industrial buildings, and roads. We can name the number—the million
rubles that the student work costs. And we understand: The result is
determined by the success of the political work in the student brigades.”111
Despite these “heroic” ideas of the work in Western Siberia in official
speeches and the propaganda campaigns, its success to mobilize workers is
highly questionable. In a meeting in January 1979 several leaders of
regional Komsomol organizations, one brigadier of Tomskgazstroi criti-
cized that Komsomol members and youngsters from Azerbaijan were
neither trained for the construction industries nor did they have an
appropriate image of the working conditions in Western Siberia, which is
why many of them left Western Siberia after facing initial difficulties.112 On
the whole, the Soviet citizens of the 1970s were also quite used to the gap
between the propaganda and reality.113 Therefore, Brezhnev’s trip and the
following media campaign seemed just a “farce”.114

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND CONFLICTS IN THE WESTERN

SIBERIAN OIL AND GAS COMPLEX
Official propaganda could not hide the fact that it was difficult to recruit
workforce to the Arctic regions. As early as 1964 the Institute for
Economic and the Organization of Industrial Production (IĖOPP) of the
Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences warned the planners to be
careful with sending “unwanted elements” of the Western regions to
Western Siberia. They feared that these would probably have a great impact
on the indigenous population and would increase crime and alcoholism in
the region. In January 1967, regional party officials complained about
mistakes concerning the selection, nomination and “education” of
300 D. KREMPIN

technical and working cadres of Glavtiumenneftegaz and about the

authorities within the glavka only superficially checking their political
attitude and ability to work. People very often climbed up the hierarchy of
an organization despite not providing the necessary personal and organi-
zational skills.115
Minor problems were linked to the “moral discipline” of young workers
and students. The Komsomol newspaper “Horizon” (Gorizont) com-
plained about the laissez-faire attitude of the leaders toward amusements
and intimate relationships of the students who were still characterized as
“children”. These amusements were to be “dancing parties until the
morning” or the trip of some students to a sauna far from the camp
without any supervision. The article complained that even if the students
had a private or even intimate life because the “stars in the Taiga were so
beautiful”, the young “fighters” ought to maintain the moral spirit as well
as the official and unofficial rules.116
Alcoholism, however, was widely spread among Russian workers of the
1970s: According to one survey, one-third of the Russian workers were
heavy drinkers, and in remote factories even 40%. Drinking alcohol became
a social ritual on almost every occasion, even in work relations. Drinking
meant a manifestation of masculinity, virility, and strength.117 This prob-
lem was nothing new for Soviet energy workers: e.g., in the Donbass coal
region the “beloved” recreational activities of the miners were drinking
vodka, playing cards, and fighting.118 Regardless, some documents of the
late 1970s presented a shocking picture of alcoholism and its consequences.
One telegram to the Komsomol Central Committee reported about an
incident from November 1979: On November 18th after a dancing eve-
ning in the club Maiak, two men became entangled in a fight, with their
family names and the description suggesting it was ethnically motivated.
After the incident in the club, the fight continued in the dormitory where
Azerbaijani students from a student brigade took part in the fight. Four
members of the brigade were seriously injured. Indeed, between 1978 and
1979, 76 offences were recorded in the polar city Urengoi alone. Very often
individual conflicts led to fights in which firearms were also used. In most
cases the involved persons were drunk. Within 10 months 115 persons
were held liable for alcohol abuse, but the responsible organizations did not
react properly. Officials instead blamed missing ideological education,
work discipline and fulfillment of plans in the region. This lack of
proper attention led to more incidents within the Komsomol: seven
Komsomol brigade members from Urengoineftegazgeologiia changed their
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 301

working place, two were dismissed on their own request and two persons
were dismissed for dawdling. For the ongoing working months of the
student construction brigades almost every third member of the brigade
was involved in dawdling. The missing material base was blamed for the
offences: During these months the dormitories were relocated several times
and were badly equipped and overcrowded. For young families, the report
stated, the situation for finding living space was even harder and they had to
wait even longer for a flat. The living conditions were very low, as there was
not enough food and not enough recreational possibilities. Even so, after a
meeting of the Tiumen’ Komsomol committee the responsible people were
fired and the criminal put on trial.119 Other reports named cases of refusals
of work, dawdling, alcoholism, and fighting. In four cases they led to death
of the involved persons. In one case a member of the Estonian brigade,
G.A. Vasilev, a demobilized soldier from the red army, died as a conse-
quence of drinking stolen alcohol.120 In another case in the Tomsk region,
a Komsomol member from Kaliningrad died because of a fight after
consuming alcohol.121 Although Russian scholars even today reject
conflicts with a national background,122 the naming of nationalities of the
delinquents confirms the assumption that many conflicts occurred
between them.
The oil industry also caused problems among the indigenous popula-
tion. The oil and gas industry disturbed the traditional way of life of some
23,000 Khanty, Mansi and Nenets, 12,000 of which lived as nomads.123
They lived from hunting and gathering as well as reindeer breeding. The
policies of settling nomads had been in effect since the 1930s so that they
could be taught “principles of brigade organization, Soviet law, sanitation
and Communism.”124 But denomadization and collective reindeer
breeding, a source of producing heavily demanded meat for the Northern
regions was not achieved until the early 1950s.125 In the 1960s, the Soviet
leaders announced the achievement of a Soviet nation, praising the leap
from primitive communal society to socialism.126 The arriving oil and gas
industry had an even greater impact: From 1959 to 1979 the overall
population in the Khanty-Mansi district increased by a factor of 4.6% while
the proportion of the indigenous people dropped from 14.5 to 3.2%.127
Furthermore, it limited those areas which could be used for reindeer
breeding.128 As an oilmen mentioned in his memoirs, “for many indige-
nous Siberians, the advancing oilmen must have seemed like unwelcome
intruders. Of course, the view prevalent among the newcomers, that they
were national heroes who should be free to do anything they liked, did
302 D. KREMPIN

little to enhance their popularity [among the indigenous population—an-

notation D.K.].”129 Even “indigenous” Russian inhabitants who lived in
the area up to its industrialization, among them friends of officials,
expressed their dissatisfaction with the new arriving “pioneers” that were
keeping them away from fishing and woodcutting, disturbing the peace
and turning everything upside down and even made them work “all day
and night.”130 The conflict between the land, its significance, and the
contrary interests of its inhabitants intensified since the 1960s. The envi-
ronment suffered extensively through geological works, pipeline accidents,
burning accompanying gas, forest fires and water pollution.131
For young indigenous people moving into the cities was an attractive
option. Smaller towns were underdeveloped and did not offer any broader
perspectives, which is why youngsters preferred “films, food, education,
and social life of the central towns to life in the tundra”. As a young Khanty
explained in 1976: “Reindeer breeding is not desirable to young people,
who want films, volleyball, and to leave from here. Many try to live in
Tiumen. Some return.”132 In November 1976 the Mansi writer Juvan
Šestalov tried to mediate between the interest groups while citing parts of a
speech of Antonina Grigoreva, a Khanty official, on a meeting of the
Supreme Soviet: “We, the indigenous inhabitants of the Far North vote
consent for the great Siberian oil. The great oil is the youth of the old
Iurga. But we also want that the geologists and oilmen do not pollute the
water, do not damage the Taiga without a reason, that they—as real
landlords—watch over the plants and animals and save them for the
coming generations. We have to act in such way that the small people of
the North—the Khanty, Mansi, Komi, Selkup and Nenets—do not have a
reason to complain about the oil and gas industries of the North but do see
and experience a faithful, reliable helper [in these industries].”133 This
request was sadly not fulfilled. In 2000, the Samotlor region was called an
“ecological catastrophe zone.” Pipelines contaminate rivers, lakes, and
groundwater; accompanying gas was burned and caused air pollution.
Cancer rates among the indigenous people rose, and life expectancy
decreased from 61 to 45 years.134

CONCLUSION
Under Brezhnev and his concept of “developed socialism” Soviet citizens
developed a wish for welfare and consumerism, and official statements
strengthened these wishes. Since 1956, the creation of living space had
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 303

been a priority and until the 1980s many Soviet citizens at least managed to
improve their housing standards. Radios, TVs, refrigerators, and washing
machines were, by the end of the 1970s, widely spread in town households,
and material well-being became one of the main goals of Soviet citizens.
Under those circumstances, work lost its character of a struggle for exis-
tence, but became the search for well-paid jobs which opened the access to
consumer goods and social networks.135 Compared to such improvements
in the Western industrial regions of the Soviet Union, work and life in the
Western Siberia oil and gas complex seemed to be less than promising.
Specialists often had to cut their living standards which they had only
gained after long years of changing workplaces in various regions and social
promotion within the industrial and political hierarchies. Brigade workers
faced even more deprivation: despite the promotion of automated industry,
work in the Western Siberian oil and gas fields remained manual. Material
shortages influenced the structure of working days and periods, and
well-being at the workplace mainly depended on personal relations with
foremen and coworkers. In the remote towns and settlement, workers had
to lower their sights even more: Missing recreational facilities as sport halls
and clubs led to boredom, fighting and drinking, leaving workers and
youth spending recreational time far away from official (Komsomol)
institutions.
The Western Siberian oil and gas complex is the centerpiece of the
Russian economy even today. However, it remains questionable if propa-
ganda and the “myth of the heroic Siberian” oilman of the 1960s and
1970s had an impact for workers’ motivation and succeeded in changing
the perception of Siberia within the Soviet Union and abroad. Instead, the
temporary character of an exotic youth project, missing quality of public
works and a lack of financial means left their social and environmental
marks until this day.

NOTES
1. Klaus Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus: Sowjetische
Technik- und Umweltgeschichte, 1948–1967 (München: Oldenbourg, 2010).
2. Jörn Grünewald, Die Ethnisierung des Proletariats. Arbeiter in der
Ölindustrie Bakus im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts, in Sowjetische
Bergleute und Industriearbeiter: Neue Forschungen, ed. Tanja Penter, vol.
37 of Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen (Essen: Klartext
Verlag, 2007), 31–50.
304 D. KREMPIN

3. E.g. on the general development of frontier areas see: Greg Rohlf, “Dreams of
Oil and Fertile Fields: The Rush to Qinghai in the 1950s,” Modern China 29,
no. 4 (2003): 455–489; For a case study on oil workers see: Terisa E. Turner,
“Oil Workers and the Oil Bust in Nigeria,” Africa Today 33 (1986): 33–50.
4. Eva-Maria Stolberg, Sibirien: Russlands “Wilder Osten” ‒ Mythos und
soziale Realität im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 2009), 323–332.
5. The Stakhanovite movement aimed at increasing production through an
authoritarian control over society. See Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and
Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production
Relations, 1928–1941 (London: Pluto Press, 1986).
6. Paul T. Christensen, Russia’s Workers in Transition: Labor, Management,
and the State under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (DeKalb: Illinois University
Press, 1999), 32.
7. Carsten Goehrke, Russischer Alltag: Eine Geschichte in neun Zeitbildern
vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 3 (Zürich: Chronos, 2005),
356–359.
8. Adolf Karger and Claus Christian Liebmann, Sibirien ‒ Strukturen und
Funktionen Ressourcenorientierter Industrieentwicklung (Köln: Aulis,
1986), 30–31.
9. See also: Linda J. Cook, The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed—
Welfare Policy and Workers’ Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 19–53.
10. In the beginning of the exploitation of Tiumen’ oil and gas, these resources
ought to cover the regional needs and to supply the refinery at Omsk. In:
RGAĖ, f. 4372, op. 62, d. 544, ll. 164–165; Nikolai Bajbakow, Sache des
Lebens: Aufzeichnungen eines Erdölarbeiters (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985), 339.
11. D.A. Smorodinskov and V.N. Klepikov, eds., Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v
dokumentakh, 1966–1970, vol. 2 (Sverdlovsk: Sredne-Uralskoe Kizhnoe
Izdatel’stvo, 1973), 135–136.
12. Ibid., 13.
13. Since the late 1960s several Western European countries signed “gas for
technology” deals with the Soviet Union. In: Per Högselius, Red Gas:
Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3.
14. Tiumen’ oil production increased from 0.2 million tons in 1964 to 352.85
million tons in 1982 while overall oil production rose from 224 million
tons in 1964 to 613 million tons in 1982. Soviet gas production grew from
127.7 bcm in 1965 to 500.7 bcm in 1982. In: Mariia V. Slavkina, Triumf i
tragediia: Razvitie neftegazogo kompleksa SSSR v 1960–1980-e gody
(Moskva: Nauka, 2002), 69, 75, 85. On Soviet energy policy of the 1970s
and 1980s, see: Thane Gustafson, Crises Amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 305

Energy under Brezhnev and Gorbachev (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press), 22–181.
15. Grünewald, Die Ethnisierung des Proletariats, 31–50.
16. Jennifer I. Considine and William A. Kerr, The Russian Oil Economy
(Northampton: Elgar, 2002), 23–56.
17. Bajbakow, Sache des Lebens, 93.
18. N.M. Pashkov, Deiatel’nost’ partijnykh organizatsii Zapadnoi Sibiri po
sozdaniiu i razvitiiu neftegazogo kompleksa 1964–1980gg (Tomsk:
Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo Universiteta, 1988), 89.
19. Han-Ku Chung, Interest Representation in Soviet Policymaking: A Case Study
of a West Siberian Energy Coalition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 16.
20. Slavkina, Triumf i tragediia, 90.
21. Glavtiumenneftegaz, the oil ministry’s largest production organization in
Western Siberia, was founded in 1965. In 1969, Glavtiumenneftegaz
employed 26,401 workers. In: Galina Iu. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii
neftegazovyi kompleks: Istoriia Stanovleniia, vol. 2 (Tiumen’: TiumGNGU,
2005), 74.
22. Ibid., 65–66.
23. Ibid., 114.
24. Johannes Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale: vom stalinistischen Lager
zum Mobilisierungsprojekt unter Brežnev (München: Oldenbourg 2012), 234.
25. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 95.
26. Slavkina, Triumf i tragediia, 89–90.
27. Zh.A. Zaionchkovskaia and D.M. Zakharina, “Problems of Providing
Siberia with Manpower,” Soviet Geography 13, no. 10 (1972): 682.
28. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 69.
29. Bernd Knabe, “Aspekte der gegenwärtigen Arbeitskräftepolitik in
Sibirien,” in Sibirien: Ein russisches und sowjetisches Entwicklungsproblem,
ed. Gert Leptin (Berlin: Verlag Arno Spitz, 1986), 123–137.
30. Gertrude E. Schroeder, “Managing Labor Shortages in the Soviet Union,”
in Employment Policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, ed. Jan
Adam (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987), 10–11; N.M. Pashkov,
Deiatel’nost’ partiinykh organizatsii Zapadnoi Sibiri posozdaniiu i razvitiiu
neftegazogo kompleksa 1964–1980gg (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo
Universiteta, 1988), 90. Other scholars provide higher figures for re-
cruitment through orgnabor in Western Siberia, e.g.: Koleva,
Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 62–64.
31. The “Northern fee” was a special benefit system for work in the Northern
areas of the Soviet Union. It consisted of the zonal coefficient (poiaznoi
koeffitsient) and the Polar fee (poliarka). In: M.V. Slavkina, Triumf i
tragediia: Razvitie neftegazogo kompleksa SSSR v 1960–1980-e gody
(Moskva: Nauka, 2002), 99.
306 D. KREMPIN

32. Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), f. M-1, op. 65,
d. 238, l. 38; Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–
1970, 83–84; 114.
33. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 70.
34. Viktor A. Pristupko, Studencheskie otriady: istoricheskii opyt 1959–1990
godov (Moskva: Moskovskii gumanitarnyi universitet, 2008), 35–43.
35. Pashkov, Deiatel’nost’ partijnykh organizacii, 91.
36. “Tiumenskie besedy,” Neftianik 1 (1971), 3; Smorodinskov, Neft’ i gaz
Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 17.
37. Smorodinskov, Neft’ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 207.
38. Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale, 243.
39. RGASPI f. M-1, op. 65, d. 441, ll. 15–17.
40. The German news magazine Der Spiegel in August 1982 referred to
100,000 Soviet prisoners: “Dreckige Lüge,” Der Spiegel, August 16, 1982,
94–96.
41. Iurii G. Erv’e, Sibirskie gorizonty (Ekaterinburg: Sredne-Ural’skoe knizh-
noe izdatel’stvo, 1999), 36.
42. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 64.
43. Walter D. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat: Workers, Politics, and Crisis
in Gorbachev’s Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 133.
44. Knabe, Aspekte der gegenwärtigen Arbeitskräftepolitik in Westsibirien, 132–
134.
45. Peter De Souza, “The Nature of Manpower Problem in the Development
of Siberia,” Soviet Geography 27, no. 10 (1986), 689–715.
46. Slavkina, Triumf i tragediia, 61.
47. Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 20–21.
48. Bajbakow, Sache des Lebens, 371.
49. Ibid., 364.
50. Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale, 266.
51. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat, 162–163.
52. Erv’e, Sibirskie gorizonty, 36.
53. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat, 163.
54. „Tiumen‘ ‒ Tataria: Sorevnovanie neftianykh gigantov“, Neftianik 7
(1974): 1–2.
55. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) f. 5446, op. 105, d. 278,
l. 95-102ob.
56. Erv’e, Sibirskie gorizonty, 29.
57. Lev Tchurilov, Lifeblood of Empire: A Personal History of the Rise and Fall
of the Soviet Oil Industry (New York: PIW Publications, 1996), 66.
58. Stanislav V. Vtorushin, “Zolotye gody: Povestvovanie o zhizni,” accessed
September 12, 2012, http://www.akunb.altlib.ru/files/LiteraryMap/
Personnels/Vtoryshin.html.
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 307

59. Tchurilov, Lifeblood of Empire, 69–70.

60. Leslie Dienes, “The Development of Siberia‒Regional Priorities and
Economic Strategy,” in Geographical Studies on the Soviet Union, ed.
George J. Demko and Roland J. Fuchs (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1984), 189–213.
61. David Wilson, “The Siberian Oil and Gas Industry,” in Siberia: Problems
and Prospects for Regional Development, ed. Alan Wood (London: Croom
Helm, 1987), 96–129.
62. Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale, 290–293.
63. E.g. Tchurilov, Lifeblood of Empire, 66; S.D. Velikopol’skii and Iu.
I. Perepletkin, eds., Glavtiumenneftegaz: 40-letniaia istroiia Glavka v
svidetel’stvakh ochevidtsev, vospominaniiakh, dokumentakh, fotografiiakh
(Tiumen’: Mandr I Ka, 2005), 60 and 64.
64. Tschurilov, Lifeblood of Empire, 91.
65. Velikopol’skii and Perepletkin, Glavtiumenneftegaz, 52 and 91.
66. T.I. Zaslavskaia, V.A. Kalmyk, and L.A. Khakulina, “Social’nye problemy
razvitiia Sibiri,” Izvestiia Sibirskogo Otdeleniia Akademii Nauk 1 (1982):
3–11.
67. RGASPI, f. M-17, op. 7, d. 12, l. 13ob.
68. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 65, d. 325, l. 38.
69. Anne Köbberling, Das Klischee der Sowjetfrau: Stereotyp und
Selbstverständnis Moskauer Frauen zwischen Stalinära und Perestroika
(Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1997), 124–220.
70. De Souza, The Nature of Manpower Problem in the Development of Siberia,
698–701.
71. Chung, Interest Representation in Soviet Policymaking, 133.
72. Leonid I. Breshnew, Auf dem Wege Lenins- Reden und Aufsätze: April
1974–März 1976, vol. 5 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1977), 549.
73. “ER 77-10436U, July 1977, Soviet Economic Problems and Prospects,” in
CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947–1991, ed. Gerald K. Haines and
Robert E. Leggett, accessed March 31, 2016, https://www.cia.gov/
library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-
monographs/cias-analysis-of-the-soviet-union-1947-1991.
74. E.g. “Poezdka tov. A.N. Kosygina,” Pravda, no. 82, March 23, 1978, 2;
“Prebyvanie A.N. Kosygina v Tiumeni i Tomske,” Pravda, no. 84, March
25, 1978, 2; “Poezdka tov. A.N. Kosygina,” Izvestiia, no. 74, March 28,
1978, 2.
75. “Prebyvanie tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva v Tiumeni,” Pravda, no. 90,
March 31, 1978, 1; “Prebyvanie tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva v Chite,”
Pravda, no. 94, April 4, 1978, 1; “Pribytie tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva v
Chabarovsk,” Pravda, no. 96, April 6, 1978, 1; “Poseshchenie L.
I. Brezhnevym tikhookeanskogo flota,” Pravda, no. 98, April 8, 1978, 1.
308 D. KREMPIN

76. Dnevniki A. S. Cherniaeva, Sovetskaia politika 1972–1991gg.- vzgliad

iznutri, 1978 g., Project of the National Security Archives, Washington,
DC, 10, accessed March 31, 2016, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
rus/text_files/Chernyaev/1978.pdf.
77. “Sibirskii razmakh,” Literaturnaia gazeta, May 1, 1978, 10. On the
complex development of Siberia under the program title “Siberia” see also:
Andrei A. Trofimuk, O rabote sibirskogo otdeleniia AN SSSR po kooperatsii
nauchnykh issledovanii v regione i ispol’sovaniiu ikh resultatov v narodnom
khoziastve strany: osnovnye napravleniia organisatsionnoe soprovozhdenie i
effektivnost’ rabot po programme “Sibir’” (Novosibirsk: IEOPP SO AN
SSSR, 1988).
78. E.g.: “Sibirskaia vakhta,” Pravda, May 31, 1978, 3; “Industriia neftianogo
kraia,” Pravda, June 10, 1978, 2.
79. Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus, 273–274; Klaus
Waschik and Nina Ivanovna Baburina, Werben für die Utopie ‒ russische
Plakatkunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bietigheim-Bissingen: Edition tertium
2003).
80. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat, 163.
81. Avvakuum, M.N.: „Resheniia XXVI s“ezda vypolnym!“ accessed August 9,
2013, http://eng.plakaty.ru/posters?cid=1&part=1976&id=1404.
82. Feklyaev, V.N.: „Daesh Sibir’!“ accessed August 9, 2013, http://
www.plakaty.ru/posters?cid=4&sort=year&part=1978.
83. Parmeev, B.A.: „Sibirskii razmakh!“ accessed August 9, 2013, http://
eng.plakaty.ru/posters?cid=4&part=1980&id=721.
84. Stanislav V. Vtorushin, “Zolotye gody: Povestvovanie o zhizni,” accessed
September 12, 2012, http://www.akunb.altlib.ru/files/LiteraryMap/
Personnels/Vtoryshin.html.
85. S. Vtorushin, “Mnogoetazhnaia tundra,” Pravda, February 24, 1978, 3.
86. S. Orudzhev, “Goluboe zoloto strany,” Pravda, March 26, 1976, 2.
87. S. Vtorushin, S. and A. Murzin, “Zhil’e dlia severian,” Pravda, June 19,
1976, 2.
88. “Sibirskii razmakh,” Literaturnaia gazeta, May 1, 1978, 10.
89. Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale, 252.
90. Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus, 281.
91. Hilde Hoffmann, “Geschichte und Film – Film und Geschichte,” in
Geschichte und Öffentlichkeit: Orte – Medien – Institutionen, ed. Sabine
Horn (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 135–143.
92. Cover of Neftianik 4 (1974).
93. Oleg N. Stafeev, “Memuary kak istočnik po istorii neftegazovogo kom-
pleksa Zapadnoi Sibirii” (Ph.D. diss., Surgut, 2007).
94. Stafeev, Memuary kak istočnik po istorii neftegazovogo kompleksa Zapadnoi
Sibirii, 106.
 HEROIC “BLACK GOLD”? WORKING FOR OIL AND GAS … 309

95. Erv’e, Sibirskie gorizonty, 83.

96. Bajbakow, Sache des Lebens, 350.
97. Stanislav V. Vtorushin, “Zolotye gody: Povestvovanie o zhizni,” accessed
September 12, 2012, http://www.akunb.altlib.ru/files/LiteraryMap/
Personnels/Vtoryshin.html.
98. Leonid I. Brezhnev, Speech at the 18th Congress of the Allunion Leninist
Young Communist League, Apri1 25, 1918 (Moscow: Novosti Press
Agency PubIishing House, 1978), 11–13.
99. Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 20–21.
100. Ibid., 227.
101. Ibid., 155.
102. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 72.
103. Alla Bolotova, “Die Geologen: Kolonisatoren am Lagerfeuer – Selbstbild
und Naturverständnis in der UdSSR,” Osteuropa 58, no. 4–5 (2008): 57–
67.
104. Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 67–68.
105. RGASPI, f. M-17, op. 7, d. 12, l. 66.
106. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 7, d. 12, l. 12.
107. Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 76.
108. Ibid., 74.
109. Ibid., 75.
110. Ibid., 76.
111. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 7, d. 12, l. 15ob.
112. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 65, d. 238, l. 50–51.
113. Carsten Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, 377.
114. Dnevniki A. S. Cherniaeva, Sovetskaia politika 1972–1991gg.- vzgliad
iznutri, 1978 g., Project of the National Security Archives, Washington,
DC, 10, accessed March 31, 2016, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
rus/text_files/Chernyaev/1978.pdf.
115. ARAN, f. 1731, op. 1, d. 35, l. 10; Smorodinskov, Neft‘ i gaz Tiumeni v
dokumentakh, 1966–1970, 78.
116. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 7, d. 12, l. 48.
117. Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, 361–362.
118. Tanja Penter, “Der “neue sozialistische Donbass” und der Aufstieg des
Bergmanns zur kulturellen Leitfigur,” in Sowjetische Bergleute und
Industriearbeiter: Neue Forschungen, ed. Tanja Penter, vol. 37 of
Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen (Essen: Klartext,
2007), 79–98.
119. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 65, d. 342, ll. 6–10.
120. RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 65, d. 342, l. 12.
121. Ibid.
122. Slavkina, Triumf I tragediia, 90–91.
310 D. KREMPIN

123. Koleva, Zapadno-Sibirskii neftegazovyi kompleks, 59.

124. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in
Global Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 124–125.
125. Violet Conolly, Siberia Today and Tomorrow: A Study of Economic
Resources Problems and Achievements (London: Collins, 1975), 188.
126. Bruce Grant, “Siberia Hot and Cold: Reconstructing the Image of Siberian
Indigenous Peoples,” in Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in
Russian culture, ed. Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1993), 227–253.
127. Yuri Slezkine, Artic Mirrors: Russia and the Small People of the North
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 338.
128. Jörg Stadelbauer, “Naturraum Arktis – Russlands Hoher Norden,”
Osteuropa 61, no. 2–3 (2011): 21–45.
129. Tchurilov, Lifeblood of Empire, 87.
130. Ibid.
131. Johannes Rohr, “Anpassung und Selbstbehauptung,” Osteuropa 61, no.
2–3 (2011): 387–416.
132. Mandelstam Balzer, The Tenacity of Ethnicity, 125.
133. Juvan Shestalov, “Svet nad tundroi,” Pravda, November 2, 1976, 3.
134. Regine Richter and Karsten Smid, “Raubbau an der Natur: Ölförderung in
Westsibirien und auf Sachalin,” Osteuropa 58, no. 4–5 (2008): 117–130.
135. Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, 359.
 PART III

The Social and Urban Life of Oil

 Building an Oil Empire: Labor
and Gender Relations in American
Company Towns in Libya, 1950s–1970s

Elisabetta Bini

INTRODUCTION
In 1965, several Libyan men entered into the industrial area of Marsa el
Brega, built by Esso in the early 1960s to refine and export the crude oil the
company extracted in the desert, and blew up three storage tanks and a water
pipeline. Their aim was to express their opposition to the Libyan monarchy,
at a time of rising criticism of American oil companies operating in Libya. In
the previous months, a growing number of articles published in Arab
nationalist weekly newspapers had accused US firms of exploiting the
country’s wealth by employing foreigners rather than Libyans, and not
allowing the Libyan government to control their activities, including their
labor policies.1 Esso Libya replied to such forms of opposition by increasing
security measures in the industrial area and company town it had built for its
American and British employees. Not only did it raise new fences and
established three army checkpoints in Marsa el Brega, but it asked for sup-
port from the US State Department, which recommended the creation of a
National Security Force to patrol pipelines, oil fields, and storage facilities.2
This story raises a series of questions about the ways in which American
oil firms defined and reshaped their interests in Libya after the Suez crisis of
1956, when they expanded the country’s oil production in an effort to

E. Bini (&)
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

© The Author(s) 2018 313

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_12
314 E. BINI

avoid the Suez Canal. Most research on postcolonial Libya has examined
the “transfer of power” from Italy, to the UN trusteeship, to indepen-
dence, or the relationship between the US government, American oil
companies, and the Libyan state.3 This chapter takes a different approach.
It analyzes the labor relations American oil companies introduced in oil
camps and company towns, as Libya became one of the main oil-producing
countries of the Mediterranean. Through a study of government sources,
corporate and trade union records, newspapers, memoirs, interviews, home
videos and Facebook pages, it argues that between the mid-1950s and the
late 1970s, debates and struggles over labor policies played a crucial role in
shaping US–Libyan relations.
Clashes and tensions between Americans and Libyans were not limited
to trade unions and organized forms of labor protest, but extended to
living spaces. By examining the conflicts that emerged around the oil
camps and company towns American firms established in Libya, this
chapter sheds new light on the social history of labor in the oil industry. It
argues that US oil companies reproduced the gender, class and racial
hierarchies that characterized other American camps across the globe,
based on racial and ethnic segregation, and the elevation of white women
to symbols and agents of America’s corporate civilizing mission. It thus
contributes to an understanding of the experience of a specific category of
skilled workers, which has not received much scholarly attention, but was
crucial in the history of the global oil industry during the twentieth cen-
tury, namely the expatriate workforce.
The study of social relations in oil towns has recently been at the center
of a growing scholarship.4 As Robert Vitalis has argued, American firms
exported to Latin America, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia a model “rooted in
Jim Crow,” with its ideas of “white supremacy, norms of discrimination,
and segregation and, at its margins, of paternalistic racial uplift.”5 Such a
model drew on and replicated the forms of segregation that had charac-
terized mining industries on the American frontier, as well as US businesses
in Latin America. As Myrna Santiago has pointed out in her work on early
twentieth century Mexican oil fields, women “were an integral part of the
local and transnational economy created by oil extraction.”6 White
American women followed their husbands and established their homes in
company towns, where they oversaw servants, formed ladies’ clubs, and
attended social events.
While American oil companies operating in Libya drew on previous
experiences, they also introduced significant changes. In particular, they
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 315

tried to limit the number of Libyans they trained and hired, and kept under
control the size of the industrial area and company town. This decision was
the result of a wider set of changes taking place in other producing regions
at the time. After the nationalization of Iranian oil in 1951, oil firms were
aware of the risks involved in employing a large number of local workers.
The Abadan crisis in 1951–1954, in particular, showed the power large
numbers of concentrated and organized workers in urban, industrial cen-
ters, could have over crucial nodes of the international oil market, and
pushed oil companies to change their policies. After the crisis, oil compa-
nies decided to refine in Western Europe most of the crude oil they
extracted in the Middle East. At the same time, they limited the number of
local workers they employed in oil camps, in order to prevent the emer-
gence of organized political conflict.
In Libya, American oil companies reproduced some of the features that
characterized US suburbs in the post-World War II decades.7 They created
segregated company towns for their white American and British engineers,
technicians and secretaries, where workers could have access to the same
forms of leisure and domesticity they enjoyed in the US. Women played a
particularly important role in building the community, by organizing their
families’ everyday lives, along with the leisure activities of the town as a
whole. By doing so, they maintained and reinforced the class and racial
hierarchies needed for the expansion of American corporate capitalism.
Like in American suburbs, US company towns in Libya were characterized
by tensions: families did not always have access to the standard of living
promised by the company, and many women felt isolated, especially single
women who moved to Libya as secretaries.
While most studies of oil towns have focused on the decades preceding
the rise of oil nationalism, this chapter investigates the ways in which the
nationalization of oil resources in the early 1970s transformed labor rela-
tions and everyday life in American company towns in Libya. Once
Muammar Qaddafi’s regime came to power in 1969, it emphasized the
need to create a class of skilled Libyan oil workers, capable of operating the
plants US oil companies had built in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Libyan
workers increasingly challenged American oil companies’ labor policies, by
demanding the right to live in company towns and have access to the same
services as their American and British colleagues. As this chapter shows,
relations between American and Libyan engineers, managers and
316 E. BINI

technicians—and their families—were characterized by strong gender

tensions. While some Libyan men who moved into the company town
considered American women as sexual objects, Esso Libya replaced families
with male bachelors working on a temporary basis. In this context, the
company town as it had been built in the early 1960s became unsustain-
able, until in the early 1980s American oil companies left Libya, in the
context of growing tensions between the American and the Libyan
governments.

BUILDING AND MANAGING AN INFORMAL EMPIRE

At the end of the Second World War, Libya was one of the poorest
countries in the world. Italian colonial rule had been characterized by
extreme violence and exploitation, particularly after the rise of the Fascist
regime in 1922. Whereas the previous Italian government, which ruled
over Libya between 1911 and 1922, had established numerous forms of
exchange and collaboration with merchants and the Jewish middle-class in
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, the Fascist regime pursued a form of control
based on racial segregation and subordination. Since Libya was to serve as
Italy’s “fourth shore,” reviving imperial prestige and providing an outlet for
Italy’s overpopulation, the regime seized much of the land used by Libyans
and established settlement farms through the Ente per la colonizzazione
della Libia [Agency for the Colonization of Libya]. In Cyrenaica, where
the Sanusi tribe resisted Italian colonial rule, the Fascist regime deported
over 100,000 people to concentration camps built in the desert, killing
most of the region’s inhabitants.8
When Libya became independent in 1951, its population had been
reduced to 1 million. Most people lived in the desert as seminomadic
pastoralists and farmers, or in Benghazi and Tripoli. Despite the fact that
during the Second World War and after independence tens of thousands of
Italians left Libya, about 20,000 stayed behind. They continued to live in
the farms they had acquired during the colonial period, and many of them
worked as merchants and businessmen in Tripoli. In the early 1950s,
Libyans and Italians interacted with a growing number of American and
British citizens working in military bases, or for the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).9
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 317

Following the discovery of oil resources in the first half of the 1950s,
Libyan society experienced a deep transformation. In 1955, the govern-
ment passed a new Petroleum Law, which increased the presence of in-
ternational oil companies in Libya. The Law encouraged competition
among firms, by limiting the size and number of their concessions, and
forced companies to develop their oil fields within a specific time period.
With the introduction of this new Law, which included the possibility of
paying lower royalties than in other oil-producing countries, dozens of
firms started operating in Libya, including independent ones from West
Germany, Japan, and Italy. The development of Libya’s oil resources was
also closely related to the decision on the part of the US and Great Britain
to differentiate the sources of oil coming from the Middle East, in order to
avoid being entirely dependent on the Suez Canal. Libya’s geographic
position west of the Canal and close to Western European markets and
refineries made it an ideal place where to invest public and corporate
resources.10
As dozens of international oil companies applied for concessions,
thousands of Libyan men left the desert, while hundreds of expats arrived
to work in the oil industry. Many Libyans found employment in the
growing construction and service industries catering to oil companies.
They became night watchmen or domestic workers for wealthy oil com-
pany employees and military personnel, or contractors in a range of sectors
including water-well drilling, air transport, and trucking. Tripoli and
Benghazi changed accordingly. As their population increased, the two
cities introduced a clear-cut separation between luxurious neighborhoods
inhabited by a wealthy class of foreign businessmen on the one hand, and
slums for the Libyan population on the other. As the American Embassy in
Tripoli put it, whereas foreign workers moved into “new, white, gleaming,
‘Mediterranean’ style buildings,” most Libyans occupied “the rapid bur-
geoning of ‘bidonvillas’…jammed with thousands of country people—
mostly semi-nomadis [sic].”11
Given that most Libyans were rural and unskilled, oil companies
imported skilled workers from abroad. At the Zelten oil field, for instance,
Esso employed drilling and derrick technicians from California. In other
cases, firms hired Egyptians who had acquired experience in their country’s
oil industry and moved to Libya in search of a better job. Or else Italians
who stayed after the end of colonialism or migrated to Libya to find
employment in the growing transportation, construction and oil sector,
318 E. BINI

and who were not only more qualified, but often less hostile to the
American and British business world.12 Libyans, on the other hand, were
hired on a weekly or monthly basis and did not receive any benefits or
allowances. Most of them were young, unmarried and unskilled migrants,
who considered working in the oil fields a temporary and transient job.13
By the mid-1960s, international oil companies in Libya employed about
9000 people. Of these, 6400 were Libyan, 1290 American, 600 British and
210 Italian, while the rest were divided between Canadians, French,
Germans, Dutch, Maltese, and Greeks. The divisions between different
nationalities reflected and reinforced divisions and hierarchies between
skills and salaries: whereas Libyans worked as laborers, drivers and ser-
vicemen, American and British employees occupied the higher ranks as
managers and technicians. Italians, on the other hand, were hired as cler-
ical, professional, or technical workers.14 A typical crew was composed of
approximately ten people and included, for example, a Libyan cook, a
Danish tool pusher, a Berber driver, a British derrickman, an Italian driller,
and several Arab laborers recruited from the tribes around the wells.15
In this context, labor relations became the object of increased tension
between Libyans and Americans. In the second half of the 1950s, the
Libyan government and oil workers’ trade unions started challenging
American labor policies. In 1957, the government passed a Labor Law
aimed at “Libyanizing” the oil workforce and securing social rights for
Libyan workers. The decision to regulate labor was in many ways tied to
international oil companies’ behavior. In order to quickly set up their
businesses and carry out their activities, firms often hired people who
worked for the Libyan government and were politically influential. Faced
with the threat that they would draw on the more educated employees, the
government made sure that all workers were registered and employed
through provincial and federal Labor Offices. The Law also introduced a
series of social rights, such as the right to a minimum wage, and the right
to proper working and living conditions. Furthermore, it challenged the
forms of discrimination between Libyan and foreign workers, particularly
between Libyans and Italians. While the Labor Law concerned all cate-
gories of workers, the Libyan government applied it primarily to oil
workers employed by foreign oil companies. By doing so, it established a
clear separation and hierarchy between a class of skilled oil workers that
could serve as the backbone of the country’s economy on the one hand,
and unskilled workers on the other. US oil companies reacted immediately
to the Labor Law and argued that it constituted a “harassment of American
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 319

oil companies.”16 Nonetheless, they approved the final draft and accepted
the introduction of fixed pay scales, and the need to hire workers through
the Labor Office.17
While the Libyan government used the Law to further its control over
the Libyan workforce and the country’s oil resources, other groups
advanced more radical requests. In 1958, Abd al-Latif Kekhya, a trade
unionist previously employed by Mobil Oil Canada, founded the
Petroleum Workers Union (PWU), which aimed at representing all
employees of the oil companies operating in Tripolitania. With a mem-
bership of 600 people, it soon joined the International Federation of
Petroleum Workers (IFPW), based in Denver, Colorado. The PWU
denounced employers for not respecting Libya’s Labor Law, and attacked
firms for establishing hierarchies between Libyan, Italian and other foreign
workers.18
In the late 1950s, the US administration, along with the companies,
became increasingly worried about Kekhya’s activities. While the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) described him as “a rabid opportunist with
strong grievances against the Western companies,”19 the State Department
feared that “Kikhya [sic]…could well become a matter of serious concern
to Western petroleum and political interests for years to come.”20 In order
to undermine his growing power, the American government, with the
support of US oil companies, offered Kekhya a fellowship to study at the
“Centro Studi CISL” in Florence. Funded by the anti-Communist
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the Center
was run by the Italian trade union Confederazione Italiana Sindacato
Lavoratori [Italian Confederation of Trades’ Union] (CISL) and played an
important role in training pro-Western trade unionists from Italy and,
increasingly, from Latin America, Africa, and Asia.21 However, when he
returned to Libya, Kekhya organized a major labor federation, which
received support from the Soviet Union, the Tunisian Communist Party,
the Port Workers’ Union, and Arab Communists.22 Like in other contexts,
the US administration reacted by offering its support to a pro-Western
trade unionist, Salim Shita, and mobilized the American Federation of
Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to establish a
strong relationship between Shita and the ICFTU. In 1959, with the
support of the American government and the AFL-CIO, Shita expelled
Kekhya from the PWU, and placed Libyan trade unions under the Libyan
General Federation of Trade Unions (LGFTU), directed by him.23
320 E. BINI

“THE HOUSES THAT OIL BUILT”

In a context characterized by limited social and political rights, American
oil companies proceeded to establish a firm presence in Libya. In 1959,
Esso made one of its most important discoveries at the Zelten oil field,
located in Cyrenaica about 100 km south of the Mediterranean coast. The
amount of crude extracted was such that it supplied most of the company’s
share of the European market. With its 30 wells, in 1963 the field produced
up to 300,000 barrels of crude per day. Esso thus became the largest and
most important company in Libya, and contributed significantly to trans-
forming the country into the main African oil producer, with an extraction
of 58.5 million tons of oil by 1965.24
The firm quickly expanded its activities, and introduced a series of
changes that had profound social and political consequences. In 1959, it
started building an industrial area along the coast, near the village of Marsa
el Brega, to process the oil it extracted in the desert. This included a
pipeline connecting its oil field to the sea, a power station to provide
electricity to Zelten, a terminal to ship petroleum to Western Europe and
the US, and several storage tanks. In the early 1960s, the company decided
to build a refinery, needed to transform the increased amount of oil coming
from its concessions. It was prefabricated in Belgium by the Chemical
Construction Company of New York and sent to Libya in 1962, and was
supposed to refine 8000 barrels of crude per day, for its own needs and
those of Libyan consumers. In 1965, Esso added a plant to produce liq-
uefied natural gas (LNG) for its Western European markets.25
In order to operate its various plants, Esso imported skilled workers
from the US, Canada, and Great Britain. As long as it limited its activities
to extraction, Esso relied on a pool of geologists and technicians that
moved monthly between the company’s domestic and international affili-
ates. After it built the refinery, it needed a more stable workforce, willing to
work and live in Marsa el Brega. The first group of workers, which was
particularly crucial in getting the refinery started, came from several plants
Esso owned in Great Britain, at Milford Haven (Wales), Fawley
(Hampshire), and Whitegate (Ireland). Most employees, though, were part
of an American group of expats who moved from one oil town to another,
and many had previously worked and lived in Venezuela, Texas, and
California. One of them, for instance, after graduating from Ohio State
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 321

University in the late 1940s was hired in Aruba as a refinery plant safety
engineer. He stayed there until 1965, with his wife, the daughter of an
Esso employee from Louisiana, with whom he had seven children. They
eventually moved back to the US so that their children could attend
school, and then to other oil towns across the world, from England, to
Singapore, to the Philippines, before going to Marsa el Brega, where they
stayed for 2 years, after which they moved to yet another oil town, in
Baytown, Texas.26
With the construction of the refinery, Esso also built a company town
for the growing number of foreign employees operating the plant. One
resident described it as, “a large fenced enclave, about five miles across,
surrounded by the Great Sahara Desert to the south and the Gulf of Sirte,
the southern reach of the Mediterranean Sea, on the north.”27 The com-
pany aimed at creating what it called a “settler community,” based on a
clear-cut separation between white American, British and Canadian
employees and the Libyan population. Like other oil towns Esso (and
other companies) built in oil-producing countries, Marsa el Brega was a
gated community. As the Residents’ Guidebook Esso distributed to its
employees and their families put it,

To assure Esso exclusive use of the area as set forth in the agreement [be-
tween Esso and the Libyan government], the entire Esso development is
isolated and separated from the surrounding area by a fence 17 km long, and
like other oil installations, is guarded by security police.28

Marsa el Brega had been the site of an Italian concentration camp for those
Cyrenaican tribes that had tried to resist Italian colonial rule. The town was
abandoned after being destroyed during the Second World War. At first,
Esso Libya preserved the memory of colonial violence, by having “concrete
fences constructed around four of the Brega cemeteries.”29 Americans,
however, quickly forgot about the past, and proceeded to build a new town
based on new forms of segregation and violence. As Richard H. Tallman,
Community Development Advisor for Esso Libya, stated during a lecture
held at the University of Tripoli in 1968, before the oil boom Marsa el
Brega had been “little more than a point on the map marking the location
of a police post, a few shallow water wells and a very small community.”30
Yet, Libyans continued to draw parallels between the two camps. In an
article published in the Cyrenaican newspaper Al Zaman in 1963, a
322 E. BINI

journalist defined Marsa el Brega as an “empire,” and Libyan workers’

living conditions as “concentration camp conditions.”31
In 1965, the residential area had three streets, which housed about sixty
families. The “houses that oil built,” as one Esso publication called them,
were standard concrete houses made of two, three or four bedrooms. The
company encouraged male employees to bring their wives and children,
and provided bachelors with small trailers or houses that could accom-
modate approximately ten workers. Unlike other American oil towns, the
residential area was not characterized by spatial hierarchies between
employees, although office workers—mostly female—lived in a separate
area called “Secretary Street,” along with teachers. In order to attract
employees, a pamphlet emphasized how,

In the fashion of other towns that in the mid-twentieth century have been
planned and engineered into sudden existence by private investment, almost
every conceivable material need has been anticipated and met. The neat rows
of bungalow-style houses are equipped with both central heating and central
air conditioning.32

Esso provided its employees with a supermarket, a clinic, a cinema which

mostly showed Western movies, a bowling alley, tennis courts, and several
recreation facilities, including a golf course made “by rolling a mixture of
oil, sand and sea weed.” Children could attend school up to eighth grade,
after which they would go—with Esso’s financial support—to boarding
schools in Europe and the US, or to international schools in Rome. In
order to provide high learning standards, Esso made sure to hire American
and British teachers. Employees, therefore, had access to the standard of
living they were used to in the US or in other American company towns
across the world, with the supermarket providing “a wide selection of
canned, packaged and frozen food products imported from Europe and the
United States.”33 As Muriel Arnold, who worked in Marsa el Brega as a
secretary, put it, the supermarket “could be anywhere in the world. Shelves
are filled up when a ship comes in with supplies mainly from America. It
then takes on an atmosphere like Christmas. Goodies everywhere.”34
Esso aimed at building an informal community of employees and their
families. In order to attract workers, the company highlighted the forms of
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 323

leisure workers could have access to in Marsa el Brega. As one publication

put it,

A recreation center with swimming pool, restaurant, lounge and sailing

facilities provides an atmosphere, a view of the Mediterranean and—most of
the time—a climate that most people have to buy with vacation money.35

Marsa el Brega relied on a strict gender segregation. Wives were not only in
charge of planning their families’ everyday lives, but also of building a sense
of community by organizing social events for the town as a whole, thus
preventing the emergence of social conflict. They took care of their chil-
dren, volunteered in schools, socialized through the Ladies Ghibli Golf
Club, “cook[ed], paint[ed], [and played] bridge.”36 The company pro-
vided them with Information Packages, which included a Ladies Group
Directory, as well as recipes to be used in the Libyan desert, such as a recipe
for stuffed camel. One resident offered the following description,

There is a very active social life here. In addition to the Golf Club, we have a
Dramatic Group…the Scuba Club…There is a Go-Kart Club, a Ladies
Bowling League and a Children’s Bowling League. A Sailing Group, the
Brega Lawn Tennis Association. Ladies Duplicate Bridge and Mixed
Duplicate Bridge, a Gourmet Group, a Garden Club, a Square Dance Club,
the Caledoniam Society and Brownies.37

In the middle of the desert, wives had the difficult task of maintaining
“sophisticated and civilised standards.” Esso encouraged them to repro-
duce the forms of middle-class identity that characterized other company
towns in Latin America and Asia, setting a “dinner table equal to any
Manhattan apartment with crisp table linen, dinner services of the finest
bone china and Waterford crystal glass for the fruit juice,” and engaging in
stimulating conversations, so that it would be “difficult to believe that we
are several hundred miles from anywhere.”38
Despite Esso Libya’s efforts to describe Marsa el Brega as a tourist
resort, many residents felt isolated. The town was located hundreds of
miles away from Benghazi and Tripoli and “seem[ed] to come up out of
nowhere almost mirage-like.”39 While Esso’s official publication depicted
“the houses that oil built” as colorful and surrounded by trees and grass,
324 E. BINI

the residential area was “built on the grid system…[and] segregated by…
long, bare, empty streets with not a hint of colour or lick of paint, not a
bush or tree or plant.”40 Yards were filled with sand “that proved hostile to
most vegetation,” while sandstorms (ghiblis) forced residents inside their
homes for days at a time.41 As Arnold put it,

In the Esso brochure Marsa el-Brega is described as a ‘modern port com-

munity’. In fact, Marsa el-Brega is a camp with top security, enclosed by that
high mesh fence with armed guards at check points. I have described it in my
diary as a B.G.D (bloody great dump) smell of dead rats, smell of sewers and
oh! The smell of gas!42

Furthermore, despite the fact that for some families living an international
corporate life meant social mobility and access to higher living standards
than those possible in the US, the forms of status described in Esso’s official
publications rarely translated into reality. According to one handbook,
employees could employ domestic servants and each house even had a
small room for a maid, but in fact “no one hired servants because there
were none to be had.”43
Nonetheless, for many women (and their families), Marsa el Brega
offered a good quality of life and provided them with a close-knit com-
munity. The experience of living in the desert struck many residents as
unique, and many enjoyed encountering Bedouins on the outskirts of the
company town. An engineer’s wife, for instance, pointed out that “prob-
ably [she] would not move there and live there, it would not be her choice
to live there if she had the choice to live anywhere in the world, but it was
beautiful in the Spring, with the Spring rains and the desert in bloom.”44
Children, in particular, had access to a range of facilities and forms of
entertainment, and still remember growing up in Marsa el Brega as “the
greatest part of [their] childhood & teenage years!”45 The company
encouraged boys and girls to become members of scout organizations, and
most of them spent their time on the beach, at the swimming pool or
on the go-kart racetrack. Children would also be taken on trips to the
desert, where they searched for fossils, or visited plane wreckages from the
Second World War. Especially for boys, Marsa el Brega provided a safe
haven where to build their identities as frontiersmen. Journalist Neil
MacFarquhar, who moved to the company town in 1965 with his father, a
chemical engineer, described Marsa el Brega as “the perfect little beach
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 325

town…, a little Texas oil town inadvertently planted along the

Mediterranean coast.”46
Libyan employees, on the other hand, lived a segregated life. In order to
comply with the Labor Law, which stipulated that after a period of 10 years
Libyan nationals should make up 75% of the labor force, in 1963 Esso
opened a training center for its Libyan workers. Directed by Leverett
Guess, who had previously worked as a training supervisor for Esso in
Venezuela, the center provided courses in accounting, mechanics, oil field
operations, and clerical work. Libyans, however, were often discriminated
for their trade union activities and were usually employed on a temporary
basis. Furthermore, they were not allowed to bring their families with them
and were assigned small segregated bungalows. Other Libyans worked in
Marsa el Brega, at the town’s restaurant, the grocery store, or the bowling
alley. They usually lived in what was called the “crossroads,” just outside
the compound, “a collection of shacks of corrugated iron, open bazaar type
shops, filth and liter everywhere,” located in an area between the industrial
plant, the desert and the few existing paved roads. While Libyan women
were not allowed on the compounds, men entered every day and left after
their workshift. Americans, therefore, rarely interacted with them. The only
encounters took place at the stores, or when Bedouins lent their donkeys,
camels or sheep for the school’s Christmas pageant. As MacFarquhar put it,
“Libyans were mostly strangers viewed from afar.”47

CHALLENGING AMERICAN FORMS OF SEGREGATION

Starting in the mid-1960s, Libyan oil workers began challenging American
oil companies’ labor policies. In 1963, they rioted against Bechtel Brothers,
which was building a pipeline for the Oasis Oil Company. They challenged
the forms of working and living segregation the firm had established in its
oil camp, where 120 American and British employees lived in a trailer
camp, whereas almost 600 Libyans were lodged in a tent camp. As the
American Embassy reported,

a crowd of approximately 100 Libyans descended upon the non-Libyan

camp. Under a barrage of stones and bottles, the foreign employees ran to
the trailers and barricaded themselves inside. For the next 2 h the Libyan
mob battered the trailers with rocks, boards, and bottles, breaking most of
the windows and damaging the air conditioners.48
326 E. BINI

Two years later, Libyans placed bombs in the homes of two Esso
employees, as well as at the British Embassy, the American and the German
Consulates in Benghazi. Furthermore, they sabotaged and blew up three
storage tanks and a water pipeline in Marsa el Brega.49
In response, American oil companies increased their security measures
and asked support from the State Department. During a meeting held in
Washington, DC with representatives of Standard Oil (N.J.), the State
Department recommended the creation of a National Security Force,
which could patrol pipelines, oil fields and storage facilities. It pointed out
that, “Libya needs to have a new, elite ‘National Resources Security Force’,
somewhat analogous to the National Guard which was formed in
Venezuela at oil company request.”50 Esso built more fences and assured
its employees’ security by establishing three army checkpoints in Marsa el
Brega. It also increased the forms of discrimination carried out against
Libyan oil workers, by requiring them to leave the compounds after
working hours. In MacFarquhar words, “after the fence went up, the
volatile Middle East seemed even more distant from inside our oil company
cocoon. Brega felt more Texan than Libyan.”51
Despite the introduction of more security measures, Libyans continued
to oppose the forms of segregation and discrimination carried out by Esso.
In 1966, over 100 Libyan employees signed a petition asking the company
to increase their wages, provide married quarters for all married men, and
allow Libyans to access positions that had been vacated by expats. An
article published in the newspaper Al Hakika pressured the Ministries of
Petroleum and Labor to inquire into the differences between Libyan and
American workers’ living conditions. In order to respond to these growing
tensions, Esso proposed to transform Marsa el Brega into an “open com-
munity,” a city that, as Esso’s President put it, “could become one of the
proudest examples of development in modern Libya.” The plan included
the “establishment of municipal utilities system, construction of housing
under a home purchase plan… government schools, medical facilities and
the necessary public buildings.” Unless these problems were addressed,
Esso’s President pointed out, “ugly settlements will spring up around the
area and social problems will develop.”52
These discussions about Libyans’ working and living conditions became
part and parcel of the political changes that characterized Libya in the
second half of the 1960s. During the Six Day War of 1967, oil workers and
their trade unions played a crucial role in redefining international oil pol-
itics. Along with dock workers and students, they organized a strike in July
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 327

1967, which began with a 3-day general strike in Tripoli, involving the
boycott of American goods, and continued with a 3-week work stoppage in
various oil industry installations in Tripoli and the Gulf of Sirte. Oil
companies reacted accordingly. Whereas Esso used an alternative pipeline
to transport crude oil from Zelten to Marsa el Brega, American firms
replaced Libyan workers with expats, and evacuated the wives and children
of their American and British employees.53
Oil workers’ activism in the Six Day War set the stage for Qaddafi’s
military coup in 1969. In the weeks preceding and following the coup, oil
workers offered their support to the new regime, by organizing meetings
and demonstrations. They asked for better working and living conditions in
oil fields, and the expulsion of unskilled foreign workers. Once he came to
power, Qaddafi assigned oil workers a particularly important role in car-
rying forward the ideals of the revolution. He nominated Mahmud
Sulaiman al-Maghribi, one of the leaders of the 1967 embargo, Prime
Minister, and placed him at the “head of a team to renegotiate the terms of
the country’s contracts with foreign oil companies.”54 Born to a Palestinian
mother and a Libyan-Siryan father, al-Maghreibi had studied petroleum
engineering and geology at George Washington University and law at
Johns Hopkins University, before being employed by Esso Libya as a
lawyer. He advocated the need for the Libyan educated class of advancing
oil workers’ rights through forms of oil nationalism.55
With the rise of Qaddafi, labor relations changed profoundly. The new
regime declared trade unions illegal, thus excluding the possibility of
redefining international oil politics through forms of social justice. Inside
oil facilities, the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) orga-
nized workers around popular committees, which supervised the election
of boards and union officials, forbade “direct contact with foreign labor
unions, require[d] Cabinet approval for all union decisions,” and outlawed
strikes.56 The RCC expelled or transferred many American and British
workers, encouraged the employment and training of Libyans, and cri-
tiqued Americans’ high salaries and allowances.57
These policies went hand in hand with the nationalization of Libya’s oil
industry. Following the example of the Algerian state-owned company
Sonatrach, in 1971 Libya nationalized British Petroleum’s assets and,
between 1973 and 1974, those of nine other international companies
operating in Libya. One of its main aims was to make sure that skilled
Libyan workers would operate the oil fields and plants previously managed
by American and British firms. In order to do so, it required foreign oil
328 E. BINI

companies to provide training services, in exchange for concession rights.

While Occidental set up a training program for Libyans, the Italian com-
pany Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi [National Hydrocarbon Agency] (ENI)
provided courses in drilling, mechanics, refining, and pipeline operations.
The regime also established relations with other Arab countries, such as
Algeria, in order to exchange technical information, equipment and
training, and founded the Tobruk Higher Petroleum Institute.58
As a result, expats’ everyday lives underwent several important trans-
formations, and many decided to leave. Under the new regime, US, British
and Canadian citizens were allowed to enter into Libya with a 3-month
visa, and they could be deported if they did not comply with the rules of
the new government. Qaddafi banned the consumption of alcohol and the
selling of pork, restricted access to Coca Cola (because of the presence of a
Coca Cola plant in Israel), and censored newspapers and magazines.
During the 1970s Esso’s Residents’ Guidebook advised employees that “if
you arrive at the airport drunk…you will be deported and blacklisted
thereby forfeiting any chance of return to Libya.”59
The town of Marsa el Brega changed accordingly. In 1971, the plant
was partly nationalized (with the National Oil Corporation gaining control
over 51% of the company). While it continued to be operated by Esso
personnel, the firm also trained Libyans as engineers, technicians and
managers.60 In the company town, the population increased to 3000. Most
foreign workers continued to be British and American (with a small
number of Norwegians, French, and Germans), but the community was
made less of families and more of bachelors. Their contracts did not require
them to move to Libya permanently, but rather to work for 55 days in a
row and then return to their home countries for 18 days of paid leave.
During the 1970s, Marsa el Brega’s communal life was deeply trans-
formed. Inside the company town, all signs in English were replaced by
Arabic ones, the movie theater started showing Egyptian films rather than
Westerns, while most consumer goods were imported from Eastern
Europe rather than the US. Single men brought with them a strong sense
of male camaraderie and homosociality, as they lived together in big
houses, which became the center of the company town’s social life. With
the limitations placed on alcohol consumption, most residents tended to
organize private parties, where they served homemade alcoholic beverages,
prepared according to a semi-official instruction manual handed out to
every new resident.61
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 329

The Brega Social Club continued to organize dinners and balls regu-
larly, so that American, British, and Canadian employees would feel at
home, “anywhere but at the edge of the Sahara desert.”62 Since Esso
recognized that under Qaddafi’s regime living conditions in Marsa el Brega
had become worse, it allowed its employees to have one extra week of
vacation per year, which gave them “a chance to dash out to nearby civi-
lized locations for a needed break from homemade booze and boredom.”
They often spent their vacation time in Beirut, Lebanon, which
MacFarquhar described as “the ‘Paris of the Middle East,’ a great place to
vacation away from the restrictions of living in a country where citizens
could be flogged for having a beer.”63 In the 1970s, though, Esso was less
willing to provide its employees with all the benefits and privileges that
characterized American corporate culture in the previous decades. As one
interviewee put it, “in Aruba [in the 1940s] the company would ship
Christmas trees, because we couldn’t get Christmas trees… in Brega… the
quality of support from Esso [went] down as years went on…The
employees at first were treated as kings and then as time went on…you
were just a normal employee.”64
With the new regime, restrictions previously placed on Libyans living in
Marsa el Brega were removed. As a result, a growing number of Libyans
working at the plant as engineers and technicians moved to the company
town, although still in a segregated area, with a separate school for their
children. Most of them had studied in the US, with funding provided by
Esso. For instance, Ali Gabriel el Kubti, the son of a merchant from
Benghazi, had earned a degree in chemical engineering at UCLA. Many of
them, though, complained about their living quarters, pointing out “that
they’d been assigned inferior housing, stables unfit for animals, apparently
imagining all those years that the foreigners were living in absolute
luxury.”65 Contacts between American, British, Canadian, and Libyan
workers were polite, but distant, as Libyans “would come home for coffee
or tea, but they never came home for dinner.” This led to tensions, as
“little Libyan kids would hang over the wall and throw rocks at the people
walking by and spit at them.”66
Relations between Libyans and Americans were gendered in several
important ways, as Libyan men sometimes perceived American women as
being sexually available.67 American teenage girls tended to spend time
with young male Libyan employees living in the company town, and there
330 E. BINI

were instances when relations turned sexually violent.68 Arnold, for

instance, reported,

recently a new secretary was settling into her bungalow on the day she arrived
when there was a knock at her door. There stood a handsome young Libyan
clutching a fistful of dinar (Libyan currency). When you realise just what the
Western television stations are churning out—naked white men and naked
white women performing acrobatics on a bed before millions of viewers—
who can blame these frustrated young men for believing that we are all
prostitutes and available.69

At the end of the 1970s, with the expansion of Libya’s oil and gas industry,
the government planned a new city, New Brega, which was intended to
serve what had become the country’s most important industrial area. Its
aim was to “stabilize the workforce by encouraging permanent settlements
and socio-productive interactions that could create open communities.”70
The town, as well as the oil and gas plants, were directly managed by the
state and were built according to a series of principles laid out in the Green
Book. New Brega, which included large residential areas and public parks
overlooking the sea, aimed at promoting a specific brand of social-
ism through forms of autocracy and centralization, areas, and “was
designed with the goal to remove social discrimination and to encourage
achievement on an equal basis.”71 Families were, once again, the main
social unit, and received the bigger and nicer apartments, while bachelors
lived in bungalows or in the old houses built by Esso in Marsa el Brega.
When it was built it had a population of 45,000 people.
By the time the Libyan state started transforming the industrial and
urban area of Marsa el Brega, American oil companies were facing growing
opposition. In 1979, demonstrators attacked and burned the American
Embassy in Tripoli, along with the French Embassies in Tripoli and
Benghazi, leading to the temporary evacuation of most of Exxon’s
employees. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, relations between
the US and Libya deteriorated, and in 1981 the American government
decided to close the US Embassy in Tripoli. Tensions rose when the US
Sixth Fleet shot down two Libyan planes off the country’s coast. Following
the increased harassment of its employees and “occupation of company
housing at Marsa el-Brega by security forces,” Esso (which in 1972
changed its name to Exxon) withdrew its workers from Libya and closed its
operations. By the end of 1981, the Libyan government had completed the
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 331

nationalization of the company’s assets and passed them into the hands of
the Libyan national oil company.72

NOTES
1. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, August 27, 1965. National
Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter
NARA), Records Group 59, General Records of the Department of State
(hereafter RG 59), Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–1966, box 1394.
2. Memorandum of Conversation, September 15, 1965. NARA, RG 59,
Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–1966, box 1395.
3. Adrian Pelt, Libyan Independence and the United Nations: A Case of
Planned Decolonization (New York: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1970); Scott L. Bills, The Libyan Arena: The United
States, Britain, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–1948 (Kent: The
Kent State University Press, 1995); Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya and the
United States, Two Centuries of Strife (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya: from Colony to
Revolution (Oxford: One World, 2008).
4. Miguel Tinker Salas, The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in
Venezuela (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Kaveh Ehsani, “The
Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry: The Built Environment
and the Making of the Industrial Working Class (1908–1941)” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Leiden, 2014); Nelida Fuccaro, ed., “Histories of Oil
and Urban Modernity in the Middle East,” special issue of Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (2013); Ulrike
Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Claudia Ghrawi, and Nora Lafi, eds., Urban
Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from
Empire to Nation State (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
5. Robert Vitalis, “Black Gold, White Crude: An Essay on American
Exceptionalism, Hierarchy, and Hegemony in the Gulf,” Diplomatic
History 26, no. 2 (2002): 200; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom:
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2006).
6. Myrna I. Santiago, “Women of the Mexican Oil Fields: Class, Nationality,
Economy, Culture, 1900–1938,” Journal of Women’s History 21,
no. 1 (2009): 88; see also Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil:
Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
7. Nathan Citino, “Suburbia and Modernization: Community Building and
America’s Post-World War II Encounter with the Arab Middle East,” The
Arab Studies Journal 13/14, no. 2/1 (2005–2006): 39–64.
332 E. BINI

8. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation,

Colonization, and Resistance (Albany: State University of New York,
2009); Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, eds., Italian Colonialism (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
9. Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia. Dal fascismo a Gheddafi
(Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1991); R.L. Swetzer, Wheelus Field: The Story of the
U.S. Air Force in Libya. The Early Days, 1944–1952 (N.p.: Historical
Division, Office of Information, U.S. Air Force in Europe, 1965).
10. Judith Gurney, Libya: The Political Economy of Oil (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996); Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence: Oil
and State Building (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).
11. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, June 2, 1961. NARA, Record
Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State
(hereafter RG 84), General Records in Tripoli, 1948–1961, box 12.
Robert S. Harrison, “Migrants in the City of Tripoli, Libya,” Geographical
Review 57, no. 3 (1967): 397–423.
12. See for example the job ads published in the main newspaper of the Italian
community living in Tripoli, Il Giornale di Tripoli.
13. Fred Halliday, “Migration and the Labour Force in the Oil Producing
States of the Middle East,” Development and Change 8, no. 3 (1977):
263–291; Ruth First, “Libya: Class and State in an Oil Economy,” in Oil
and Class Struggle, ed. Petter Nore and Terisa Turner (London: Zed Press,
1980), 119–142; Robert Mabro, “Labour Supplies and Labour Stability: A
Case-Study of the Oil Industry in Libya,” Bulletin of the Oxford University
Institute of Economics & Statistics 32, no. 4 (1970): 319–338. As Mabro
has argued, compared to other oil producing countries, in Libya the oil
industry did not act as a wage leader or a promoter of employment. The
Libyan state used oil revenues to expand government employment, and
offered higher wages and better benefits, such as family and housing
allowances, and pensions. Libyans thus preferred to be employed by the
state rather than by oil companies, whose jobs tended to be characterized
by highly exploitative working conditions.
14. Kingdom of Libya, Employment in the Petroleum Mining Industry in Libya,
1964 (Tripoli: Census and Statistical Department, 1964).
15. Don Sheridan, Fahud, The Leopard Mountain: Oil Exploration in Oman
and Libya in the 1950s (Dublin: The Vico Press, 2000), 193–197.
16. Notes on Petroleum Commission Meeting, November 24, 1958. NARA,
RG59, Central Decimal File, 1955–1959, box 4865; International Labour
Office, Report to the Government of Libya on Labour Legislation and Labour
Administration (Geneva: ILO, 1966).
17. US Embassy Benghazi to Department of State, March 12, 1958. NARA,
RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955–1959, box 4865. Elisabetta Bini,
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 333

“From Colony to Oil Producer: US Oil Companies and the Reshaping of

Labor Relations in Libya during the Cold War,” Labor History, forth-
coming (2018).
18. John Norman, Labor and Politics in Libya and Arab Africa (New York:
Bookman Associates, 1965).
19. “Increasing Harassment of Western Oil Companies in Libya,” Central
Intelligence Bulletin, October 20, 1958. NARA, CIA Records Search Tool
(CREST).
20. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, January 6, 1958. NARA, RG
59, Central Decimal Files, 1955–1959, box 4865.
21. Federico Romero, The United States and the European Trade Union
Movement, 1944–1951 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1993).
22. Fondazione Gramsci, Archive of the Italian Communist Party (PCI);
Willard A. Belling, Pan-Arabism and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1960).
23. US Embassy Benghazi to Department of State, May 6, 1959. NARA, RG
59, Central Decimal Files, 1955–1959, box 4865. For a more detailed
analysis: Bini, “From Colony to Oil Producer;” see also Geert Van
Goethem and Robert Anthony Waters Jr., eds., American Labor’s Global
Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL-CIO during the Cold
War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
24. Bennett H. Wall, Growth in a Changing Environment: A History of
Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) 1950–1972 (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1988).
25. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, August 3, 1962. NARA, RG
59, Central Decimal File, 1960–1963, box 2761; Esso in Libya, 1963.
ExxonMobil Historical Collection, Center for American History,
University of Texas at Austin, box 2.207/H18.
26. Interview with MB; Esso Elementary School Marsa el Brega Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/57708626807/. Tinker Salas, The
Enduring Legacy.
27. Gary Gentry, Oil Patch: Living in Oil Company Compounds from Desert to
Jungle (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2004). On the building of the
refinery and company town: Esso Libya Operations, 1963–1966, home
video, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G5BvrVp7Mk.
28. Residents’ Guidebook: Introduction, 4. ExxonMobil Historical Collection,
Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, box
2.207/H18. Carl H. Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided
Cities (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
29. Residents’ Guidebook, 34.
334 E. BINI

30. Richard H. Tallman, “Marsa El Brega Community Development,” in Esso

Seminar Series on Aspects of the Oil Industry at Libyan University Faculty of
Commerce and Economics, April 8, 1968, 1. NARA.
31. US Embassy Benghazi to Department of State, October 18, 1963. NARA,
RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, box 3622.
32. Esso in Libya, 20. On architecture in oil fields: Mark Crinson, Modern
Architecture and the End of Empire (London: Ashgate, 2003).
33. Residents’ Guidebook, 7.
34. Muriel Arnold, Libya in Limbo: Echoes from Marsa el-Brega (Elgin: Librario
Publishing, 2012).
35. Esso in Libya, 20.
36. Residents’ Guidebook, 30. Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American
Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life (New York: WW. Norton &
Co., 2002).
37. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 452. Women’s roles were in
many ways similar to those that characterized colonial settings: Tony
Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, eds., Bodies in Contact: Rethinking
Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005).
38. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 547–550.
39. Esso in Libya, 21.
40. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 169.
41. Neil MacFarquhar, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes
You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East
(New York: Public Affairs, 2009).
42. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 67.
43. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 175.
44. Interview with MB.
45. See the Esso Elementary School Marsa el Brega Facebook page.
46. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 637. See also JT Davis, Esso Marsa el Brega
Life, 1965–1968, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15e
ASM9VdtU.
47. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 64. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of
State, November 5, 1965. NARA, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files,
1964–1966, Economic, Petroleum, box 1395; US Embassy Tripoli to
Department of State, August 27, 1965. NARA, RG 59, Central Foreign
Policy Files, 1964–66, Economic, Petroleum, box 1394.
48. US Embassy Benghazi to Department of State, July 17, 1963. NARA, RG
59, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, box 3622.
 BUILDING AN OIL EMPIRE: LABOR AND GENDER RELATIONS … 335

49. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, August 27, 1965. NARA, RG

59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–1966, box 1394. Rasmus Christian
Elling, “On Lines and Fences: Labour, Community and Violence in an Oil
City,” in Freitag et al., eds., Urban Violence in the Middle East, 197–221.
50. Memorandum of Conversation, September 15, 1965. NARA, RG 59,
Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–1966, box 1395.
51. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 62.
52. Letter to Prime Minister Mazek, November 16, 1966; US Embassy Tripoli
to Department of State, January 25, 1967, NARA, RG 59, Central Foreign
Policy Files, 1964–1966, box 1364.
53. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, August 15, 1967, box 639.
54. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
(London: Verso, 2011), 166; Dirk Vandewalle, ed., Libya since 1969:
Qadhafi’s Revolution Revisited (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
Mansour O. El-Kikhia, Libya’s Qaddafi: the Politics of Contradiction
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997).
55. Harold H. Saunders to Mc George Bundy and Walt W. Rostow, July 3,
1967. Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Papers of Lyndon B.
Johnson, President, 1963–1969, National Security Files, Files of the Special
Committe of the NSC, box 6; John K. Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 17–19; “I lavoratori del Campo
Dahra chiedono il miglioramento delle condizioni sociali,” Il Giornale di
Tripoli, October 3, 1969; “Il sindacato del petrolio si sta riorganizzando,”
Il Giornale di Tripoli, October 2, 1969.
56. US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, February 23, 1972. NARA,
RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1970–1973, box 1412.
57. Jonathan Bearman, Qadhafi’s Libya (London: Zed Books, 1986).
58. Archivio Storico Eni (Ase), Fondo Eni, Direzione Estera, b. 202, f. 1713;
US Embassy Tripoli to Department of State, April 1970. NARA, RG 59,
Subject Numeric Files, 1970–1973, Economic, box 1506.
59. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 113.
60. Joseph A. Pratt with William E. Hale, Exxon: Transforming Energy, 1973–
2005 (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2013).
61. Gentry, Oil Patch, Kindle edition, loc. 153.
62. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 69.
63. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 183.
64. Interview with MB.
65. MacFarquhar, The Media Relations of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy
Birthday, Kindle edition, loc. 199.
66. Interview with MB.
336 E. BINI

67. Gentry, Oil Patch.

68. Interview with MB.
69. Arnold, Libya in Limbo, Kindle edition, loc. 86.
70. Antonluca Di Paola, The Towns of Petroleum: Urban Planning and New
Towns in Libya (1970–2000) (Città di Castello: Alinea, 2011), 211.
71. Di Paola, The Towns of Petroleum, 212.
72. Pratt and Hale, Exxon.
 Tapline, Welfare Capitalism, and Mass
Mobilization in Lebanon, 1950–1964

Zachary Davis Cuyler

INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines the politics of the technical and of anti-colonial
nationalism in the labor history of the Trans-Arabian pipeline, or Tapline,
in Lebanon. It covers the period between 1950, when Tapline was com-
pleted, and 1963–1964, when the company’s Lebanese workforce
unionized and participated in a successful nationwide strike. After
reviewing the purposes Tapline was built to serve, this chapter examines the
technical systems that enabled and regulated the flow of oil through the
pipeline and the managerial strategy Tapline pursued to prevent worker
mobilization that could disrupt those systems. It then shows how Tapline’s
Lebanese employees unionized, secured coordinated control over the flow
of oil through the pipeline and used their resulting power to contest the
terms of their labor. In doing so, this chapter aims to illustrate the unpre-
dictable ways in which technology distributes agency, and the complex and

I would like to thank Rayyane Tabet, Ayyub Shami, Maria Abunasr, Raja Iliya, Osama
Abi-Mershed, and Borre Ludvigsen. This project would not have been possible
without their help. I would also like to thank the members of the Energy and the Left,
and Labor Politics in the Oil Industry workshops for their insightful comments and
critiques.

Z.D. Cuyler (&)

New York University, New York, NY, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 337

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_13
338 Z.D. CUYLER

seemingly contradictory ways in which labor activism engages with the

managerial strategies it opposes.
From 1950 through the 1960s, Tapline was a critical conduit for flows of
energy and capital from Saudi Arabia through Lebanon to Western Europe
and the United States. As the pipeline itself was built, the Tapline company
also assembled a paternalistic management system that provided for work-
ers’ welfare, accommodated certain workers’ demands, and treated
Lebanese as the social equals of their American employers while maintaining
disparities of power and compensation. For the first decade of Tapline’s
operation, this strategy successfully deferred unionization. Though
Lebanese workers occupied positions critical to the flow of energy, their lack
of organization left American management in control of Tapline’s facilities
and the terms under which Lebanese workers operated them.
Yet Tapline’s Lebanese employees unionized in 1963, thereby gaining
the ability to act in concert to halt the flow of petroleum through the
pipeline. This control over energy flows gave Tapline’s Lebanese unions
the ability to force concessions from management, but also required that
union leaders unite a workforce of diverse socioeconomic and sectarian
backgrounds against the company’s American managers. To this end,
Tapline’s unions employed anti-colonial nationalist discourse that chal-
lenged Americans’ unequal access to decision-making power, benefits, and
pay. But despite the oppositional terms in which they were framed, these
demands also represented an insistence that the U.S.-owned company
grant Lebanese workers the equal treatment and paternalistic care it had
encouraged them to expect.
This chapter aims to make interconnected interventions in the histori-
ographies of Lebanon and the global petroleum industry. Historians of oil
have tended to focus on petroleum’s upstream and downstream—relations
between exporters and importers, exploration of and geopolitical compe-
tition over oil fields, producers’ political economies, and occasionally
ecology and labor in fields and refineries—while paying little attention to
the transportation of oil by pipeline, tanker, or other means.1 This focus on
petroleum’s upstream and downstream mirrors a tendency to rigidly cat-
egorize states as oil-producers or consumers, corresponding in the litera-
ture influenced by world-system theory to the core and periphery of the
capitalist world.2 A similar tendency also emerges in public discourse in the
United States on what some call oil dependency, and others regard as oil
imperialism. This chapter aims to complicate that picture by examining the
history of Tapline, a major piece of midstream oil infrastructure, in
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 339

Lebanon, a commercial intermediary that transshipped petroleum and used

it to sustain flows of people, capital, and goods.
One exception to the tendency noted above is Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon
Democracy, which devotes significant attention to the politics of transporting
energy. Mitchell argues that petroleum transportation technologies like
pipelines and tankers tend to neutralize the labor politics of energy by
employing small, isolated, and easily controlled workforces.3 Mitchell cor-
rectly identifies the ways in which the technical features of such technologies,
largely determined by the physical task of moving oil, help managers, engi-
neers, and policymakers insulate transportation systems from disruptive labor
activism. Yet as this essay will show, at the scale of the Lebanese nation-state,
as opposed to Mitchell’s scale of the global oil industry, Lebanese Tapline
workers had sufficient control over energy flows to assert autonomy in the
workplace and force greater equality within Tapline’s hierarchy of labor. This
mobilization required social links across collar and communal lines as well as
shared workplace experience, a shared repertoire of demands, and a shared
language of grievance. Another exception is Rania Ghosn’s excellent 2010
doctoral thesis on Tapline, Geographies of Energy, which mainly focuses on
Tapline’s construction and operations in Saudi Arabia and gives only cursory
attention to the company’s critical Lebanese operations.4 This chapter uses
Tapline’s history in Lebanon to examine the work required to transport oil,
to show how and why Lebanese Tapline workers mobilized to gain coordi-
nated control over an oil pipeline’s technical processes, and how they exer-
cised that control to change the terms of their labor.
In doing so, it also seeks to demonstrate that Tapline’s American managers
unintentionally fostered a particular and oppositional form of worker
mobilization while conditioning the types of demands that Lebanese Tapline
employees would make from management. As will be shown, Tapline’s
unions were specifically anti-sectarian and cross-collar, and employed
anti-colonial nationalist discourse to insist upon equality between Lebanese
and non-Lebanese employees. Pointing out the links between Lebanese
labor activism and struggles against foreign domination is not new to
Lebanese historiography, but previous historians of labor in Lebanon have
not examined how particular conditions fostered specific kinds of worker
mobilization. Moreover, historians like Elizabeth Thompson, Malek
Abisaab, and Ilyās al-Buwārī have drawn a clear line of opposition between
Lebanese labor and foreign capital, which is unsurprising given the extent of
trade union participation in Mandate-era anti-colonial mobilization and links
of solidarity and coordination between organized labor and anti-imperialist
340 Z.D. CUYLER

political parties after independence.5 Yet as Frederick Cooper has argued in

Colonialism in Question, this line is not always clear. This chapter aims to
show that it certainly was not in the case of Tapline’s operations in Lebanon:
Tapline’s management practices unintentionally encouraged Lebanese
workers to unionize, strike, and demand equality between Lebanese and
non-Lebanese employees, but that demand was itself informed by elements
of Tapline management’s own discourse and practices.6
Finally, this chapter aims to make an intervention in the historiography
of Lebanon. An especially influential strand of pre-civil war Lebanese his-
toriography rendered labor and labor activism invisible by depicting
Lebanon as a nation of merchants not suited to manual labor. Much of the
historiography written during and after the war either construed Lebanon
as a collection of warring sects for which communal loyalty and inter-
communal conflict drive all political mobilization, or sought to explain the
origins of sectarianism as the primary means of political mobilization. Yet
Lebanon has a rich history of labor activism and other forms of nonsec-
tarian mobilization, as historians such as Fawwaz Traboulsi, Elizabeth
Thompson, and others have demonstrated, and as 2015’s “You Stink”
protests have shown. This chapter’s final goal is to contribute to the
marginalized history of Lebanese labor activism, to show how Lebanese
Tapline employees mobilized along anti-sectarian and cross-collar lines,
and to link their activities to the broader spectrum of working class and
progressive mobilization in post-Mandate Lebanon.

ARAMCO, THE COLD WAR, POST-MANDATE LEBANON,

AND TAPLINE

Tapline was born of a confluence of the strategies of Aramco, the U.S.

government, and the elites of the states through which the pipeline was to
pass. Following an abandoned wartime U.S. government plan for a similar
pipeline, Aramco planned in the mid-1940s to construct a pipeline that
would transport Saudi oil to the Mediterranean as a means of efficiently
supplying European markets.7 After the Second World War, the size of the
world’s postwar oil tanker fleet was insufficient to meet rising petroleum
demand, and an overland pipeline promised to be less expensive than the
tanker route around the Arabian Peninsula and through the Suez Canal.8
Though Tapline was originally planned to terminate in Haifa, the looming
partition of Palestine forced Aramco to devise a new route from eastern
Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese coast.
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 341

Work began on Tapline in 1947 with the diplomatic support of the U.S.
government, which sought to develop Saudi Arabia’s oil resources to
conserve U.S. supplies for use in a war with the Soviet Union, maintain the
United States’ ability to manage the global oil market through its position
as swing producer, and build prosperous non-communist economies in
Western Europe and Japan.9 Some within the Truman administration also
saw Tapline as useful in the United States’ prosecution of the Cold War in
the Middle East. Aramco quickly seized on that idea. Though Aramco was
primarily interested in increasing its profits by cutting transportation costs,
the company marketed the pipeline to the Truman administration as a
private Marshall Plan for the Middle East that would inoculate the region
against communism.10
In Lebanon, Tapline fit within an elite strategy to make the new
nation-state into a regional trade and financial hub.11 Fawwaz Traboulsi
notes that local elites conceived of the coast of Ottoman Syria as a commercial
intermediary between “East” and “West” at least since the nineteenth cen-
tury, and continued to develop this region’s intermediary role through the
Mandate period.12 As Carolyn Gates has argued, after independence
Lebanon’s elite aimed to “attract foreign capital; maintain a strong currency,
surplus budgets and balanced external accounts; promote international trade
and service exports; and mobilize private financial resources to develop the
economy” along those lines.13 To that end, the Lebanese government
invested heavily in its “communications and transport infrastructure,”
strengthening the position Lebanon had developed as a regional entrepôt
since the mid-nineteenth century and taking advantage of the rapid postwar
growth of the Persian Gulf’s oil industry.14 Indeed, the vast majority of
Lebanon’s transportation infrastructure was petroleum-based by the
mid-twentieth century, and the country required imported petroleum
products like gasoline to sustain the movement of people and goods.15
When Aramco officials approached the Lebanese government to propose
that Tapline’s terminal be constructed on the Lebanese coast in the late
1940s, Lebanon’s economy was in dire need of the capital and fuel the
pipeline promised to provide, and its government was eager to secure
revenue—a promised £150,000 in annual transit fees—without increasing
taxation.16 The young state’s political elite, including Prime Minister Riyāḍ
al-Ṣulḥ and sympathetic editors of major newspapers, therefore, made strong
diplomatic and public relations efforts to ensure that Tapline would pass
through and terminate in Lebanese territory.17 Lebanon’s parliament
unanimously approved a transit agreement with the company in 1946.
342 Z.D. CUYLER

Five months later, lawyer and Ṣulḥ-allied parliamentarian Ḥabīb Abī-Shahla

left for Saudi Arabia to help Tapline representatives negotiate a transit
agreement with the desert kingdom. When Syria, another prospective transit
state, objected to Aramco’s plan to terminate the pipeline in Lebanese rather
than Syrian territory and attempted to extract additional concessions from
the company, Ṣulḥ expended strenuous diplomatic efforts between 1947 and
1949 to mediate between the two parties, and Shahla interpreted for Tapline
representatives in meetings with Syrian officials. Though the Syrian gov-
ernment remained intransigent until a CIA-backed coup overthrew
President Shukrī al-Quwatlī in 1949, the high-level involvement of Lebanese
politicians like Ṣulḥ and Shahla—and their willingness to remove the
left-populist politician Kamāl Junblāṭ of the Progressive Socialist Party
(PSP) from the government following pressure by U.S. diplomats who were
concerned that he was a resource nationalist—indicated deep interest in the
project by Lebanon’s commercial and political elites.18
Completed in 1950, Tapline transported Aramco oil from Abqāʾiq in
eastern Saudi Arabia through Jordan and Syria to Zahrani, south of Sidon,
Lebanon.19 It supplied nearly 110 million barrels of oil per year to tankers
in the Mediterranean, equivalent to roughly 25% of Western Europe’s oil
imports, by 1951.20 Together, Aramco and Tapline’s parent companies
invested a total of $168 million in the pipeline by the time of its com-
pletion.21 This investment made quick returns: in 1952 Tapline seems to
have provided roughly $23 million in profit for Aramco, and its throughput
equaled between 30 and 45% of Saudi production until 1960.22 Tapline
thus served as a critical piece of infrastructure supporting Aramco’s bottom
line, U.S. efforts to build and sustain Western Europe’s economy, and the
U.S. strategy for managing global oil supplies.23 Tapline was also critical to
the Lebanese economy. According to Irene Gendzier, petroleum pumped
through Tapline and the larger Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) pipeline
accounted for “97% of the tonnage and…45% of the value of goods in
transit through Lebanon” by 1952.24 Together, the two pipelines provided
Lebanon with the vast majority of its fuel, as well as transit fees for crude
exported via Zahrani and Tripoli.
Tapline’s construction was the result of a perceived commonality of
interest between the U.S. government, Aramco, and transit states including
Lebanon. While Tapline did not amount to the Middle East Marshall Plan
promised by Aramco, it literally fuelled Western Europe’s economic
recovery, and it served Aramco’s bottom line by permitting the company to
sell its petroleum to European markets more economically. Tapline was
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 343

also part of a long-standing economic strategy to secure Lebanon’s role as a

commercial and financial intermediary between the mashriq and Western
Europe. The pipeline was a vital component of a massive, interconnected
network of corporate and state power, centered in the United States, that
ensured and regulated the flow of oil to consumers in Western Europe,
throughout the capitalist world, and within Lebanon itself. Tapline’s
Lebanese facilities, which constituted a critical node in this network and in
the Lebanese economy, required a trained and disciplined workforce to
maintain and regulate the flow of energy.

TAPLINE’S LEBANESE OPERATIONS AND WORKFORCE

Tapline employed a small but diverse workforce to run its Lebanese
operations, which were essential to maintaining and regulating the flow of
Saudi oil. This workforce was situated within a labor hierarchy predicated
on national distinctions in which American managers and European
employees generally occupied higher positions than Arab employees.
Though Tapline’s Lebanese facilities had latent vulnerabilities to disruptive
strike action, the company’s American managers maintained control over
their Lebanese workforce—and thus over the flow of oil through that
portion of the pipeline—for more than a decade.
Lebanon hosted two of Tapline’s critical facilities: the administrative
headquarters in Beirut and the terminal at Zahrani. The pipeline’s pumping
stations, located mainly in the Saudi desert, were linked to Zahrani and to
one another via a Zahrani-based radio system. A Radio and Dispatch office
at Tapline’s headquarters in Beirut’s Ḥamra neighborhood regulated the
flow of oil, relaying orders to the pipeline’s pumping stations through
Zahrani’s radio room.25 When crude reached the Zahrani terminal, it was
stored and then either pumped into waiting tankers or sent to the adjacent
Medreco refinery (after 1955) to be processed into fuel for domestic
consumption.26 The British-, French-, and U.S.-owned IPC operated a
larger parallel pipeline system, importing Iraqi crude oil for its own refinery
and terminal in Tripoli.
The majority of the workers operating this critical piece of infrastructure
were located in Lebanon, but Tapline’s workforce in Lebanon was small—
around 1000 workers between 1953 and 1960—and primarily Lebanese,
though it also included Europeans and Palestinians.27 Local employees
performed a range of jobs, including medium- and high-skill administrative
and technical positions, but most worked at the bottom or middle of
344 Z.D. CUYLER

Tapline’s hierarchy of labor. These local employees were also subject to

internal distinctions of class and sect.
The diverse array of low- to high-skilled positions occupied by Lebanese
employees of Tapline gave the company’s Lebanese workforce a mixed
collar composition. A profile of the Zahrani terminal from the early 1950s
provides as sample some of the low- to medium-skilled jobs Lebanese men
performed: “M. Makhoul” is listed as a machinist, “Joe Safi” as supervisor
of the Zahrani terminal’s machine shop, “F. Abboud” as a forklift operator,
“Joe Geha” as the terminal’s storekeeper, and Moses Beziriganian as an
assistant chemist.28 A large number of Lebanese citizens also worked under
American management at Beirut headquarters, including drivers, secre-
taries, nurses, doctors, receptionists, aircraft dispatchers, architectural
draftsmen, and chemical engineers. The workforce also included a number
of Armenians, who tended to hold Lebanese citizenship; Palestinians, who
tended to have refugee status in Lebanon; and Saudis, who tended to be
temporarily transferred from Tapline’s facilities in the kingdom.
Though most Lebanese Tapline employees filled such low- and
medium-skilled positions, some were highly educated and performed
high-skilled work. Rajaʾ Ilīya, trained as a civil engineer at the American
University of Beirut (AUB) and the University of Texas, joined Tapline in
1949 to survey the pipeline route before becoming a structural engineer in
1952.29 Dzocack Manoukian, who had been displaced from Anatolia to
Lebanon in the 1920s, graduated from AUB’s nursing school and became
head nurse at Tapline’s hospital in Beirut. Fuʾād Qaʿwār and Albert
Laḥḥam served as local attorneys for the pipeline’s Lebanese operations.30
A very small number of Lebanese even held positions near the top of
Tapline’s labor hierarchy, including Ḥabīb Abī-Shahla, the lawyer and
former Speaker of Parliament who had helped negotiate Tapline’s agree-
ment with the Saudi government and subsequently served as the com-
pany’s head legal representative in the Middle East.
Tapline’s Lebanese workforce also had a mixed sectarian makeup and was
imbricated in sectarian patronage politics. When Tapline was first built,
Aḥmad al-Asʿad, a member of parliament who served as the head of
Lebanon’s Chamber of Deputies and was an important figure in Sidon’s local
politics, secured employment for his constituents at Zahrani. Ḥabīb Abī-
Shahla did the same at Beirut headquarters. Employees at Beirut, therefore,
tended to be Greek Orthodox like Abī-Shahla, and employees at Zahrani
tended to be Shīʿa like Asʿad. Zahrani’s workforce also included many sup-
porters of the Arab nationalist, Sunnī Muslim politician Maʿrūf Saʿd. Still,
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 345

hiring did not take place on intentionally sectarian lines, and neither site was
completely dominated by employees of any particular sect.31
Though most of Tapline’s diverse Lebanese workforce held relatively
low positions in Tapline’s labor hierarchy, they also performed critical
semi-skilled and skilled tasks. As tankers approached the Zahrani terminal,
tugboats manned by Lebanese workers transported European “mooring
masters” aboard to help tanker captains position their ships. The Lebanese
tugboat crews then secured the tankers in place and led hoses onto them to
offload petroleum from Zahrani’s high-capacity tank farm.32 By the late
1950s, amidst a wider push to employ more local labor, the company had
also trained a group of English-speaking Lebanese radio operators who
were responsible for maintaining communications between Beirut head-
quarters and the rest of the pipeline.33
Tapline’s communications and offloading systems had multiple vulner-
abilities ripe for exploitation by Lebanese workers in strategic positions.
Though the Radio and Dispatch Office at Beirut headquarters regulated
the flow of oil, the central node of the entire communication system was at
Zahrani.34 An official Tapline publication described this system as follows:

The dispatchers and management maintain communication with the pump

stations entirely by means of radio. The pump stations are connected by HF
voice and teletype circuits to one another and to the Sidon [Zahrani]
Terminal. Oil dispatching circuits are connected from Sidon to Beirut
headquarters via a VHF multichannel link. Administrative and general
communication between the Beirut office and the Sidon Terminal is
accomplished by dialing telephone circuits over the VHF radio link. Calls
between pump stations and the Beirut office are connected by a radio
operator at Sidon.35

This arrangement left Beirut headquarters completely dependent upon

communication with Zahrani’s radio room to maintain and regulate the
flow of oil.36 Zahrani’s communications staff was also responsible for
maintaining contact with oil tankers, making that site’s radio operators
integral to the pipeline’s functioning.37 Lebanese workers increasingly
occupied positions essential to the flow of oil through the pipeline and its
distribution to markets, but could not exploit that positional power
without organizing.
Beyond its vulnerability to disruption at key chokepoints, Tapline’s
connections to other portions of Lebanon’s energy infrastructure made
346 Z.D. CUYLER

Lebanon’s whole energy distribution system vulnerable to mass mobiliza-

tion.38 Tapline employees maintained constant contact with other
Lebanese petroleum workers, forming a network of laborers covering the
country’s entire petroleum distribution infrastructure. Oil shipped through
Tapline to Zahrani was processed at the adjacent Medreco refinery, which
provided fuel for gasoline truck drivers who delivered their cargo to gas
station owners and to workers who refueled planes at Beirut’s international
airport.39 Parallel links connected the IPC terminal and refinery in Tripoli
to this workers’ network.40 These links between workers throughout
Lebanon created the informal connections needed for nationwide
coordination.
Lebanese workers occupied a relatively low place in Tapline’s division of
labor but constituted a majority of the company’s workforce in Lebanon,
and the vast majority of the workforce at the pipeline’s Zahrani terminal.
They also gained increasing amounts of control over processes critical to
the pipeline’s operation, creating latent vulnerabilities to strike action.
Though they were divided along lines of collar and sect, common expe-
rience at the lower end of the company’s labor hierarchy as objects of the
U.S. company’s management practices would generate a set of shared
grievances among Lebanese employees, and spur their unionization.
Shared control over the pipeline’s operation would then allow diverse but
organized Lebanese Tapline workers to threaten the flow of oil and
demand changes to the terms of their labor.

TAPLINE’S EVOLVING WELFARE CAPITALISM

To control its small, diverse, and potentially powerful workforce, Tapline
introduced a U.S. variety of welfare capitalism—designed largely to deter
worker mobilization—into the tumultuous labor environment of 1950s
Lebanon. Though they initially lacked a union, the company’s Lebanese
employees also pushed for the further extension of benefits and rights from
their employer, and between 1950 and 1963, Tapline’s brand of welfare
capitalism evolved from a confluence of top-down and bottom-up
pressures.
Lebanon had a long history of labor activism against foreign-controlled
companies before Tapline’s construction. As Elizabeth Thompson notes
about the French Mandate era,
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 347

Labor strikes proliferated in the late 1920s… In the vanguard were

public-sector workers at ports and in the railroad, tramway, and electric
companies, along with workers in the tobacco and transport industries. They
were joined by many artisans, particularly in textile and shoemaking trades.
The number and size of strikes increased in the early 1930s, as wages fell and
unemployment rose… 41

Much Mandate-era labor activism was directed against French companies,

and Thompson contends that this activism aimed to strengthen state
provision of welfare to reduce workers’ dependence upon “mediating
paternalistic elites—in their case, bourgeois employers and French con-
cessionary companies.”42 In Lebanon as in the United States and Europe,
labor activism intensified after the Second World War. In 1946—the year
of the French withdrawal from Lebanon—this pressure led to the passage
of a labor law that supported unionization.43
Yet the foreign-dominated petroleum industry initially shielded itself
from these developments. As Gendzier notes, foreign petroleum compa-
nies were granted informal exemptions from the 1946 labor law.44 In
1947, employees of IPC, Socony-Vacuum, and Shell struck for a raise
framed as a “13th month” of pay—common in multiple sectors of the
Lebanese economy. The Lebanese government then permitted petroleum
companies to dismiss employees at will if they paid one month’s wages in
compensation, in violation of Lebanon’s recently passed labor code. The
companies—including Tapline, which was in its construction phase—fired
most Lebanese petroleum workers and began relying on easily terminated
contractors,45 establishing a government-backed, industry-wide informal
exemption from the new labor law and eliminating the sector’s “13th
month” precedent. The petroleum industry thereby insulated itself from
labor activism, although some oil companies remained unionized.46
Tapline pursued a management strategy intended to contain these
pressures and prevent its workforce in Lebanon and elsewhere from
unionizing. This strategy of providing paternalistic care to maintain hier-
archy was reminiscent of that employed by Lebanon’s “mediating pater-
nalistic elites,” to use Thompson’s phrasing. But its roots lay in what
Lizabeth Cohen identifies as U.S. “welfare capitalism,” which emerged in
the United States in the 1920s and evolved in response to the growing
power of U.S. unions into the 1950s.47 In welfare capitalist firms, man-
agement provided for employees’ welfare, and occasionally allowed worker
348 Z.D. CUYLER

input in production processes, to improve productivity, harmonize indus-

trial relations, and preempt unionization.48
Such firms’ strategies for dealing with ethnic, national, and religious
difference varied by location. In certain parts of the United States, these
firms employed mixed workforces of European immigrants,
African-Americans, and Latinos, and often exploited that diversity to
intentionally undermine labor solidarity.49 In the U.S. South and
Southwest, and in U.S.-operated oil fields around the world including those
owned by Aramco in Saudi Arabia, welfare capitalist firms racially segregated
their workforces while providing workers with paternalistic care.50 Tapline’s
Saudi operations followed a similar pattern, providing housing and indus-
trial training for Saudi employees in order to defer worker mobilization and
demands for equal pay between locals and foreigners.51
Yet Aramco and Tapline imported an unsegregated, relatively egalitarian
version of welfare capitalism to Lebanon, quite distinct from Aramco’s
segregated Saudi oil fields. As noted, the company’s headquarters and
terminal employed highly skilled, English-speaking white-collar American,
European, Lebanese, Armenian-Lebanese, and Palestinian staff alongside
Arabic-speaking, blue-collar Lebanese and other Arab workers, all under
American management. English-speaking Lebanese draftsmen, engineers,
secretaries, and lawyers worked alongside their American and European
bosses and European and Palestinian coworkers. Efficiency aside,
Americans’ perception of Lebanese “whiteness” (as opposed to Saudi
“blackness”) may also have prevented segregation.52
The company’s Lebanese facilities were mostly marked by spatial egal-
itarianism. Foreign and Lebanese employees of diverse religious back-
grounds worked side-by-side at Beirut headquarters. Most employees,
foreign and Lebanese, commuted by automobile from Sidon and its sub-
urbs to work at the Zahrani terminal.53 The social lives of Tapline
employees and their families also included socially egalitarian spaces
organized and supported by the company. The Tapline Sporting Club,
overseen by an American Manager of Industrial Relations and a group of
elected officers and committee members that included Lebanese workers,
held social events open to all employees.54 Golf and softball tournaments
included employees of all nationalities.55 The Sidon Welfare Society,
established by the American, European, and Lebanese wives of Tapline
employees, met weekly in the early 1950s to sew garments for Palestinian
refugees.56 Both work and leisure time were marked by a degree of
inclusiveness that differed starkly from Aramco’s Saudi operations, and
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 349

helped foster an expectation of equality among workers who occupied very

different positions in the labor hierarchy.
To be clear, a lack of segregation did not entail a lack of hierarchy. As
noted, Americans occupied the most senior positions in the company, with
a few exceptions. American managers were also paid much more than their
Lebanese employees, and the Zahrani terminal’s four American managers
had large houses on-site. American and European employees also tended to
receive more ample benefits than their Lebanese subordinates and
coworkers, including free, on-site English-language schooling at Zahrani
and a Loan Assistance Program for house purchases and emergencies.
Furthermore, Tapline’s Lebanese workers were not unionized, leaving
American management in control of the terms of their labor.
But Tapline strained to emphasize the social equality of its employees in
its official discourse. The Pipeline Periscope, the company’s in-house
newsletter, reported on work and social news, including profiles of indi-
viduals and offices, retirements, deaths, births, and sports tournaments,
covering both Arab and non-Arab employees. The publication’s first issue
noted that its “purpose is to bring together the employees of Tapline… of
more than a dozen nationalities, into a closer understanding of one another
and of the Company for which we work.”57 Company publications rep-
resented employees of all nationalities, sects, and collars as belonging to a
single community, and regarded them as socially equal enough to be
represented side-by-side. Despite the work and wage hierarchies that
characterized Tapline’s operations, the company made strenuous efforts to
convince its employees that they were social equals, and created spaces in
which they could act as such.
Intervention in employees’ health and welfare was another key feature of
Tapline’s strategy to maintain a productive, healthy, and disciplined
workforce. The firm established company-owned clinics and hospitals,
launched initiatives to reduce workplace injuries, and undertook inocula-
tion campaigns. The Periscope regularly published graphs of accident rates
to make employees monitor their own workplace behavior, and frequently
included cartoons with captions such as “When you’re NOT ALERT you
may be HURT, “Accidents don’t just HAPPEN they are CAUSED,” and
“Two drips make a drop! Keep oil off the floor.”58 The company cam-
paigned to inoculate workers against typhus, tetanus, smallpox, diphtheria,
and whooping cough in 1953.59 Tapline also added a wing to AUB’s
hospital to treat serious workplace injuries.60
350 Z.D. CUYLER

The company made even more holistic interventions in employee

health, welfare, and social reproduction. Tapline established a sporting club
in Beirut in 1953 open to employees and their families for a small annual
fee to maintain its workforce’s health and provide for their leisure.61 In
1954, it began offering to pay for half of the cost of an insurance plan for
“eligible employees” of all nationalities and their families. According to the
Periscope, the plan “[provided] generous benefits in cases where members
need hospitalization because of serious illness, accident, or surgery,” also to
minimize the impact of employees’ injuries on productivity.62 Tapline
invested significant resources in ensuring the welfare of its workforce, and
repeatedly communicated that commitment through official media like the
Periscope.
Such practices insulated Tapline from, but did not inoculate it against,
the working-class mobilization roiling independent Lebanon. In the early
post-Mandate years, Lebanese workers made demands similar to those that
the company’s variety of welfare capitalism aimed to meet. In 1949,
Lebanon’s government and unions negotiated the first draft of a Social
Insurance law that included disability, workplace injury, unemployment,
retirement, maternity leave, and other benefits. Though they lacked a
union, IPC workers struck in 1950 to protest a mass termination, prevent
such actions in the future, and secure free health care and other benefits.
Strikes making similar demands continued into the 1950s.63 By the
mid-1950s many of Lebanon’s populist parties, from the leftist PSP to the
right-populist Katāʾib, were calling for a more equitable distribution of
wealth and for state investment in social reproduction.64
As Lebanon’s working class mobilized into the 1960s, Lebanese
Tapline employees demanded and received additional benefits from
the company. In 1956, employees at Beirut and Zahrani established
workers’ committees with the approval of management, which picked
their members and even appointed Arabic–English interpreters to
facilitate—and manage—employees’ airing of grievances.65 This fit within
a long-standing pattern of industrial democracy in American welfare
capitalism, in which management established tightly controlled workers’
councils to allow workers’ limited input into decision-making while
deferring unionization.66 In 1963, Lebanese Tapline employees requested
and received access to the Loan Assistance Program, originally established
for American and Saudi employees, which lent money for housing
purchases, remodeling, “unanticipated personal expenses due to emer-
gency illness or death,” and “other essential purposes of a non-luxury
nature” to maintain and improve employees’ welfare, assist in social
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 351

reproduction, and encourage the proliferation of single-family house-

holds.67 Lebanese employees also requested and received the construction
of a second sports club, this one in Sidon.68 Tapline’s brand of welfare
capitalism thus evolved in response to Lebanese employees’ demands,
themselves informed by the demands of other Lebanese workers.
Yet Tapline’s stated concern for and investment in employees’ welfare
also fostered expectations of care that management was unwilling to
undertake. In the late 1950s the company paid for one employee,
Muḥammad Fuʾād Khabbāz, who had lost a leg in a workplace accident, to
be flown to Austria to receive a prosthesis. One year later, it granted
Khabbāz an indemnity of 10,000 Lebanese lira when it became clear that
he could or would no longer perform his duties.69 Though the company
claimed to have offered Khabbāz another job, he apparently refused. In
1963 he requested further compensation for his injury, which management
rejected.70 While the precise circumstances of Khabbāz’s injury, treatment,
and termination are unclear, his experience demonstrates that Tapline’s
commitment to its employees’ welfare was more limited than some
employees had come to expect.
Finally, poor and unequal treatment of Lebanese workers belied the
company’s egalitarian discourse and undermined its more benign forms of
paternalism. According to Ayyūb Shāmī, who would ultimately establish
Tapline’s first union, the racism shown by some managers—including
especially a former ship captain from the U.S. South who had previously
worked in Aramco’s segregated Saudi facilities—translated into profoundly
unequal treatment: American managers routinely gave Lebanese workers
16-hour shifts for a week at a time, terminated Lebanese employees
without giving reason, and required skilled Lebanese workers to perform
menial tasks like sweeping and mopping not expected of equally skilled
Americans and Europeans.71
To prevent disruptive labor mobilization of the kind that rocked
Lebanon during and after the French Mandate, Tapline pursued a man-
agement strategy that promised employees social equality and paternalistic
care in exchange for productivity and docility. Tapline’s variety of welfare
capitalism also included a racially inflected, nationality-based hierarchy of
labor that made most Lebanese subordinate to their American managers, a
management-controlled workers’ council that allowed the company to
respond to employees’ grievances without granting them autonomy, and
an unequal distribution of pay and benefits to American, European, and
Arab employees. Still, between 1950 and 1963 Tapline granted certain
352 Z.D. CUYLER

benefits requested by its Lebanese workforce, and its particular brand of

welfare capitalism evolved in response to its workforce’s demands and
workers’ mobilization across Lebanon. Yet Tapline’s emphasis on equality
was not reflected in its managers’ reported treatment of its Lebanese
employees, and its concern for workers’ well-being did not entail the
promise of permanent employment or care. By the early 1960s, Tapline’s
management practices had encouraged expectations of equality and care
among its Lebanese employees that the company was unable or unwilling
to fulfill. This, together with managers’ demeaning and apparently racist
informal practices, called into question the company’s official commitment
to the social equality of its diverse workforce and generated grievances that
Tapline’s Lebanese workforce mobilized to redress.

UNIONIZATION AND ANTI-COLONIAL NATIONALISM

In 1963, Lebanese Tapline employees unionized and began agitating more
actively and effectively to improve the terms of their labor. This mobilization
crossed the sectarian and collar lines dividing Tapline’s Lebanese workforce
—striking workers protested perceived American racism and employed
anti-colonial nationalist discourse to insist that Lebanese workers, whatever
their socioeconomic and sectarian backgrounds, were the equals of the
Americans and Europeans that worked for the company. Though the union
was not involved in formal politics and did not ally itself with anti-imperialist
political parties within Lebanon, its use of anti-colonial nationalist discourse
to protest mistreatment and unify workers of disparate backgrounds who
controlled different portions of Tapline’s technical systems resonated in the
context of Lebanese politics in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Yet as Frederick Cooper argues, anti-colonial labor activism does not
necessarily entail a strict rejection of the discourse with which foreign
capital justifies the division and terms of labor, “but [can] instead [be] an
engagement with it—the molding of… rhetoric into a language of claims,”
and the employment of foreign capital’s “egalitarian assertions to try to
turn them into a reality.”72 Labor activism framed in anti-colonial terms,
then, can “[bind] workers more tightly” to their foreign employers, and
represents a complex interplay between resistance against and reinforce-
ment of the relationship between labor and management.73 As noted,
Tapline’s qualified egalitarianism and its paternalistic investment in
employees’ welfare helped foster expectations of care and equal treatment
among them. Its failure to meet these expectations generated grievances
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 353

that Tapline’s Lebanese employees mobilized to redress, using

anti-colonial nationalist discourse to organize workers across lines of collar
and sect to wield shared power over Tapline’s technical systems.
Though Tapline’s unions actively avoided involvement in Lebanese
party politics, the rhetoric of anti-colonial nationalism was readily available
as a means of mobilizing across collar and sectarian lines to demand more
equal treatment. Unions had been instrumental in challenging the French
Mandate, and anti-colonial Lebanese nationalism continued to evolve
alongside organized labor after independence. Soon after Tapline’s con-
struction began, for example, representatives of a union federation decried
the small number of jobs the pipeline had generated, and asked rhetorically
in pamphlets and newspapers if Tapline’s control over Lebanese land,
waters, and resources did not constitute a form of imperialism. Unionized
workers and anti-colonial nationalists also often found a shared foe in the
Lebanese government. Presidents Bishāra al-Khūrī and Kamīl Shamʿūn
actively suppressed Lebanon’s more progressive unions, and their gov-
ernments launched raids on leftist syndicates between 1948 and 1958.74
When President Shamʿūn began abandoning Lebanon’s avowed neutralism
in international affairs and leaned toward the capitalist United States in the
early 1950s, left-leaning unions participated in anti-imperialist demon-
strations. Workers and students led a strike against the U.S.-backed
Baghdad Pact in 1954, for example, and progressive unions and parties
mobilized against a 1955 visit by President Celal Bayar of Turkey, a NATO
and Baghdad Pact member, triggering raids against union offices.75
Lebanon’s 1958 civil war brought a shift in Lebanese labor politics.
Following covert U.S. intervention in the country’s 1957 elections and
Shamʿūn’s attempt to secure a second, unconstitutional presidential term,
Kamāl Junblāṭ’s PSP led a bloc of leftist, progressive, and other
anti-Shamʿūnist forces in a brief revolt, leading to U.S. military and political
intervention that removed Shamʿūn. The new president Fuʾād Shihāb, who
aimed to construct a more socially inclusive and economically statist
Lebanon, was backed by populists from the leftist PSP to the rightist
Katāʾib.76 Shihāb’s integration of non-Christians into the civil service and
promises of “comprehensive social reform” resonated with the types of
changes that Lebanon’s populists and organized labor had long sought.
Moreover, while Shihāb’s government continued to use the intelligence
services to monitor union activity, it also attempted to manage labor
activism through dispute resolution rather than direct repression.77 In a
sign of how labor politics had shifted, in 1963 workers won the creation of
354 Z.D. CUYLER

a state-run social security program that had been subject to 14 years of

debate between Lebanon’s government and unions.78
Foreign oil companies occupied a complex position in this shifting
political environment, but were increasingly treated as antagonists in an
anti-imperial struggle for equality and independence in which many pro-
gressives and workers saw themselves participating. Under Khūrī and
Shamʿūn, the Lebanese government had often intervened on the side of
foreign oil companies in labor disputes—for example, by permitting IPC to
fire 1200 employees in 1950.79 Yet in 1956, IPC workers mobilized in
support of the Shamʿūn government’s attempt to increase its share of
transit fees from the company.80 Indeed, foreign oil companies became
increasingly identified with colonialism over time. At AUB, Arab nationalist
journals such as al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqa called for the nationalization of for-
eign companies like Tapline, which one contributor claimed “[sucked] up
the resources from the workers and the peasants and the producers and the
employees.”81 For its part, Tapline’s management was careful to remain
neutral in the 1958 civil war, and even requested that Marines not guard its
facilities during the fighting.82 Nonetheless, U.S. intervention in that
conflict was motivated in part by a desire to maintain Lebanon’s position as
a friendly oil transit state, and unsurprisingly led left-leaning politicians like
the PSP’s Kamāl Junblāṭ to accuse companies like Tapline of resource
imperialism.83 The prevalence of such political discourse by the early 1960s
prepared the ground for an association between U.S. economic domina-
tion and local working conditions at Tapline’s Lebanese facilities.
When Lebanese Tapline workers organized in 1963, they quickly made
a rhetorical connection between local and national subordination in their
protests. Ayyūb Shāmī, a radio technician working at Zahrani terminal’s
communications room, began the push for unionization in response to a
set of grievances engendered in part by the expectations of equality and
care fostered by Tapline’s welfare capitalism. Though Shāmī recalls being
treated well himself, he chafed at the treatment of his fellow employees,
which he remembers as disrespectful, arbitrary, and sometimes clearly
racist. As noted, Lebanese workers received long shifts, were fired arbi-
trarily, and lacked effective representation, and skilled Lebanese employees
like Shāmī’s colleagues in the communications room were required to
perform menial tasks not required of Americans or Europeans of equal skill
levels.84
Shāmī’s complaints and unionization drive were not unusual for the
time. Since the early 1950s, Lebanese workers had repeatedly struck to
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 355

secure 8-hour days and safeguards against termination.85 A wave of infla-

tion sparked strikes for wage increases throughout the early 1960s,
including a mass strike in 1961 for a nationwide raise.86 Lebanon’s pet-
roleum sector, initially shielded from mobilization by foreign oil compa-
nies’ insulation from labor laws, had also begun to organize: the Lebanese
workforces of Mobil, Shell, IPC, Sonoco, and Lepco were all unionized by
the early 1960s, and in January 1963 workers staged a mass strike in Tripoli
following IPC’s attempt to fire several hundred employees from its facilities
there.87 George Ṣaqr, president of Mobil Oil’s white-collar union since the
mid-1950s, had also been pushing to mobilize Lebanese petroleum
workers, and helped Shāmī organize Tapline’s workforce.
Yet although Tapline workers aimed to improve their pay and benefits,
Shāmī’s reported motive for unionizing was not that compensation was
insufficient, but rather that skilled Lebanese workers were not being treated
as the equals of American and European employees.88 Dissatisfied with
labor conditions at Tapline, Shāmī began studying law at night school with
the intention of quitting his job. Ironically, this industriousness apparently
impressed Tapline President W.R. Chandler, who admired Shāmī’s
“achievement in holding down a steady job, supporting a family of five and
winning a law degree by virtue of attending night classes,” in the words of a
U.S. Embassy report. Instead, after graduating Shami used his knowledge
of the law to file a unionization request with the Ministry of Labor in 1963
to form the Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate (Niqābat ‘Ummāl al-Tāblayn) at
Zahrani and begin rectifying the inequalities he perceived.89 Though the
union did not challenge capitalism itself or the presence of foreign capital
within Lebanon, it did assert its autonomy from its American managers,
insist on the equitable treatment of Lebanese workers, and used
anti-colonial nationalist discourse to make those claims.
This was no easy task: unionizing Tapline’s diverse Lebanese workforce
required mobilization across sectarian and collar lines. As noted, Tapline’s
unions included employees of diverse sectarian backgrounds. Beirut
headquarters was largely Christian, much of the Zahrani terminal was Shīʿī,
and some were supporters of the Sunnī, Arab nationalist Sidon MP Maʿrūf
Saʿd. Shāmī himself was Catholic, and when he founded the Zahrani
union, some Muslim employees reportedly expressed concern that the
syndicate was a sectarian, Christian-only organization. They feared that
unionization would lead to the firing of nonunion—meaning Muslim—
employees. Shāmī claims that he won the local Director of Social Affairs
over by bringing 15 of the politician’s Muslim, pro-union supporters to a
356 Z.D. CUYLER

meeting between the two of them, demonstrating the Zahrani syndicate’s

nonsectarian basis. The union’s bylaws also explicitly rejected the principle
of sectarian quotas in filling leadership positions, building its anti-sectarian
orientation into its organizational structure.90
Collar lines also divided Tapline’s Lebanese workforce. Shāmī was a
college-educated, English-speaking, high-skilled worker but the majority
of his peers at Zahrani were not—and the union he led had to wrest
concrete gains from management. Indeed, although grievances based
around the unequal treatment of Lebanese employees provided the
impetus for Shāmī’s unionization drive, workers from non-elite back-
grounds quickly used the syndicate as a means of receiving welfare the
company had denied them. For example, Muḥammad Fu’ād Khabbāz, who
had lost his leg in a workplace accident and was eventually terminated,
brought his case to Shāmī’s attention, requesting the union’s assistance in
securing further compensation and lifelong care for his debilitating
injury.91 The syndicate served as a means of rectifying the grievances of
Lebanese employees of disparate socioeconomic backgrounds, rooted in
expectations of equal treatment and lifelong care, structured by decades of
Lebanese labor activism and by Tapline’s own managerial discourse and
practices.
Indeed, when Tapline management learned of the employees’ intention
to establish a union, it relied on a paternalistic strategy of corporate welfare
to prevent labor disputes, toward which it had a policy of “complete
inflexibility” in order to avoid higher labor costs.92 Management circulated
a memorandum to employees before the unionization vote took place that
argued against the use of a secret ballot and reflected the company’s
paternalistic stance toward labor, stating that “it is natural for us to think of
the employees’ welfare, since that is also Tapline’s welfare…. Tapline does
not agree that you need a syndicate for protection since Management has
always provided that protection.”93 The memorandum continued to argue
that labor conditions at Tapline were superior to those of unionized
workplaces due to management’s concern for workers’ well-being and its
willingness to listen, listing benefits like an employees’ club, medical care,
and an expanded loan plan, and arguing that although Tapline employees
worked only 40 hours per week rather than the national average of 48,
wages were far higher at Tapline than in comparable positions in
Lebanon.94 Finally, in a strikingly direct expression of paternalism, the
memorandum contended that the company constituted a single family, and
that unionization would tear apart that family.95
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 357

Tapline’s arguments were apparently not convincing, and employees at

Zahrani voted to unionize. For its part, the Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate
construed its confrontation with management in anti-colonial nationalist
terms to unite its diverse constituency in opposition to managers’
mistreatment of Lebanese employees. In its first pamphlet the syndicate
accused “the colonialist Tapline company” of making 700,000 Lebanese
lira in profit daily, but refusing to pay the equivalent of 2 hours’ profit in
bonuses to its Lebanese workforce—one of the union’s first demands,
made in tandem with other Lebanese petroleum workers—and, instead,
spending 300,000 lira on anti-union propaganda.96 When union members
were expelled from Tapline’s premises following a demonstration in late
1963, the syndicate’s second pamphlet argued that they had been removed
from the Lebanese soil of Tapline’s facilities “as if they were not
Lebanese.”97 The union did not involve itself in formal anti-imperialist
politics, and publicly thanked a sympathetic American manager who was
apparently fired for not preventing the workforce from unionizing. Still,
the syndicate’s first public statement strongly emphasized anti-colonial
nationalist themes: Tapline’s foreignness, its unwillingness to distribute its
immense wealth equitably to its Lebanese employees, and its antagonism
toward Lebanese workers on Lebanese soil.98
The Zahrani union’s anti-sectarian and cross-collar basis allowed it to
also quickly organize Beirut headquarters by early 1964.99 Shāmī’s
Christian background and AUB pedigree likely made unionization at his
initiative appealing to the largely Christian, white-collar employees at
headquarters. The Beirut union’s name, the “Tapline Employees’
Syndicate” (Niqābat Muwaẓẓafi al-Tāblayn), explicitly suggested that it
represented Tapline’s white-collar administrative workforce, as opposed to
the blue-collar “laborers” (“‘Ummāl”) of Zahrani. Like the Laborers’
Syndicate, the Employees’ Syndicate’s bylaws also rejected the principle of
sectarian representation.100 The close alliance between the Zahrani and
Beirut unions underlined organized Tapline workers’ anti-sectarian and
cross-collar basis.
Tapline’s hierarchical tendencies and the discriminatory practices of some
of its American managers, which contradicted the egalitarianism of the
company’s rhetoric and some of its practices, were the impetus for the for-
mation of the Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate. Unionized workers quickly used
this organization to meet expectations of company intervention in their
welfare. Unionization constituted a response to grievances engendered by
the company’s violation of the expectations it had itself helped foster in its
358 Z.D. CUYLER

employees—as well as Lebanon’s long history of labor activism—and served

as an avenue to begin rectifying those grievances and improving the terms of
Lebanese employees’ labor. Tapline’s union employed anti-colonial
nationalist rhetoric to unify the company’s diverse Lebanese workforce
around the struggle to make Tapline meet the expectations of equality and
paternalistic care it had encouraged in its employees. As will be shown,
unionization consolidated those employees’ shared control over the tech-
nical systems necessary to Tapline’s operation, empowering them to force
change.

THE 1964 PETROLEUM WORKERS’ STRIKE

In 1964, the new syndicates played a critical role in a nationwide petroleum
workers’ strike, demonstrating the vulnerability of Tapline and Lebanon’s
energy distribution system as a whole to local and mass mobilization. Ten
unions from across the Lebanese oil sector demanded an industry-wide
raise, resonating with calls throughout the early 1960s for a nationwide
raise in response to increased inflation. As will be shown, the 1964 pet-
roleum workers’ strike would secure more equitable terms of labor for
Lebanese Tapline workers and demonstrate their positional power.
Though the immediate goal of this strike was higher pay, the strikers’
rhetoric showed that Lebanese workers saw the raise as part of a struggle
for equality. Ironically, Tapline’s Lebanese unions won important con-
cessions and significant autonomy from a company they construed as
behaving in colonialist fashion, while ultimately tightening the paternalistic
embrace of its particular variety of welfare capitalism.
The specific vulnerabilities of Tapline and Lebanon’s energy distribution
network were central to Lebanese petroleum workers’ power. Though
Timothy Mitchell contends in Carbon Democracy that at the global scale
petroleum tends to be distributed in flexible, redundant, grid-like net-
works, at the scale of the Lebanese nation-state the petroleum distribution
system resembled the vulnerable and inflexible “dendritic networks” that
Mitchell argues are characteristic of coal, “with branches at each end but a
single main channel, creating potential chokepoints at several junc-
tures…”101 Tapline’s Lebanese employees controlled flows of information
and oil that were critical to the pipeline’s operation, and Tapline’s infras-
tructure in Lebanon—which was critical to the transportation of energy
into and through the country—was vulnerable to local and mass strike
action. On a national scale, Tapline was one of Lebanon’s two sources of
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 359

oil and links between Tapline employees and other Lebanese petroleum
workers allowed coordination to threaten the distribution of petroleum
energy through the country. The resulting vulnerabilities gave Lebanese
Tapline workers the ability to threaten the flow of energy via Lebanon and,
therefore, to press their demands.
Tapline workers, acting in concert across lines of collar and sect, con-
trolled critical chokepoints in the flow of energy through Lebanon. As
noted, the president of the new Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate at Zahrani was
a radio technician in the facility’s communications room. This office con-
trolled the flow of information and the regulation of oil pressure across the
entire pipeline system. Shāmī was also an AUB-educated Christian, but led
a union whose members included less-educated employees of diverse
socioeconomic and sectarian backgrounds who worked alongside him to
maintain system-wide communications, and performed other critical work
that included connecting oil tankers to Zahrani’s offshore terminal system
and offloading crude oil onto them. These particular positions were espe-
cially critical to the Lebanese economy, since Tapline provided Lebanon
with much of its fuel and government revenue. Further, links between the
Zahrani union and other Lebanese petroleum workers allowed coordina-
tion to threaten the distribution of petroleum energy through Lebanon:
the flow of information through the Zahrani radio room that regulated the
pumping of oil, and the flow of oil from Tapline’s storage tanks to
Mediterranean tankers. The Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate at Zahrani had
helped form the Beirut headquarters’ mainly white-collar Tapline
Employees’ Syndicate, linking the two sites’ technical and administrative
workforces with their somewhat disparate class and sectarian bases.102
Tapline employees at Zahrani also had social links with employees of the
adjacent Medreco refinery and organizational links with George Ṣaqr’s
union of employees of Mobil Oil’s distribution branch in Lebanon.
Tapline’s diverse Lebanese workforce itself controlled much of the flow of
energy through Lebanon, but was also embedded within a nationwide
network of petroleum workers that extended across other critical points
within the sector.
In the 1964 petroleum workers’ strike, union coordination extended
across Lebanon’s “dendritic” petroleum distribution system. Workers from
the Tapline and IPC pipelines, the Zahrani and Tripoli refineries, and
Beirut’s airport joined a strike committee that included Lebanese
employees of Mobil Oil, Shell, IPC, Lepco, and Total under George Ṣaqr’s
leadership to press for an industry-wide annual bonus again framed as a
360 Z.D. CUYLER

13th month of pay, equivalent to an 8.33% raise.103 The “13th month”

had long been a project of Ṣaqr’s, who noted that his own employer, Mobil
Oil, had been offering an additional month of pay every year to its
employees in Cyprus. A general strike was to open in stages if the com-
panies failed to meet this demand, aiming to disrupt foreign companies’
operations rather than the Lebanese economy itself and starting with local
strikes by employees of fuel distributors Shell and Mobil Oil.104 The
strikers vowed to continue supplying critical services and facilities including
hospitals and the military, permitted local Lebanese distributors to service
gas stations previously supplied by Shell and Mobil Oil, and secured a
commitment by the Private Drivers’ Union not to purchase gasoline from
foreign companies targeted by the strike. On the strike’s first day, a
demonstration at the Beirut airport delayed Mobil Oil and Shell tanker
trucks, blocking more than half of the ordinary daily fuel delivery. In an
attempt to marshal business and political leaders against the strikers,
Lebanon’s petroleum companies announced that they could no longer
guarantee that airplanes would be refueled at Beirut.105 In response,
workers at IPC’s Tripoli refinery threatened to stop filling tanker trucks
altogether.106
The specter of expanding strike action spurred a round of
government-mediated negotiations between the companies and the strike
committee. When these talks failed, Mobil Oil and Shell employees
resumed their strike, and Tapline’s twin unions at Zahrani and Beirut
announced their intentions to close the pipeline.107 Tapline employees’
direct participation in the 1964 strike was brief, but it signaled a major
escalation: in the early 1960s Tapline accounted for roughly half of the
crude oil that passed through Lebanon, and the Medreco facility processed
Tapline petroleum into roughly half of the gasoline required for domestic
Lebanese consumption by 1964.108 According to an observer at the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut, the Lebanese government was “[faced] with the pos-
sibility of a shutdown of practically the entire petroleum” industry, and
President Ḥilū—inaugurated in the middle of the strike—appealed to U.S.
Embassy officials for assistance in convincing the companies to moderate
their positions to avert crisis.109
Though the strike in which they participated focused on an
industry-wide wage increase, the rhetoric employed by Tapline Laborers’
Syndicate’s made clear that its members saw their actions as part of a
struggle for equality. The Zahrani union circulated a number of pamphlets
that emphasized the gap between Tapline’s egalitarian rhetoric and its
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 361

hierarchical practices. Despite Ṣaqr’s promise to the U.S. Embassy to avoid

anti-U.S. and anti-British rhetoric, one set of pamphlets accused the
Zahrani terminal’s superintendent, who was also the intermediary between
management and the company-dominated workers’ councils, of racial
discrimination akin to that prevalent in the U.S. south.110 Workers also
picketed along the road leading to the Zahrani facility’s entrance, holding
signs that protested workplace inequality in nationalist terms. One held
aloft an English-language sign that read, “10 Americans are paid more than
our 200 laborers.”111 This rhetoric united Tapline’s Lebanese religiously
and socioeconomically diverse workforce in opposition to unequal treat-
ment by management, linked this local struggle to broader national and
even international struggles for equality, and helped weld workers into a
political force capable of blocking the flow of energy.
Though Tapline’s first strike on September 15 ended for legal reasons
within one day, the threat to halt Tapline precipitated government inter-
vention in the unions’ favor. Parliamentarians Ma‘rūf Sa‘d and Jamīl
Laḥūd, as well as the PSP’s al-Anbā ’ and the Katā ’ib-affiliated al-‘Amal,
publicly announced support for the strikers, though the corporatist and
pro-U.S. Katā ’ib expressed concern about the strike’s impact on oil com-
panies.112 The risk of the pipeline’s closure led to arbitration by Prime
Minister Hussayn al-ʿUwaynī, who negotiated the Zahrani union down
from closing Tapline, citing the dire effects the pipeline’s shutdown would
have on Lebanon’s economy.113 Government intervention on the unions’
behalf quickly followed, and petroleum workers won a 6% raise, ending
Lebanon’s longest strike since independence.114
Following the 1963–1964 unionizations and the 1964 petroleum
workers’ strike, Lebanese Tapline workers consolidated their power. The
Zahrani and Beirut unions helped organize the workers of the adjacent
Medreco refinery and formalized their relationship with other Lebanese
petroleum workers’ unions under a national Federation of Syndicates of
Petroleum Employees and Laborers (Ittihād Niqābāt Muwaẓẓafi wa
‘Ummāl al-Bitrūl). Led by Mobil Oil’s George Ṣaqr, this union confed-
eration helped petroleum workers cement their positional power vis-à-vis
their employers and take a leading role in the Lebanese labor movement.
From 1964 to the mid-1970s, unionized Tapline workers and their allies
used their control over chokepoints in Lebanon’s energy distribution sys-
tem to continue to improve the terms of their labor.
In a 1966 strike pamphlet, the Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate quoted the
company’s Marshall Plan-style slogan: “Petroleum is a means for a better
362 Z.D. CUYLER

life,” and responded with a radical question: “A better life for whom?”115
Unionization allowed Lebanese Tapline employee workers to redress their
grievances, rooted in expectations of equal treatment and substantial
investment in employee welfare. Though a full account of their gains is
outside of the scope of this essay, the Zahrani and Beirut syndicates won
raises, greater workplace autonomy, fought for more equal treatment in the
workplace, defended union members’ jobs, pressed for improved medical
care, and were even able to secure preferential hiring for their children.116
This would have cemented a multi-generational labor and
welfare-provision relationship between the company and its employees’
families. Tapline employees also maintained the union’s nonsectarian ori-
entation by continuing to reject a communal quota system, employed
anti-colonial nationalist rhetoric while electing a Palestinian as Beirut union
president and protecting a European employee’s job after he refused to
help break a strike, and challenged the petroleum federation’s relatively
conservative leadership by pushing its member unions to mobilize more
aggressively.117 Lebanese Tapline workers used the power they held over
the flow of oil to improve workers’ lots by asserting worker autonomy and
achieving a more equitable distribution of power and resources, while
deepening the company’s commitment to their well-being.

CONCLUSION
Lebanese employees of Tapline occupied key chokepoints in the flow of
petroleum through Lebanon’s “dendritic” energy distribution system.
They were, therefore, able to mobilize across collar and sect lines to gain
control over a critical component of Lebanon’s energy infrastructure and
force their employers to make concessions. Shared grievances against
American managers and the requirement of cross-collar, anti-sectarian
cooperation to assert control over Tapline’s technical systems encouraged
union members to couch their demands in anti-colonial nationalist terms,
resonating with a long legacy of anti-colonial Lebanese labor activism. Yet
these demands were not anti-capitalist or even opposed in principle to
foreign capital’s presence in Lebanon, and also resonated with more
egalitarian currents in Tapline’s welfare capitalism. Tapline employees’
positional power, and concerted action by diverse workers occupying dis-
tinct critical positions in the pipeline’s operations, strengthened their ability
to extract concessions from management while also pulling them deeper
into its paternalistic embrace.
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 363

NOTES
1. This tendency is strong in the vast historiography of the global petroleum
industry. Some better known works that share it, but were written with
distinct methodologies and subject matters, include Daniel Yergin, The
Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press,
2009); Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil
Frontier (London: Verso, 2009); Toby C. Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil
and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2010); Nathan J. Citino, From Arab Nationalism to OPEC
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Terry Lynn Karl, The
Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1997); and Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of
Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
2. See, for instance, Bruce Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering
Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2006)
and Steven Hurst, The United States and Iraq since 1979: Hegemony, Oil
and War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
3. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
(New York: Verso Books, 2011), 7–8, 31–39.
4. Rania Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University,
2010).
5. Throughout this chapter, I will use the IJMES transliteration system for
Arabic names transliterated from Arabic-language sources, except when
citing authors of English-language scholarship. When citing
English-language sources with their own transliterations of Arabic names, I
will preserve that transliteration within quotation marks. For place names, I
will use the common English spelling.
6. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History
(Berkeley: University of California, 2005), 213–238.
7. Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,” 48–53.
8. Yergin, The Prize, 392.
9. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 31; David Painter, “Oil and the Marshall
Plan,” The Business History Review 58, no. 3 (1984): 361–362; Yergin, The
Prize, 409–412.
10. Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, 35.
11. Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press,
2007), 117.
12. Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon, 55–59.
13. Carolyn Gates, The Merchant Republic of Lebanon: Rise of an Open
Economy (London: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1998), 82.
364 Z.D. CUYLER

14. Gates, The Merchant Republic of Lebanon, 102–104.

15. By the late 1940s, the Iraq Petroleum Company already operated a pipe-
line and exported petroleum to Lebanon, and provided a large proportion
of the country’s fuel supply.
16. This amount was increased in 1952 to $600,000 annually, and then to a
50/50 profit-sharing agreement between Tapline and all transit states
including Saudi Arabia in 1962–1963. Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,”
58, 149–150.
17. Youssef Chaitani, Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon: The Decline of Arab
Nationalism and the Triumph of the State (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 74;
Douglas Little, “Pipeline Politics: America, TAPLINE, and the Arabs,”
The Business History Review 64, no. 2 (1990): 268; Ghosn, “Geographies
of Energy,” 59.
18. Chaitani, Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon, 85–87.
19. Tapline’s throughput was originally 350,000 barrels per day, but was
upgraded to 450,000 per day by 1958. Tapline, “Kilometer 1213: Tapline
Today,” (promotional material, Tapline, 1961); Ghalib al-Turk, “The
South,” in Lebanon and Its Provinces: A Study by the Governors of the Five
Provinces, ed. Halim Said Abu-Izzedin (Beirut: Kayats, 1963), 73–90.
20. Interview with anonymous former Tapline employee, July 2013.
21. Tapline, “Tapline: Modern Trade Route of Steel,” 3, http://almashriq.
hiof.no/lebanon/300/380/388/tapline/ancient-lands/index.html.
22. Petroleum Attache to U.S. Embassy in Beirut Nestor Ortiz to Charge
d’Affairs John Bruins, “The Middle East Pipeline Agreements: A Review
and Appraisal of Their Current Status and Suggested Approach for
Attaining Policy Objectives,” August 4, 1953 RG 59, Decimal File 1950–
1954, 883A.2553/12-2352 to 883A.392/7-1752 (Stack 250), National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland;
Interview with anonymous former Tapline employee, July 2013; DeGolyer
and MacNaughton, Twentieth-Century Petroleum Statistics 2009 (Dallas:
DeGolyer and MacNaughton, 2009); John Bowlus, “Connecting
Midstream: The Politics and Economics of Oil Transportation in the
Middle East” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 2014), 38; Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Volume IX, Part 1: The Near
and Middle East, document 303, “Memorandum of Conversation,” July
28, 1953.
23. Interview with anonymous former Tapline employee, July 2013.
24. Irene L. Gendzier, Notes from the Midfield: United States Intervention in
Lebanon, 1945–1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 45.
25. Tapline, “Tapline: A Report on Five Years of Successful Operation,” The
Petroleum Engineer (April 1956), http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/
300/380/388/tapline/petroleum-engineer/index.html#10.
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 365

26. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, August 1953; Tapline, Pipeline Periscope,

August 1958; Barre Ludvigsen, in conversation with the author, June 27,
2013.
27. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 97; Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,”
156.
28. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, August 1953.
29. Rajaʾ Ilīya, e-mail messages to author, January–February 2015; Tapline,
Pipeline Periscope, April 1953.
30. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 96.
31. Ayyūb Shāmī, conversations with author, July 15, 2013 and August 14,
2013.
32. A.A. Brickhouse, “Tapline’s Sidon Terminal,” World Petroleum (June
1957), http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/380/388/tapline/sidon/
brickhouse/; Ludvigsen, conversation with author.
33. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, August 1958; Shāmī, conversations with
author; Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,” 170–171.
34. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, March–April 1954.
35. Tapline, “Tapline: A Report on Five Years of Successful Operation.”
36. Tapline, “Tapline: A Report on Five Years of Successful Operation”;
Tapline, “The Story of Tapline (Qiṣṣat Tāblāyn).” http://almashriq.hiof.
no/; Tapline, “Tapline: Modern Trade Route of Steel,” 10, http://
almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/380/388/tapline/ancient-lands/index.
html.
37. Aramco, Aramco World (September–October 1966): 32.
38. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 151–155.
39. Shami, e-mail messages to the author, June 2016.
40. al-ʿAmal, September 5, 1964.
41. Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal
Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), 101.
42. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 100.
43. Ilyās al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya wa-l-Niqābiyya fī
Lubnān: 1947–1970, Volume 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Fārābī, 1986), 7.
44. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 57, 117.
45. Ibid., 117; al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya, Volume 2, 27.
46. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 164.
47. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago,
1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 160–167;
Sanford M. Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New
Deal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 35–56, 236−262.
48. Cohen, Making a New Deal, 160–167.
49. Ibid.
366 Z.D. CUYLER

50. Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, 19–23.

51. Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,” 136–140.
52. See, for instance, Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race
and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2009).
53. Ludvigsen, conversation with author.
54. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, December 1956; Tapline, Pipeline Periscope,
February 1957.
55. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, December 1956.
56. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, November 1953.
57. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, March 1953.
58. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, January–February 1954; Tapline, Pipeline
Periscope, December 1954; Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, July–August 1954.
59. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, March 1953.
60. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, August–November 1955.
61. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, May 1953.
62. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, December 1954.
63. See, for example, al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya, Volume 2,
81–82, 99, 117, 120, 127.
64. Cyrus Schayegh, “1958 Reconsidered: State Formation and the Cold War
in the Early Postcolonial Arab Middle East,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 432.
65. Tapline, Pipeline Periscope, September 1956; Tapline, Pipeline Periscope,
February 1957; Brickhouse, “Tapline’s Sidon Terminal.”
66. Cohen, Making a New Deal, 171–173.
67. Aramco, “Loan Assistance Program,” (undated internal memorandum,
Aramco); Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,” 138–139.
68. Tapline, “Tapline Position Paper,” (undated internal memorandum,
Tapline).
69. John O’ Hagan to Muḥammad Fuʾād Khabbāz (letter, John O’ Hagan,
December 7, 1963).
70. Ibid.
71. Shāmī, conversations with author.
72. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 213–214.
73. Ibid., 218.
74. al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya, Volume 2, 107–108.
75. Ibid., 136–139.
76. Schayegh, “1958 Reconsidered”, 433.
77. Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press,
2007), 138–144.
78. al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya, Volume 2, 225.
79. Ibid., 81–82.
 TAPLINE, WELFARE CAPITALISM, AND MASS MOBILIZATION … 367

80. Ibid., 139–140.

81. Betty Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and
Liberal Education (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 136.
82. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 136.
83. Kamāl Junblāṭ, Ḥaqīqat al-Thawra al-Lubnāniyya (Beirut: al-Dār
al-Taqaddumiyya, 1987), 97–99.
84. Shāmī, conversations with author.
85. al-Buwārī, Tārīkh al- Ḥaraka al-‘Ummāliyya, Volume 2.
86. Ibid., 183, 196–199, 229.
87. Ibid., 140–144, 176–177, 184–186.
88. Shāmī, conversations with author.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. John O’ Hagan to Muḥammad Fuʾād Khabbāz (letter, John O’ Hagan,
December 7, 1963).
92. Ghosn, “Geographies of Energy,” 166.
93. “Tapline Position Paper.” Unpublished documents.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid.
96. Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, “To Lebanese Public Opinion (1 of 2),”
(leaflet, Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, 1963).
97. Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, “To Lebanese Public Opinion (2 of 2),”
(leaflet, Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, 1963).
98. Although the Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate employed anti-colonial nation-
alist rhetoric in its first pamphlets and placards, and although it had good
relations with the Arab nationalist MP Maʿrūf Saʿd, it was not affiliated
with Lebanon’s Nasserist movement, as Ghosn suggests. Ghosn,
“Geographies of Energy,” 160.
99. Shāmī, conversations with author.
100. Ibid.
101. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 38.
102. Shāmī, conversations with author.
103. al-ʿAmal, September 4, 1964. This was framed as a demand for a 13th
month of wages paid at the end of each year, an annual bonus that
amounted to an 8.33% salary increase.
104. al-Nahār, October 4, 1964; Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 99.
105. al-ʿAmal, September 5, 1964.
106. al-ʿAmal, September 9, 1964.
107. al-Nahār, October 4, 1964.
108. Tapline throughput reached 439,000 barrels per day in 1964, compared to
the IPC line’s 445,000 barrels per day in 1960. The IPC refinery at Tripoli
accounted for roughly 55% of premium gasoline sales and 56% of regular
368 Z.D. CUYLER

gasoline sales in Lebanon in 1964, with Tapline crude processed at

Medreco likely making up almost all of the remainder. Interview with
anonymous former Tapline employee, July 2013; Iraq Petroleum
Company—Lebanon, “General Information on Pipeline & Terminal—
Lebanon and Tripoli Refinery,” 1970, http://almashriq.hiof.no/
lebanon/300/380/388/ipc/ipc-gi-1970/index.html.
109. U.S. Embassy in Beirut to U.S. Department of State, “Petroleum Workers’
Strike Continues,” September 25, 1964; “President Helou Seeks Quick
Settlement of Oil Strike,” September 30, 1964; “Petroleum Workers’
Strike Ends,” October 14, 1964; RG 59, Central Policy Files 1964–1966,
Box 1309, NARA.
110. Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, “To the Management of the Tapline
Company,” (leaflet, Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, 1964); Brickhouse,
“Tapline’s Sidon Terminal”; Ludvigsen, conversation with the author.
111. Photograph provided to author by Ayyūb Shāmī.
112. al-‘Amal, September 5 and 20, 1964; al-Anba’, September 19, 1964.
113. Ghosn notes that the company suggested to the Lebanese government that
a shutdown would cost Lebanon 35,000 lira daily. Ghosn, “Geographies
of Energy,” 160; Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 58, 83; Shāmī,
conversations with author.
114. al-Nahār, October 4, 1964.
115. Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, “Statement number 2: Petroleum is a means
to a better life,” (leaflet, Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, 1966).
116. Shāmī, conversations with author.
117. U.S. Embassy in Beirut to U.S. Department of State, “Tapline Labor
Dispute Nears Solution,” April 6, 1966; U.S. Embassy in Beirut to U.S.
Department of State, “Tapline Strike,” December 6, 1966 RG 59, Central
Policy Files 1964–1966, Box 1309, NARA; Shāmī, conversations with
author; Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, “Statement number 3: Petroleum is a
means to a better life,” (leaflet, Tapline Laborers’ Syndicate, 1966).
 “Oil Is Our Wet Nurse”:
Oil Production and Munayshilar
(Oil Workers) in Soviet Kazakhstan

Saulesh Yessenova

THE SOVIET OIL COMPLEX IN KAZAKHSTAN

The northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea forms Kazakhstan’s western
frontier. Oil was struck there for the first time in 1912 by the Nobel
Brothers; but capitalist oil entrepreneurs did not find this coast of the
Caspian Sea so attractive, concentrating instead on Baku and Grozny. In
1922, the Soviet government created Embaneft, a state-controlled trust
that would prospect for and develop oil on the northeastern coast. By the
late 1960s, Embaneft’s resource base consisted of a number of oil deposits
located above deep salt domes characteristic of the local geology. In 1971,
however, local oil production peaked, and by 1975, all Embaneft’s fields
showed signs of depletion. Embaneft needed new finds. In 1975,
Zholdaskhali Dosmukhambetov, a chief geologist at Embaneft, marked a
spot on a local geological map: “The first [discovery] well should be here,”
he declared. “I shall name this well ‘Tengiz,’ let it give us a sea of oil.”1 In
1979, the existence of oil lying beneath the thick layer of salt at the edge of
the Caspian Sea was finally confirmed. “It was a grand spectacle!” recalls
Oringazy Iskuzhiev, another geologist at Embaneft, referring to a tall black

S. Yessenova (&)
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology,
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

© The Author(s) 2018 369

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_14
370 S. YESSENOVA

fountain of oil that burst up from the depth of over four thousand meters.2
Dosmukhambetov, who led the prospecting, did not get to be part of this
happy moment: he died of illness in 1977. To honor him, his colleagues
named this field, containing nine billion barrels of recoverable light oil,
Tengiz, which is a Kazakh word for “sea.”
The Tengiz field is situated 280 km southeast of the city of Atyrau.
Previously named Guryev, this urban center at the Ural River Delta is a
gateway to the local oil fields. The landscape between Atyrau and Tengiz,
punctuated with older and more recently installed oil collectors, pumping
stations, and other industrial facilities, is clear evidence that crude pro-
duction has been underway there for decades. The oil industry forever
altered the local environment that had previously served the needs of
pastoral nomadism and transformed old herding communities into cul-
turally mixed populations with a wide range of relationships with oil pro-
jects. By the time crude production peaked in the early 1970s, the Soviet
oil industry had become an integral part of local social realities, so much so
that rural communities, including Dossor, Kosshagil, Emba, Makat,
Karaton, and Kulsary, came to identify themselves both with the individual
oil projects they hosted and with the local oil industry more generally.
The discovery of Tengiz was, therefore, a major achievement for
Embaneft and bred hopes for a strong renewal of the oil industry among local
communities. The Soviet state invested significant resources in exploring and
developing this field that went into production in April 1991—just months
before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The largest discovery since
Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 1968, Tengiz immediately attracted foreign cor-
porate interest. In 1992, the government of Kazakhstan, already an inde-
pendent state, established Tengizchevroil (TCO), a multinational oil
enterprise operated by Chevron, Inc. that would exploit Tengiz for 40 years.
What began in the 1970s as a local battle with the Soviet bureaucracy and
local geology grew into a major international affair.
In this chapter, I discuss how the Soviet oil industry put down deep
roots in this formerly pastoral nomadic region, which remained predomi-
nantly rural throughout the Soviet era despite profound changes resulting
from the state-driven political and economic interventions. Historically, the
social structure of indigenous communities reflected a pastoral order in
which respectability and privilege derived from livestock ownership and
assumptions of patriarchy. In the 1930s, the Soviet state attempted to
transform unruly mobile herders of camel and sheep into Soviet collective
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 371

farmers, thereby generating considerable chaos in the region that lasted

until the Second World War. After the war, however, an entirely new social
class was formed within these herding communities. Collectively
self-identified as munayshilar, which is a derivative of a Kazakh word for
crude oil (munay), this class encompassed industrial professionals and
laborers working in the oil industry. By focusing on the twists and turns in
the historical relationship between Soviet industrial practice and indigenous
communities, which came to be centered on the munayshilar, I illuminate
the social and industrial processes and situations which led to the discovery
of Tengiz, and to the community’s critical response to the state’s attempt
to re-engineer the social fabric of local society as part of this field’s
development in the 1980s.
This study has emerged as part of my ethnographic research on the oil
industry in Kazakhstan, which focuses on the effects oil multinationals’
involvement in this industry had on political culture in this post-Soviet
country. The impact of oil on a given locality is conventionally measured in
terms of corporate wealth, private and public revenues, development, and
corruption as well as in terms of pressure on the environment and
indigenous communities and their cultures.3 All of these are important
concerns, relevant to the study of the post-Soviet situation in Kazakhstan4;
but these concerns are less helpful in making sense of local historical
contexts, within which neither the accumulation of wealth, nor the
preservation of a traditional way of life (deemed incompatible with oil
development) figured as dominant ideas driving either the oil industry or
the surrounding communities. On my visits to Kulsary, a settlement in the
Atyrau oblast, which is discussed below, I heard people saying that their
streets “should be paved with gold” based on such a long history of local
engagement in oil production. But it is only in the post-Soviet period that
this community has come to associate oil with the question of prosperity.
Not a single personal testimony about life and work during the Soviet
period that I collected while conducting fieldwork in this region conveyed
the relevance of oil to economic gains derived from its exchange value on
the world’s market.
Kulsary and other oil-producing communities certainly deserved to have
their roads paved, at least with asphalt, based on their contribution to the
war effort, postwar reconstruction and the subsequent rise of the Soviet
Union as an oil exporter. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind
that the rate of oil production in Soviet Kazakhstan was always quite
modest. In the 1970s, the republic’s share in total Soviet oil production
372 S. YESSENOVA

ranged between 8 and 10%,5 most of which came from the oil fields in the
Mankishlak peninsula, presently composing the Mangistau oblast.6 The
current status of the Atyrau oblast, which is the focus of my inquiry, as the
most important oil-producing region in Kazakhstan, generating billions of
dollars in revenues for the state and for the oil companies involved, is a
post-Soviet phenomenon. Furthermore, during the Soviet period, even the
largest oil-producing regions in the Russian Federation did not experience,
as Douglas Rogers reminds us, “the capitalist oil booms” observed outside
the Soviet Union.7 “The socialist oil complex” that linked different
industrial, bureaucratic, and social elements in one interactive whole for the
purposes of the production and marketing of oil, he argues, operated very
differently from the capitalist oil complex as discussed by Michael Watts
and other scholars.8
One of the key distinct aspects of the socialist oil complex was the
separation of oil production from marketing: revenues from oil exports
never returned to the enterprises that produced oil; resources required to
sustain the operations of the oil enterprises were allocated by the central
planning committee based on the expected productivity of individual
enterprises.9 The volume of allocated resources reflected the cost of oil
production and not the price of oil. This Soviet practice provided no
incentive for the oil-producing enterprises to increase the efficiency of their
operations; nor did it help create exchange value for crude oil within the
Soviet economy,10 which was another crucial moment: oil was worthless, as
Rogers points out, unless it was refined into usable products—fuel or other
petrochemicals—which is why Soviet refineries enjoyed a greater power in
relation to oil producers.11 Although there was a refinery in Guryev, the
Soviet oil industry in Kazakhstan never attained the same degree of vertical
integration of upstream and downstream operations as the oil industries in
Russia and Azerbaijan: Embaneft was merely in charge of on-site pro-
duction, functioning as a multiple project operator dependent on many
other enterprises for fuel, machinery, and parts that positioned it near the
bottom of the Soviet industrial hierarchy. Social development in the
Guryev (future Atyrau) oblast, the home base of Embaneft, reflected this
enterprise’s plight: outside Guryev, it consisted of spread-out villages fea-
turing schools and office buildings that stood among self-built houses,
animal sheds, and pyramids of dry cakes of animal dung, which herders
used for fuel to prepare food and heat their homes. These villages were also
home to local munayshilar: but now it was oil rather than herding which
had become their major source of livelihood.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 373

It is not my purpose to analyze the Soviet political economy, given that

it did not bring affluence to the oil-producing communities, even by Soviet
standards; but rather to trace some of its effects on local understandings of
oil and to explain why people became so invested in the oil industry,
attaching so much pride to their identities as munayshilar. Since the time of
the Bolshevik government, the northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea has
always been defined by its capacity to produce oil. The Soviet regime was
established there in 1928; but Embaneft was founded 6 years earlier,
becoming a Soviet outpost driving the osvoenie, which is a Russian term
denoting the process of “incorporation” and “economic development,” of
this region.12 Willard Sunderland points out that since imperial times, the
Russian government had used this term to gloss over what was, in fact, a
“conquest” or “expropriation:” a method of internal colonization, in
which “outsiders made the natives’ region their own.”13 The historical
circumstances behind the narrative I present in this chapter are charac-
teristic of Soviet internal colonization; but the narrative itself is about how
“natives” asserted control over the local social environment and the place
of oil in this process.
This discussion is based on fieldwork that I conducted in the Zhilioy
audany, which is a primary oil-producing administrative district in the
Atyrau oblast centered on Kulsary. This district roughly corresponds to
Embaneft’s sites of operation during the Soviet period. During three
summer seasons of fieldwork (2004–2011), I interviewed members of this
already urbanized community who had worked in the Soviet oil industry
and collected oral history narratives from the old-time local residents.
I have also drawn in this study on so-called brokered data,14 including local
media sources, memoirs, and corporate publications. I also interviewed
present-day munayshilar in Astana and Atyrau-city who trace their
genealogies to Kulsary and other locations in the Zhilioy audany. Not
every person who contributed to this study is acknowledged in the text;
however, those who are mentioned are introduced by their real names.
In the following section, I discuss the first decades of the Soviet oil
industry that, as invasive as it was, became integrated into this region’s
social life. Focusing on the realities of industrial praxis, I then discuss how
working in oil became an important part of local culture and identity. The
issue of oil depletion and local efforts to avert industrial decline are
explored next, followed by a discussion of developments pertaining to the
osvoenie of Tengiz. This latter issue aptly demonstrates the double meaning
of this Russian term: in a broad sense, osvoenie refers to colonization by
374 S. YESSENOVA

means of resettlement and the creation of social and political infrastructures

that makes the region in question governable; in a narrow sense, however,
it denotes the process of development of a significant and hitherto
untapped natural resource, such as an oil field. This distinction is important
to acknowledge here because local resistance was directed against the
osvoenie of Tengiz in the first broader sense. To conclude, I sum up my
discussion of this historical engagement in oil that shaped local skills and
expectations, preparing local society for “the capitalist oil booms and
associated inequalities” that Rogers mentions,15 which they experiences
only in the aftermath of Socialism.

MAKING THE KAZAKH OIL WORKING CLASS

Made up of Caspian lowlands, the northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea
was historically occupied by herding communities of predominantly Turkic
origin. Their engagement in pastoral nomadism, a system based on the
seasonal migration of animals and people between ecologically specialized
grasslands, shaped local cultural and physical environments. For the living
generations of the Aday, Berish, Sherkesh, Yissyk, and Taz lineages that are
native to the region, oral tradition locates long successions of names,
place-names, and events that communicate the depth of their history.
Belonging to the Bay Uly and the Kishi jüz tribal confederations, historical
lineages used these political umbrella organizations to access regional trade
centers on the Ural and Volga Rivers. By linking individual communities to
broader cultural universes, markets, and political structures, these historical
relations and exchange networks ensured the long-term survival of the local
society and its culture.16
Subsequent historical developments tied this region to even more dis-
tant markets and political structures. In the mid-nineteenth century, the
Caspian lowlands were incorporated into the Russian Empire, and, in
1924, they were added to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic17: which
brought further challenges for the local society. In 1918, the Bolshevik
government nationalized the oil industry in Baku and Grozny.
Nationalization generated a fuel crisis in the Soviet Union, which trans-
formed the Caspian lowlands from distant backwaters into an important
resource for the Soviet state; in 1920, Embaneft was thus established to
operate the Dossor and Makat oil fields.18 Two years later, the company
became a state-controlled trust that was headquartered in Moscow until
1929; after that it was managed from Guryev: but the enterprise remained
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 375

under Moscow’s direct control. In 1970, Embaneft was reorganized as a

production association containing divisions that not only prospected for,
drilled and pumped oil, but also built roads, railroads and pipelines, and
trained cadres. Their activities created the Soviet oil industry on the
ground. In accounts that have been published in post-Soviet Kazakhstan,
there is a tendency to stress the participation of the local Kazakh society in
the oil industry since the 1920s. This is when oil indeed began shaping the
lives of individual Kazakh men and their families; however, at the societal
level, the indigenization of the local oil industry only became a trend in the
postwar period. Before that, as a local observer from Kulsary noted to me,
the relationship between local communities and the oil industry was a
“forced” one in which neither party was a willing partner.
In 1924, the first local school of industrial studies was opened in Dossor,
where oil had first been discovered, and which was the center of oil pro-
duction at that time. By 1928, only five Kazakhs had graduated. In the
early 1930s, a total of 510 Kazakh students were enrolled at this school and
at another one in Guryev.19 This was a significant increase. This increase
should not be attributed to a desire to master new professions, but rather
to the desperation created by Soviet sedentarization and collectivization
campaigns, which began in 1928 and drove local Kazakh youth to the
schools in search of food and shelter. Local herders’ position as suppliers of
food and draft animals to the industry somewhat facilitated the establish-
ment of a symbiotic relationship between the implanted industry and local
communities. But the violence and coercion involved in both sedenta-
rization and collectivization, prompting mass slaughters of animals and
outmigration of herders to Iran and Turkey, complicated the relationship
between the indigenous populations and the oil industry still further.20 In
1935, the Soviet government quietly backtracked from its uncompromis-
ing decree on collectivization, which had put food production in crisis, by
allowing rural Kazakhs to maintain private herds as long as they partici-
pated in collective farms.21 As a result, the remaining Kazakhs continued to
rely on animal husbandry which was the backbone of their household
economy.
The Second World War, or more precisely, the beginning of the Great
Patriotic War in 1941, imposed new demands on the region. The advance
of Hitler’s army pushed Soviet industrial enterprises eastward. Caspian
lowlands became a prime destination for equipment and workers evacuated
from Grozny and Baku. Locally, over ten thousand Kazakhs were drafted
into the oil industry, which at the start of the war included nine
376 S. YESSENOVA

oil-producing projects, to work side by side with the evacuees and the
workers who had arrived earlier. Nearly half of these rural Kazakhs were
women: hundreds of them engaged in drilling and well operation, which
attested to the depth of labor recruitment among local communities, from
which many men had already been sent to the front.22 The threat of losing
fuel production capacities in Baku created the need for a refinery in
Guryev.23 Following the construction of this refinery, initially coded as
“Plant #441” and completed in 1945, the oblast was granted the status of
industrial center, despite the fact that it remained rural outside the city of
Guryev.24
The war, which led to an expansion of industrial activities in the region,
prompted changes in pre-existing cultural norms and economic patterns
among the indigenous population. In particular, it fostered new under-
standings of the oil industry that became a collective experience for many.
Individual stories of endurance and appreciation of industrial work were
integrated in local lore as sources of pride and honor that alongside other
deeds gave meaning to community life. Trying to expand the existing
workforce, the Soviet state supported aspirations for industrial labor among
the indigenous population. Photographs of Kazakh oil workers, such as the
ones included in this chapter, standing by the oil gushers and rigs or
handling heavy equipment, as well as portraits and biographies of local
Heroes of Socialist Labor were printed in newspapers both during and after
the war (see Figs. 1 and 2).
Individual experiences of wartime labor thus acquired a public form in
which the misery and duress it involved were replaced with a sense of
purpose and heroism.25 “The eyes of local Kazakhs [finally] opened,” said
an amateur historian from Kulsary to me. They came to recognize that, as
he noted, “the oil industry was a major source of prestige and political
advancement” in the region and, therefore, wanted to join it. This candid
comment was intended to explain the turn in the postwar relationship
between local Kazakhs and the oil industry, previously dominated by
newcomers. However, it conveys the reverse idea as well: after the Second
World War, the oil industry lost its foreign roots in the eyes of the local
society, going beyond its industrial function. It became part and parcel of,
as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put it, “the production of social life
itself, in which the economic, the political and the cultural increasingly
overlap and invest in one another.”26 A key process in this production of
social life in the Soviet industrial context was labor.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 377

Fig. 1 1955. Masters of

subsurface well repair K.
Zhusupov (left) and A.
Karzhauov (right), the
Kulsary oil field. Courtesy
of the Aldongar Public
Foundation for Cultural
Development, Almaty.

OIL IS OUR WET NURSE

“Neft’ i kormilitsa nasha i poilitsa,” said Bagit Kulbaev, a veteran of the
Soviet oil industry, during an interview in Kulsary during the summer of
2009. He used this metaphor, which means “oil is our wet nurse,” to
underscore the importance of oil significance as a means of subsistence for
the local society. In Russian, the term kormilitsa denotes a “wet nurse” and
is also used to refer to a river, a cow, or even land from which people can
obtain nourishment vital for their survival. In this case, the source of
nourishment is an inedible and nonrenewable mineral. “My father was a
munayshi, so were his brothers,”27 Kulbaev said, explaining his decision to
choose this profession. He was born in Kosshagil, which was the name of a
collective farm that hosted one of the Embaneft oil projects at which he
worked as a young man. In 1960, he became a student at the Institute of
Energy in Alma-Ata, then the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan. Upon
378 S. YESSENOVA

Fig. 2 1943.
Operator K.
Begembetova, the
Shubarduk oil field.
Courtesy of the Aldongar
Public Foundation for
Cultural Development,
Almaty.

graduation, he worked as an assistant driller in Kulsary. Eventually, he was

promoted to master driller, then to engineer, and finally to chief engineer.
He had a stellar munayshi career that he built by participating in a number
of oil projects, including Karaton, Prorva, and Tengiz from which he
retired in 2003 (see Fig. 3).
Not every man of his age in this region had this kind of career or was an oil
worker at all; and yet his biography reflects the professional aspirations
among the generation of Kazakh men who began their working lives in the
1960s. Many of these men established family dynasties of munayshilar by
passing their ambitions to the next generation. Through dedication and hard
work this 1960s cohort claimed symbolic ownership of the local oil industry
that the local populace came to treat as “their” industry. Kulbaev’s testimony
attests to the degree to which individual narratives about how “oil became
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 379

Fig. 3 Bagit Kulbaev and his wife, Svetlana Kulbaeva, in 2011. All five of their
children—three daughters and two sons—work in Kazakhstan’s oil industry. Photo
by the author.

our life,” in his words, are not merely personal testimonies, they are cultural
narratives of identity which extend to broader communities.
Working in oil became an important part of local men’s lives: so much
so that even dangerous and exhausting jobs, such as drilling, acquired
meaning consistent with pre-existing expectations of masculinity and peer
pressure, and images of wartime efforts. The emblematic organization of
the Soviet oil industry, within which tasks, goals, and strategies were often
divorced from the common sense dictated by economics and even geology,
supported the continuous absorption of local youth into Embaneft. The
Soviet Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources determined binding
production targets for each oil enterprise in the country. As Rogers dis-
cusses, the targets were usually set so high that they were impossible to
achieve.28 In this situation, oil enterprises met the expectations of
Moscow’s authorities by drilling new wells. Not every new well delivered
380 S. YESSENOVA

more oil from a known field or signaled a new find (or was even expected
to). At the same time, drilling represented a frantic effort that was legible to
Moscow’s authorities. This is why the number of drilled meters was an
important measure of the enterprise’s performance. In the early 1980s,
Embaneft had 3641 wells: nearly half of these were either dry or in need of
repair. Nonetheless, the company drilled eighty thousand meters for
prospecting purposes alone in 1 year. This was not a useful practice at all
since the existence of Tengiz, which was confirmed in 1979, proved the
need for deep drilling in order to find new sources of oil, something that, as
discussed below, Embaneft could not perform on its own. Unable to
achieve oil production targets, the enterprise was forced to continue dril-
ling, despite the fact that it constantly ran short of resources and workers
for this task and, therefore, was in constant need for young recruits.
One of them was Asset Magauov, who is now a senior manager at
KazMunaiGaz, Kazakhstan’s national oil company. In the early 1980s,
Asset was a student at the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow and
worked in Kulsary as an assistant driller in the summer. Drilling brigades
stayed at their work sites for days, he remembers, “hiding from the wind in
cardboard boxes while the wind was protecting them from mosquitoes” at
night. He joined a drilling brigade at the insistence of his father, a distin-
guished munayshi himself, who believed that his son had to endure the
physical hardship involved in drilling, which for him was an important part
of learning about the oil industry from the bottom-up. Asset was to follow
the steps of the previous generation, including his father and his peers, as
well as Kulbaev, who worked as a roughneck and an assistant driller, jobs
that did not require a particular qualification, except physical strength,
before and after he graduated from an institution of higher learning: he
defined it as a “school of life,” about which he clearly had no regrets.
As in other extractive industries around the world, in the oil industry
entry-level positions, such as assistant drillers and other roughneck jobs in
well repair and prospecting were used to discipline recruits and prepare
them for industrial labor.29 Drilling is always an important task, requiring a
well-coordinated team effort: insubordination or incompetence may cause
injuries, explosions or fire, something that has often been a problem in the
past.30 In the Soviet Union, accidents and equipment loss, as Span dis-
cusses in the context of oil development in Soviet Kazakhstan, could also
result in prison sentences.31 As noted earlier, before the Second World
War, drillers, derrick operators, and geologists included in Embaneft dril-
ling expeditions were workers from the outside. The few Kazakhs recruited
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 381

by the oil industry were youth from impoverished families and orphans
who learned Russian in boarding schools.32 Furthermore, after the War,
many of the Kazakhs who joined the industry during the conflict, returned
to animal husbandry; however, some were drawn to the oil fields for the
same reasons that attracted rural people to industrial enterprises elsewhere:
as a means to escape “from the oppressive routine of agricultural life,” as
Alison Frank put it,33 and claustrophobic community life, as well as hun-
ger, which in the 1940s was still a leading cause of death in the Soviet
Union.34
Kazakh workers were welcomed as roughnecks. With the end of the
war, evacuees returned home. The expansion of oil production in the
Volga-Urals oil basin led the Russian workforce back to Russia. Those
who remained in Kazakhstan, on the other hand, wanted to get away
from the mud and dust of the oil fields by moving to Guryev. The
outmigration of these workers in the aftermath of the war generated
labor shortages in oil production that, in turn, stimulated the recruitment
of local youth, creating opportunities to learn trades, obtain degrees, and
seek promotion. Thus, unlike other historical contexts, such as Mexico
and Saudi Arabia, where oil corporations,35 reinforced race-based divi-
sions by employing foreign workers, in Soviet Kazakhstan the shortage of
labor led to a wider involvement of indigenous people in the oil industry,
and to their recognition by Russian authorities as members of the Soviet
industrial working class. In the 1960s, Kazakhs came to dominate drilling
crews, from roughnecks to master drillers and geologists. They were able
to use their native language, thus reducing the cultural distance between
home and work. Working autonomously in distant locations, local crews
had control over the work processes in which they were involved, an
important component of which was teaching trade and subordination to
recruits. What the munayshilar came to regard as their “school of life”
was defined as such because the on-site training and labor processes in oil
production were consistent with the cultural practices of the broader local
communities.
The oil produced by Embaneft was pipelined to Russia and processed at
the refinery located in Guryev. In the 1960s, i.e., before local production
peaked, Embaneft filled 35–40% of the refinery’s capacities, and was about to
decrease its supplies.36 In the following decade, the Dossor field, once
containing 50 million barrels of oil, struggled to sustain prewar production
rates, while the enterprises that exploited the Kosshagil and Prorva fields were
shut down. Embaneft relocated oil workers and their families to Kulsary. Yet,
382 S. YESSENOVA

every Embaneft enterprise was embedded in a local community, providing

jobs, building and maintaining kindergartens and schools, supplying water
and gas, and meeting other social needs. The closure of the Prorva project led
to the decay of Sarakamis, a settlement that was built for oil workers and,
according to the census, had over four thousand permanent residents in
1970. In 2004, Sarakamis had become a ghost town and was used in the
post-Soviet period as a shelter for migrant families from distant villages, who
were the last to abandon it (Fig. 4).
As Nasibkaliy Marabaev, who worked at these oil projects testifies, in the
1950s and 1960s the names of Prorva, Dossor, and Makat “were on
everyone’s lips;” these towns “were bustling with life as if they were the
center of the universe.” They certainly seemed to be to those who saw
“caravans” of trucks arriving to their worksites from different parts of the
Soviet Union. “People worked hard thinking about the future with
enthusiasm and optimism,” he reported.37 In the 1970s, however, a

Fig. 4 Sarakamis (2004). One of the last families to leave Sarakamis, shown here
with visitors from Kulsary. Photo by the author.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 383

gloomy prospect began to appear: with the depletion of the oil supply, the
future became unstable, and looked similar to what happened in Oman.38
As Mandana Limbert argues, this instability was clear in the idea people
had about their future, which looked more like the past when their country
was one of the poorest in the world.39 In Soviet Kazakhstan, a “return to
the past” meant an unlikely event of the turnaround of the Soviet regime
that taught citizens to believe in the “bright communist future.” This is
why local munayshilar mobilized for what would become a historic dis-
covery: after all, oil was the “wet nurse” for all of them.
“We always knew there was big oil,” recalls Iskuzhiev, a geologist who
was involved in the discovery of Tengiz, referring to the lack of commit-
ment from Moscow to expand exploration in Kazakhstan.40 In the postwar
period, the Soviet state prioritized the Volga-Urals oil basin and Western
Siberia, allocating no resources for systematic prospecting in Kazakhstan.
In the early 1970s, however, Embaneft carried out theoretical research in
order to examine the potential for new discoveries.41 By October 1975, the
company had obtained enough information to start exploratory drilling. Its
chief geologist (Dosmukhambetov), head of the Geology Department
(Iskuzhiev), and the General Director (Bulekpay Sagyngaliev) went to
Moscow where they met with the Soviet Minister of Energy and Mineral
Resources, Nikolai Yerofeyev, and members of the Ministry’s Department
of Geology.42
A key difficulty in obtaining the Ministry’s approval was Embaneft’s
intention to drill deep underneath the ground surface. Moscow officials
were initially dismissive of the possibility of there being oil buried 4000 or
5000 m below the surface, as the team of Kazakh geologists had sug-
gested.43 Their skepticism had to do with the poor state of Soviet drilling
technology. Although the Soviet Union was a major producer of steel, it
failed to manufacture the high-quality steel required for rotary drills used
elsewhere in the world. In order to address this issue, the Soviet Union
invented a turbodrill. This machine, though, could be used for drilling in
soft ground such as that in the Vulga-Urals oil basin, but lost its effec-
tiveness in the corrosive environment of the northeastern coast of the
Caspian Sea, and was not useful for drilling deeper than 500–700 meters.
These technological limits conditioned the state of mind of Soviet officials,
as was noted by foreign observers.44 Only after prolonged debates, Kazakh
geologists managed to convince the Ministry, and Embaneft was allowed
to drill three exploratory wells.
384 S. YESSENOVA

In December 1979, the first well was finally tested and to everyone’s
delight it delivered the very first Tengiz oil. “Dosmukhambetov was not
mistaken,” Iskuzhiyev commented, “there was a true underground sea of
oil.” It took a “colossal” effort to make this discovery happen, he stres-
sed.45 The novelty of the experience and the geological complexity of the
field were only part of the difficulties they faced. Most problems originated
in the hyper-centralized organization of the Soviet industry, which is the
main reason why it took them almost 3 years to drill the first three wells.
Every operation had to be approved by central authorities, who then
authorized the shipment of required supplies. Almost every type of oil
equipment had to be brought from other Soviet republics. Tatiana
Mikhailovna, a Russian woman from Kulsary who worked in procurement
at Embaneft, defined the process as “hozhdeniye po mukam” or a “journey
through torment.”46 From the 1970s onward, Embaneft also depended on
equipment imported from France, Germany, and Canada.47 The request
for technology from the other side of the Iron Curtain had to be approved
by the Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministries himself, a process that
greatly delayed the project. As Tatiana Mikhailnovna told me, sometimes
they received the wrong products as a result of the long bureaucratic chain
involved in the requisition and procurement procedures.
This created constant delays and scarcity, which led to the formation of
informal arrangements and networks in the local oil industry. Exchanges of
favors and materials between production divisions, enterprises, and projects
helped mitigate the pain of the “journey,” or, as James Scott has argued,
helped “circumvent some of the colossal waste and inefficiencies built into
the system.”48 Moreover, production and the fulfillment of state targets
came to depend on this informal economy as much as on the Soviet state
itself. Informal relations extended far outside regional boundaries, con-
necting the local oil industry with industrial centers in Russia and Ukraine,
which produced steel pipes, drills and drill bits, rails, and motors. These
relations outlived the Soviet state given that they were useful to local
contractors who supplied pipes and rails from Dnepropetrovsk to TCO and
its subcontractors, beating others in terms of cost and delivery time.
During the Soviet period, working at Embaneft was not merely about
handling industrial operations, but also about negotiating with central
authorities. These tasks required leadership skills and social foundations
that supported these behaviors. Everyone I asked about their experience in
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 385

the local oil industry during the Soviet period acknowledged how absurd it
was and described it as something imposed from the outside. However,
during the Soviet period, the bureaucratic constraints that determined the
pace of work could not be easily separated from local industrial culture and
social life.
The intensity of these informal economic relations, where equipment,
work hours, meters drilled, and personnel were loaned and repaid, hidden
and reported elsewhere, obtained and lost, all of which were coordinated
outside the purview of the state, generated a sense of control among the
local munayshilar over their industry. Similar to the sense of control among
the drilling crews, it was feeding into sentiments of identity and community
of the munayshilar and marked their relationship to oil. The closure of the
old projects was a practical reminder of the finite nature of oil. Divorced
from market incentives, local munayshilar developed a distinct sense of
ownership and even care for this nonrenewable resource. They hoped that
oil would support generations of munayshilar and their communities. For
instance, with the beginning of the Tengiz project, local professionals,
including Kulbaev, went to Canada to buy drilling and well casing
equipment. “Our choice of technology was grounded in a theory that this
oil field was not to be exploited by barbarian means,” Kulbaev told me,
pointing out that their goal was to extend its lifespan. When Chevron
arrived, he said, the company immediately dug out that equipment and
threw it out. For Kulbaev, this underscored a fundamental difference
between them and Chevron, a capitalist enterprise, in terms of how they
approached the resource. They equipped wells so that they could produce
500–600 tons of oil in 24 h from each one. By contrast, as Kulbaev said
with evident disapproval, Chevron pumped on average 10,000 tons from
one well in 24 h.
So the presence of “big oil” was not treated as a sign of instant pros-
perity: what motivated the discovery of Tengiz was the renewal of the local
industrial tradition and a shared expectation that the richness of local
geology would bring about social prestige to the local oil industry. It was
regarded as a great honor to host a “flagship” enterprise developing a field
that was “unparalleled” in terms of geological complexity, as Lukpan
Seysimbekov, a retired munayshi from Kulsary explained to me. The local
expectation was that such recognition would bring additional resources for
the local oil industry as well as social infrastructure and consumer goods for
its loyal workforce, their families, and communities. However, this is not
what the Soviet state had in store for them.
386 S. YESSENOVA

THE TENGIZ OIL FIELD

Situated some 100 km from Tengiz, Kulsary is a former herding
encampment. In 1939, it was reorganized as a collective farm; in 1945,
Embaneft struck oil in the vicinity of this settlement, which made it an
important regional center of oil production that by 1970 was populated by
over sixteen thousand people.49 When I first arrived in Kulsary in 2004, I
soon learned that it was named after a local man from the Aday lineage
who lived there in the late nineteenth century. Kapen Kidibasov, a retiree
working as a journalist in his spare time, told me the story of this man as he
knew it. Kulsary was a wealthy owner of herds and at bege or horse trainer.
As such, he had a respected position within the local society; but he is
mostly remembered for his ability to foresee the future. One night he had a
strange dream. His horses were falling into the abyss, dragging him along
as he tried to stop them from disappearing underground. He woke up
realizing that it was just a dream and his horses were still there. But he still
heard a knocking sound that was coming from underground, which he
interpreted as the sound of the whole world rushing to meet in his
homeland. Kulsary’s prediction proved to be right, the journalist said,
pointing his finger in the direction of Tengiz where tens of thousands of
people from many countries were working that year.
The globalization of Tengiz is usually associated with the arrival of
Chevron in 1993; and yet the development of this field was an interna-
tional endeavor from the very beginning. From 1981 to 1983, drilling was
conducted by 20 brigades, 10 of which included local workers from
Embaneft and others arrived from Volgograd, recruited from two oil
enterprises, Prikaspiyburneft and Nizhnevolzhskneft.50 For 2 years, these
brigades worked to map the Tengiz field, and this led to the discovery of
Korolev, a smaller oil field to the northeast of Tengiz.51 In 1983,
Tengizneftegaz, an enterprise dedicated to the development of these two
fields, was established. Tengiz’s geology and high sulfur content required a
complex infrastructural setup, something that was not well thought out at
the beginning; so in 1985, during an initial stage of deep drilling,
high-pressure forced liquid to the surface, causing an explosion at one well,
similar to what happened at the Deepwater Horizon platform in 2010.
Looking for opportunities in the Soviet Union, Chevron used this incident
to approach Soviet authorities, but the company’s proposal for a joint
development of the field was declined. The Kremlin disagreed with the
suggested profit-sharing scheme and contracted other firms: the Bauman
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 387

State Technical Institute in Moscow designed a supporting infrastructure

for drilling; the Hungarian State Engineering Company built an on-site
processing plant separating oil and compressing sour gas; the German
company Lurgi, and Lavalin and Kremco from Canada supplied drilling
rigs, casing pipes, and other well equipment.52
In preparation for oil production, Tengizneftegaz built a new pipeline
(Tengiz-Guryev-Grozny) and extended the railway to connect Tengiz to
the network.53 It also built a water pipe to carry water for over 500 km from
Kygach, a tributary of the Volga River, to Tengiz.54 These expansive
industrial operations required significant labor input. In 1987,
Tengizneftegaz had 10 thousand employees, over 50% of whom were oil
workers, engineers, and support staff from Russia.55 The incoming Russian
workforce was housed at a makeshift camp, named the Tengiz Rotation
Shift Worker Village (or poseolok, henceforth the Tengiz Village), which was
set up near the field. Russian brigades worked at Tengiz for two or four
weeks after which they were replaced by other Russian brigades. This shift
work or concentrated work schedule was treated as a temporary arrange-
ment: the Soviet state intended to provide incentives in the form of housing
and high pay rates for the Russian oil workers to zakrepitsa or “fix their
position” in Kulsary, i.e., resettle them permanently.56 Thus, by developing
Tengiz the Soviet state wanted to accomplish two goals: replace the rapidly
depleting supplies from the Volga-Urals basin, and accommodate an excess
of industrial labor, created by the region’s declining oil production.
In the early 1980s, Kulsary contained small clay and brick houses and
several two-story wooden office buildings, but lacked asphalted streets and a
centralized sewage system. It was ill-suited to provide even temporary
accommodation for incoming workers. Housing was a major problem
among local populations as well. Composed of treeless grasslands, the
region did not produce construction materials, except clay. Historically, the
indigenous population lived in agash yui or yurts, and used clay to build
tombs and subterranean huts. Starting in the mid-1930s, Embaneft tried to
improve the housing situation for its workforce, but it never had enough
resources to import bricks, lumber, and pipes from other regions.57 Svetlana
Kulbaeva, Kulbaev’s wife, who participated in the interview along with her
husband, described the problem through their family’s experiences.

When we arrived in Prorva in the mid-1960s we shared a room with another

eight people. We treated this room as a two-room apartment because the
stove divided it into two [sections]. We burned fuel oil for heating and baked
388 S. YESSENOVA

bread ourselves. When we moved to Karaton, life did not become easier
because there was no kitchen in the clay house we lived in; it was the same in
Sarakamis. It was only when we moved to Kulsary in 1976 [when her hus-
band was already a chief engineer] that we could build a [proper] house and
make a garden.

Tengizneftegaz was extravagantly well-funded compared with Embaneft.

In 1986 alone, the enterprise’s budget equaled $16 billion.58
Tengizneftestroy, a subsidiary of Tengizneftegaz in civil construction, was
to transform Kulsary from a rural calamity into a modern Soviet town.
Mandated to erect new mikrorayons or urban residential neighborhoods for
the incoming oil workforce, Tengizneftestroy contracted firms (do-
mostroitelniye kombinaty) that manufactured standard apartment blocks in
Kuibyshev, Alma-Ata, and Aktyubinsk, the cities in Russia and Kazakhstan
that sourced the labor for this civil construction. By 1989, Kulsary’s
population doubled, exceeding 32 thousand people. Local residents were
angered by the fact that after decades of industrial operations, this was the
first time that the oil industry was addressing the housing shortage and the
poor living conditions, and was doing so for the Russian workforce and not
for them.
Furthermore, all incoming workers were paid a 60% supplement added
to their wages, which was a Soviet practice designed to compensate
employees for working in a hazardous environment and away from home.
Construction brigades arrived almost complete, and managers at
Tengizneftestroy preferred not to hire locally anyway, to avoid disputes
over pay rates, as I learned from former managers in Almaty,59 given that
local residents were not entitled to the lucrative wage supplement. This
situation unfolded within the context of rising unemployment rates in
Kulsary and elsewhere in the region, due to fewer opportunities at
Embaneft and the nonexistent service sector. Unemployment affected
especially young people, as many of them were no longer able to obtain
entry-level jobs in the oil industry or related enterprises.60
Economic discrimination was thus an important issue in shaping local
criticism of the state, new enterprises, and incoming workers. However,
there was an even bigger issue in the minds of local inhabitants. The urban
changes that were supposed to transform Kulsary was based on a model
used during the development (osvoenie) of the oil fields in Western Siberia.
This model included base-towns with a relatively complex social infras-
tructure that served to attract the incoming workforce and their families to
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 389

stay in the region. Their permanent presence was regarded as a positive

contribution to the social development and economic diversification of the
remote region.61 A similar model of osvoenie had been used in Kazakhstan
before, a prime example of which was the Virgin Lands campaign, as well as
mining projects, which brought millions of people to this Soviet republic in
the 1950 and 1960s. As a result, by the 1970s, ethnic Kazakhs constituted
less than 40% of the total population in their republic.62 During the same
decade, Russian became the language of instruction for 78% of students at
universities and at most urban schools in Kazakhstan.63 With minor
exceptions, Russian-speaking populations came to dominate cities in
Kazakhstan. Likewise, the osvoenie of Tengiz was not confined to the oil
field itself: it was to change the local society’s existing cultural setting and
social fabric.
Having thousands of construction workers occupying Kulsary and the
prospect of the Russian oil workers settling permanently overwhelmed the
community. Local residents feared that Kulsary would follow the path of
Kazakhstan’s cities. One of them shared his memories with me, comparing
Kulsary to Guryev and Shevchenko (present-day Aktau), cities that he
visited as a young man in the early 1970s. “Those were cities in
Kazakhstan; and yet, we did not see a single Kazakh on the streets!” he
exclaimed. “And the Kazakhs we met all spoke Russian,” he continued,
adding that proper Kazakhs lived at the outskirts in clay houses similar to
those in Kulsary and “had nothing while the Russians had all the goods and
conveniences.” Since the early 1960s, the Soviet state used oil to upgrade
the transportation system and improve living conditions in major cities
across the Soviet Union.64 Most Soviet revenues from oil exports were
used to purchase food items and other consumer products abroad.65
Kulsary did not receive any benefits, which is why I assumed that my
interlocutor would express his grievances about the unfairness of oil rev-
enue distribution and the loss of “their oil” to other regions and political
interests. Instead, he talked about his community and its advantages and
not about what was missing. Life in Kulsary was built around traditional
values, he stressed, such as: living in proximity to one’s kin in a close-knit
community, tending to animals, and using the Kazakh language at home
and in the workplace.
Unemployment and discrimination augmented the community’s fear of
cultural destruction, which led to a guerilla war conducted by local youth.
In June 1989, some young men set fire to several apartment buildings in
Kulsary, and then attacked on horseback the workers as they tried to
390 S. YESSENOVA

escape. Their goal was to drive them away and to stop the construction of
the new mikrorayons. OMON (or militarized police) units were dispatched
to get the situation under control, but the organized attacks on the oil and
construction workers at their homes, and during their commute to the
train station in Kulsary, continued for 2 months. This was not what sea-
soned munayshilar, who had worked so hard to find the “big oil,” expected
to happen. By the end of summer, all the construction workers had left
Kulsary. According to the stories that both Kulsary residents and former
Tengizneftestroy employees in Almaty told me, they left out of fear for
their wellbeing. In Kulsary, workers’ departure was treated as a victory,
reinforcing a sense of social cohesion and community pride that local
residents relayed in their conversations with me. Safety was indeed a big
concern for workers; however, construction brigades never came back for a
different reason.
In January 1988, the state issued a new Law on Enterprises as a measure
against the crisis of the centrally planned economy. According to this law,
industrial enterprises were to be self-funded by reinvesting their profits in
production. In less than 2 years, this legislation, aiming at reviving the
failing Soviet economy, led to a loss of 1.6 million jobs across the Soviet
Union as many enterprises could no longer maintain their existing work-
force.66 This legislation pushed Tengizneftegaz to focus on its core
activities in order to reach the production stage as soon as possible. The
enterprise used social struggle as a pretext to terminate civil construction in
Kulsary. Coincidentally, in August 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev signed a
protocol of agreement for the joint development of Tengiz with
Chevron.67 This deal never materialized: in 1991, Nursultan Nazarbaev,
the future President of independent Kazakhstan, finally claimed Tengiz. To
the Kremlin’s disappointment, he signed a new protocol of agreement with
Chevron in 1992.68 The battle for Tengiz thus relocated, now involving
high political forces and overseas commercial powers. But in 1990, in
anticipation of foreign investment, the Soviet state abandoned Tengiz.
Within months, Tengizneftegaz’s workforce had shrunk by four thousand
employees as many Russian workers headed home. The local residents, at
last, had Kulsary back to themselves—at least temporarily. They occupied
the newly built apartments that stood empty; the welcome idea that one of
their own had predicted that the whole world would rush to meet in their
homeland was yet to capture the local imagination.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 391

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have discussed the ways in which Kazakh communities
engaged with the Soviet oil industry that was brought to this region in the
first half of the twentieth century. Participation in the oil industry during
the Second World War transformed changed local society following a
Soviet plan to transform industrial and agricultural workers. After the war,
this industry became a social institution with a broad range of cultural
effects, including the creation of a sustained social class of oil workers
within the indigenous communities—the munayshilar. Focusing on Soviet
industrial praxis and the specificity of the socialist oil complex. I have
explored the munayshilar’s commitment to the oil industry that conferred
a respected social status upon them. It is important to note that this status
was recognized and carried meaning only within the local oil-producing
communities. As Rogers asserts, the oil industry was not an iconic or
powerful industry in the former Soviet Union. If the oil industry or oil
labor mattered at all, he notes, “it was in a very specific, geographically
bounded context that was not exemplary beyond itself.”69 The situation in
Soviet Kazakhstan supports this claim. For example, it was only in 1995,
i.e., in the aftermath of socialism, that Dosmukhambetov, Iskuzhiev and
another six local oil specialists finally received state recognition for their
discovery of Tengiz, one of the largest oil fields in the world.70 The
question is then, why were the munayshilar so proud of what they did, and
even referred to oil as their “wet nurse?”
As I have argued in this chapter, participation in the Soviet oil industry
was important to them because by being associated with the main indus-
trial enterprise in the region, local communities could assert control over
the local social environment, in the presence of a powerful Soviet state that
had previously generated considerable destruction locally in the region.
This participation gave rise to particular subjectivities in which oil, com-
munity, and tradition were intricately interwoven to stand for a way of life,
grounding the Soviet oil industry in local realities and motivating the local
munayshilar to prospect for “big oil” in the early 1970s. In the late 1980s,
however, Kulsary resisted the Soviet plan to develop Tengiz, which
threatened the community’s integrity and its way of life. Soviet Tengiz thus
taught this community to guard its social boundaries, informing the
community’s future attitudes and behaviors. With the arrival of Chevron in
1993, industrial operations significantly increased at Tengiz. Between 2004
and 2008, TCO sustained the operations of nearly 100 companies,
392 S. YESSENOVA

clustered within a two thousand kilometer perimeter, which included work

sites and accommodation for the workforce. This organization originated
in a corporate strategy to wall oil production off from local interference,
creating problems for the local workforce.71 And yet, this organization was
widely approved in Kulsary. Local officials rejected the idea of TCO sub-
contractors being based in Kulsary. As one of them pointed out to me, oil
enterprises come and go, but their community was there to stay.
Kulsary residents praise themselves for preserving the social cohesion of
their old community. At the same time, shifts in the mode of production,
legal arrangements, and the labor regime in the aftermath of socialism
generated significant changes once again, transforming industrial praxis,
social classes, and their identities. What happened to the munayshilar and
their proud family dynasties? Unlike Russia, Kazakhstan did not generate
oil oligarchs: the state opened the oil industry to foreign capital, simulta-
neously consolidating resources in the national oil and gas company. This
property regime limited the accumulation of oil capital in private hands.72
Nevertheless, the former Soviet munayshilar came to occupy respected
positions in corporate and political structures in the early 1990s, and were
able to pass their social capital on to the next generation. However, it is no
longer the hard work in the mud and dust of the oil fields that defines their
professional identity. Oil has been transformed from a working-class mis-
sion into a corporate endeavor, so the present-day munayshilar are
engaged in problem-solving, brokering, and other activities in engineering,
finance, and politics relating to Kazakhstan’s oil industry and its transna-
tional interests. Many of them live in Astana, the region’s new capital that
now hosts the headquarters of KazMunaiGaz, the national oil and gas
company, and the head offices of multinational oil corporations operating
in Kazakhstan. Kulbaev and his wife are among the few families of the
dynastic munayshilar who still (at the time of my fieldwork) kept their
home bases in Kulsary, the birthplace for many of them. Kulsary finally got
asphalted streets, but it remains a site of oil production, just as it was during
the Soviet period, now populated by a new breed of roughnecks and
entrepreneurs. However, the translocal identities of individual munayshi-
lar, cherishing the memory of their lineages and places of origin, suggest
that in Kazakhstan, the roads that led them to occupy leading position in
the oil industry began in poswar Soviet Kulsary and in other formerly
pastoral nomadic communities in this western frontier region on the
northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 393

NOTES
1. K. Igilik and K. Dzhakiev, Embi munayina 100 zhilda (Atyrau: Ak Zhaik,
1999), 122.
2. Assel Yelimesova, “Pervootkryvateli Tengiza: Oringazy Iskuzhiev,”
KazMunaiGaz, October 2, 2009, available at http://www.kmg.
kz/press/company_news/publication/2290#.VxaxSbfQcdV.
3. This literature is too large to acknowledge here fully. In addition to the
works already noted in this chapter, I would include Terry Lynn Karl, The
Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997) and Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature,
Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1997) for oil and state-building; Kenneth Omeje, ed., Extractive Economies
and Conflicts in the Global South: Multi-Regional Perspectives on Rentier
Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Susana Sawyer, Crude Chronicles:
Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004) for indigenous social move-
ments; and Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the
Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2011) for the history of energy and political
culture.
4. For a comprehensive discussion of some of these issues in post-Soviet
Kazakhstan, see: Pauline Jones Luong and Erica Weinthal, Oil Is Not a
Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Wojciech Ostrowski,
Politics and Oil in Kazakhstan (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
5. Leslie Dienes, Istvan Dobozi, and Marian Radetzki, Energy and Economic
Reform in the Former Soviet Union: Implications for Production,
Consumption and Exports (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), 38.
6. In 1971, Kazakhstan’s total annual output was 69 million tons a year.
Theodore Shabad, “The Soviet Potential in Natural Resources: An
Overview,” in Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy, eds.
Robert G. Jensen, Theodore Shabad, and Arthur W. Wright (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983), 265. Within this volume, Embaneft
produced a meager three million ton (N. A. Marabayev Munayshi Public
Foundation at: http://www.munayshy.kz/index.php/2010-06-23-15-
17-21/2010-06-23-15-17-44/2010-08-01-12-33-06). For a compar-
ison, the fields in Western Siberia produced 148 million tons in the
mid-1970s, and the Volga-Urals oil basin delivered 222 million tons
(Shabad, “The Soviet Potential in Natural Resources”, 265).
7. Douglas Rogers, “The Materiality of the Corporation: Oil, Gas, and
Corporate Social Technologies in the Remaking of a Russian Region,”
American Ethnologist 39, no. 2 (2012): 287.
394 S. YESSENOVA

8. Michael Watts, “Securing Oil: Frontiers, Risk, and Spaces of Accumulated

Insecurity,” in Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, eds.
Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2015), 211–236; Michael Watts, “Resource Curse?
Governmentality, Oil and Power in the Niger Delta, Nigeria,” Geopolitics 9,
no. 1 (2004): 50–80. For a succinct discussion of the capitalist oil complex
see: Douglas Rogers, The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture After
Socialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 37.
9. Rogers, The Depth of Russia, 49.
10. Maria Slavkina, “Istoria prinyatia reshenia o promyshlennom osvoenie
Zapadnoy Sibiri,” in Ekonomizheskaya istoria. Obozrenie, ed. L.I. Borodkin,
Moscow, #10 (2005), 147.
11. Rogers, The Depth of Russia, 50. The worthlessness of oil (and illegal
bunkering) was also conditioned by the lack of access to the international
black market of oil. Fuel and other petrochemicals, on the other hand, were
routinely siphoned to be used or bartered domestically. But I am not aware
of artisan-produced diesel or fuel oils in Kazakhstan, a practice discussed,
for example, by Elizabeth Gelber, “Black Oil Business: Rogue Pipelines,
Hydrocarbon Dealers, and the ‘Economics’ of ‘Oil Theft’,” in
Subterranean Estates, eds. Appel, Mason, and Watts, 274–290, that she
observed in Nigeria.
12. Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on
the Russian Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 3.
13. Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 2–3.
14. Julia Paley, “Introduction,” in Democracy: Anthropological Approaches, ed.
Julia Paley (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2008), 17.
15. Rogers, “The Materiality of the Corporation,” 287.
16. Nurbulat Masanov, Kochevaia tsivilizatsia kazakhov: osnovy zhizhnedey-
atelnosti nomadnogo obshestva (Almaty: Sotsinvest and Moscow: Gorizont,
1995), 74–76.
17. Kazakhstan was first an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the
Russian Soviet Federative Republic. In 1936, it became a Soviet Socialist
Republic within the Soviet Union.
18. The information on Embaneft in this paragraph comes from Ravil
Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana (Astana: Aldongar Public Foundation for
Cultural Development, 2012), 72; A. Kalibekova, Obrazovaniye tresta
Embaneft—80 let (Almaty: Asem-System, 2004); and E.A. Kozlovskiy,
Gornaya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskya entsiklopediya, 1984–1991,
electronic edition available at http://www.mining-enc.ru/e1/embaneft/).
In Soviet Kazakhstan, 97% of all industrial enterprises were controlled by
Moscow. See Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstanskiy put (Karaganda,
2006), 109.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 395

19. Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana, 79.

20. Collectivization and sedentarization cost more than a million lives, corre-
sponding to 29% of the total number of ethnic Kazakhs in this Soviet
republic. For a concise discussion of this period, see: Paula Michaels,
Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 164–170.
21. Peter Rudolf Meffert, “The Population and Rural Economy of the Kazakh
Soviet Socialist Republic” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1987), 165.
22. Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana, 79.
23. Wilhelm Tieke, The Caucasus and the Oil: The German–Soviet War in the
Caucasus 1942/43 (Winnipeg: J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, 1995).
24. Yelena Yessenova and Boris Cherdobaev, Atyrau munay ondeu zauitina 70
zhil (Almaty: Aldongar Public Foundation for Cultural Development,
2015), 17, 45. Embaneft’s annual production of oil between 1941 and
1945 was 800 thousand tons, increasing to two million tons by 1968.
T. Shaukenbayev, Ekonomika of neftyanoy promyshlennosti Kazakhstana
(Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1974).
25. Here I draw on James C. Scott’s discussion of public forums and their
significance in the Soviet strategy to create order in the Soviet countryside.
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Human Condition have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998),
195–196.
26. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001), xiii.
27. Munayshi (oil worker) is a singular form of munayshilar (oil workers).
28. Rogers, The Depth of Russia, 46–47.
29. Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process
Under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979),
209.
30. Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican
Revolution, 1900–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
31. A. Span, Nasibkaliy Marabayev: Priznanie, trans. B. Zhumakiyeva (Almaty:
TOO Almaty Print, 2008), 53.
32. Famine generated large numbers of orphans and destitute youth who went
to Soviet boarding schools set up for them across Kazakhstan. A biographic
account of the late Nasibkaliy Marabayev, who began his career at
Embaneft, illustrates this situation in the Guryev oblast quite well by pro-
viding biographical details of his peers and superiors who joined the
industry after boarding school. Span, Nasibkaliy Marabayev.
33. Alison Fleig Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5.
396 S. YESSENOVA

34. Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald A. Filtzer, Hunger and War: Food
Provisioning in the Soviet Union During World War II (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2015).
35. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom:
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2007).
36. Yessenova and Cherdobaev, Atyrau munay ondeu zauitina 70 zhil, 54.
37. Span, Nasibkaliy Marabayev, 36.
38. Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an
Omani Town (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
39. Ibid.
40. Adil Amantayev, “Chistaya postel dlya buravikov,” Ak Zhaik, July 29,
2004.
41. Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana, 154.
42. Yelimesova, “Pervootkryvateli Tengiza.”
43. Ibid.
44. James Meredith, Impact of Oil Exports from the Soviet Bloc. Supplement: A
Report of the National Petroleum Council’s Committee and Working
Subcommittee, volume 1 (Washington: National Petroleum Council,
1962), 114–115; John P. Hardt and Marshall I. Goldman, The Enigma of
Soviet Petroleum: Half-Full or Half-Empty? (London: Allen & Unwin,
1982), 149–150. Western oil specialists believed that the task of finding oil
there required more advanced seismic and drilling technologies than the
Soviet Union had at the time. Russian oil specialists who were interviewed
in the 1970s assessed their drilling capacities as very low, which determined
the 500 m limit for drilling. Arthur A. Meyerhoff, “Soviet Petroleum:
History, Technology, Geology, Reserves, Potential and Policy,” in Soviet
Natural Resources in the World Economy, eds. Robert G. Jensen, Theodore
Shabad, and Arthur W. Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1983), 355–356. At the same time, Meyerhoff, who interviewed these
specialists, acknowledged the quality of training of Soviet geologists, their
advancement in theoretical knowledge and their seismic-refraction meth-
ods to determine the structure and boundaries of a prospective oil deposit
(Meyerhoff, Soviet Petroleum, 316). Perhaps it is this training and skills that
helped Kazakh geologists discover Tengiz.
45. Yelimesova, “Pervootkryvateli Tengiza.”
46. In The Depth of Russia, Rogers provides ethnographic examples of similar
creative machinations and defiance of the central authorities in the Soviet
oil industry in the Volga-Urals oil basin.
47. Valeriy Neverov and Alexandr Igolkin, “Rossiyskaya neft’ v mirovoy poli-
tike” Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, 41 (1992): 4.
48. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 203–204.
 “OIL IS OUR WET NURSE”: OIL PRODUCTION AND MUNAYSHILAR … 397

49. Promyshlennost Kazakhstan za 40 let (Alma-Ata: Kazakhskoye gosu-

darstvennoye izdatelstvo, 1957).
50. Igilik and Dzhakiev, Embi munayina.
51. Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana, 158–159.
52. Dienes et al., Energy and Economic Reform in the Former Soviet Union, 47.
53. Cherdobaev, Neft’ Kazakhstana, 145.
54. Yelimesova, “Pervootkryvateli Tengiza.”
55. Todd Levy, Masket Taubaev, Maria Karazhigitova, and Linsi Crain, 15 Zhil
TenghizChevroil (Atyrau: Caspian Publishing House, 2008), 47.
56. The construction of this plan was done by Hungarian workers who were
accommodated in a camp that they built for themselves outside Kulsary. It
is now named the TCO Village.
57. Atyrau Oblast State Archive, fond 7, opis 38, 1–2. Available at: http://
www.munayshy.kz/index.php/2010-06-23-15-17-21/2010-06-23-15-
17-44/2010-08-01-12-33-06.
58. Proekt osvoyenia mestorozhdeniya Tengiz (Kazakhstan). http://www.
nefte.ru/projekt/s1.htm.
59. Formerly Alma-Ata; the name was changed to Almaty in 1993.
60. Statistics on unemployment in the Soviet Union by regions are absent.
William Moskoff, Unemployment in the Soviet Union (Lake Forest College:
The National Council for Soviet and East European Research, 1992), 9. I rely
on the information provided by old-time Kulsary residents, which is consis-
tent with general data. Unemployment in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union
was reported at two million people. Most unemployed concentrated in
Kazakhstan, in the Central Asian republics and in Transcaucasia. See World
Bank, A Study of the Soviet Economy, vol. 3 (Washington: World Bank, 1991),
144, and Moskoff, Unemployment in the Soviet Union, 8. The same sources
report that unemployment disproportionally struck young workers.
61. I. N. Stas, “Discussiya o stroitelstve gorodov neftyannikov zapadnoy sibiri
(po materialam konferentsii 1966 g. v g. Tumeni),” Vestnik S UDK 947.1
(5712.12). PbGU, series 2, no. 2 (2015): 13–23.
62. See the 1995 UNDP Report on Human Development in Kazakhstan:
United Nations, Kazakhstan. The Challenge of Transition. Human
Development Report 1995, 17. Available at www.undp.org/undp/rbec/
nhdr/Kazakhstan.
63. Azamat Sarsembaev, “Imagined Communities: Kazak Nationalism and
Kazakification in the 1990s,” Central Asian Survey 18, no. 3 (1999): 324;
see also Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, Les Russes du
Kazakhstan: Identités Nationals et Nouveaux États dans l’Espace
Postsoviétique (Paris: Maissonneuve & Laros, 2003).
64. Slavkina, “Istoria prinyatia reshenia.”
65. Maria Slavkina, “Ostrye grani ‘chernogo zolota,” Rodina, 416, no.
4 (2016), available at www.rg.ru.
66. Moskoff, Unemployment in the Soviet Union, 4.
398 S. YESSENOVA

67. Dienes et al., Energy and Economic Reform in the Former Soviet Union, 47;
Jonathan Aitken, Nazarbaev and the Making of Kazakhstan: From
Communism to Capitalism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009), 169.
68. For a discussion of that period, and the Russia–Kazakhstan disputes over
Tengiz, see Aitken, Nazarbaev and the Making of Kazakhstan.
69. Rogers, The Depth of Russia, 61.
70. Decree # 403, dated April 4, 1995 and issued by the Cabinet of Ministers
of the Republic of Kazakhstan bestowed them with the 1994 State Award
for achievements in science, technology and education for their discovery of
Tengiz (Levy et al. 15 Zhil TenghizChevroil, 30).
71. Saulesh Yessenova, “The Tengiz Oil Enclave: Labour, Business, and the
State,” POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 35, no. 1 (2012):
94–113.
72. Luong and Weinthal, Oil Is Not a Curse.
 Doubly Invisible: Women’s Labor
in the US Gulf of Mexico Offshore
Oil and Gas Industry

Diane E. Austin

INTRODUCTION
1
Betty and I got our bowls of gumbo and sat down at one of the school
cafeteria-style tables in the church hall to enjoy the Lenten luncheon. Betty
and I had spent a lovely day at her home in the historic section of
Thibodaux, Louisiana just the week before. A lifelong resident of
Thibodaux who raised three children and worked as a substitute teacher,
Betty had been eager to share her observations of her community and how it
had been affected by the offshore oil and gas industry in the US Gulf of
Mexico. She had invited me to the luncheon to introduce me to others who
might be interested in talking to me. As we sat down across from Carolyn,2
Betty introduced her as a woman who did interesting artwork—painting
ostrich eggs. Carolyn and I chatted a bit about her art and where she
obtained the ostrich eggs, and then Betty told her why I was in the area.
Carolyn told me she had been the first female production operator offshore
in the Gulf of Mexico and that it had taken more than 3 years to get anyone
to hire her. I asked how she came to work offshore, and she said she had
wanted to get out of the Mississippi cotton fields. After a bit more chatting,
she agreed to talk again another time. When I called her, though, she was
hesitant to talk because she did not want to dredge up hard feelings or cause

D.E. Austin (&)

School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 399

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6_15
400 D.E. AUSTIN

problems for anyone because “that was all water under the bridge.” I replied
that she could talk about whatever she wanted to, and she agreed to get
together. We met at a restaurant in Thibodaux and talked about our per-
sonal lives and trajectories. During that meeting and several more at her
home, Carolyn shared many stories and experiences. She did not want to be
recorded but allowed me to take notes during our conversations.
As I got to know more women, I learned that Carolyn was not alone in
her reluctance to “dredge up” the past. Nor was the indirect manner
through which I found and came to interview her unusual. While a few
women learned about our efforts to document the history and effects of the
offshore industry and reached out to me and my colleagues, in most cases
we relied on trusted friends and family members who encouraged women
to participate. The reasons for this are complex and have to do with the
special place that the offshore oil and gas industry holds in the social,
political, and economic lives of communities that have been central to it
since the middle of the twentieth century—men, too, hesitate to talk with
researchers until they or members of their social networks get to know us.
But, they also stem from the particular roles women play in those com-
munities and the industry, and the fact that, despite decades of campaigns
to bring more women into the industry, their numbers remain low and
their presence often uneasy.
Like Carolyn, many offshore workers have interesting and important
stories to tell. My experiences with them range from single encounters to
friendships that have spanned almost two decades. To date, over 700
people have participated in oral history interviews that have been recorded,
transcribed, and placed in university and community archives by me and
my colleagues. Of these, just over 100 interview participants have been
women, including wives and prominent community residents such as
Betty. The participants represent only a fraction of the people who have
worked in this industry or have been affected by it. At the start of the
twenty-first century, around 35,000 people were estimated to work off-
shore in the US Gulf of Mexico.
It is impossible to know how many people work offshore on any given
day, much less how many did so in a given month, year, or decade.
Exploration, development, and production take place over open water on
thousands of platforms and the many rigs, helicopters, and vessels oper-
ating in the Gulf. At the same time, much of the work associated with that
activity, such as the leasing, construction of rigs and vessels, and devel-
opment of drilling fluids and muds, takes place onshore and stretches
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 401

across the Gulf Coast region from Texas to Florida (heavily concentrated in
Texas and Louisiana). Some companies work exclusively for the oil and gas
industry and some work entirely offshore, but many work both onshore
and offshore or also manufacture, sell, or transport machinery and equip-
ment for other industries.
This is trie for the energy companies (operators) as well as the service
firms with whom they contract. Many of them hire contract or contingent
labor, and those contracting companies provide workers to a number of
industries. People may spend their time with a single firm (staying even as it
is absorbed by another one) or they may move from one firm to another as
they are laid off or fired, or seek higher wages or better benefits elsewhere.
Consequently, some people spend their entire careers offshore, others work
for service companies that have offshore and onshore crews and go back
and forth between them, and others work offshore for a while but then
return to onshore positions. Thus, even the decision to consider someone
an offshore worker or not is always a bit arbitrary. These factors also
contribute to the challenges for labor organizations and others concerned
about the conditions of labor in the Gulf of Mexico offshore industry.
The purpose of this essay is to provide a glimpse into the world of a
small group of women who lived in southern Louisiana and worked off-
shore in the Gulf of Mexico between 1970 and 2000. The essay draws
upon my experience in southern Louisiana and upon hundreds of ethno-
graphic and oral history interviews my colleagues, students, and I con-
ducted between 1999 and 2015 with men and women who have worked
offshore, onshore in the industries that support offshore, and in the com-
munities that are hubs for offshore activity.3 It focuses on the stories and
experiences of the 14 women in that sample whose work took them onto
rigs, platforms, helicopters, and service vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.
Human resource managers and offshore workers have reported a noticeable
increase in the number of women engineers working offshore over the
years, but many engineers live in large cities such as Houston, beyond the
study area; the sample includes only one woman engineer.4

LABOR IN THE US OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

The oil and gas industry moved off the coast of California and into the Gulf
of Mexico in the 1930s. Exploration in the Gulf was halted during the
Second World War by German U-boat presence, and the offshore industry
did not advance until the war ended. In southern Louisiana, oilfield
402 D.E. AUSTIN

employers, and especially the major oil companies,5 provided among the
best paying and most stable work available, and employees earned higher
pay working offshore than in comparable jobs onshore. Yet, few women
made it into the oil and gas industry, and it was not until the 1970s that
working offshore became an option for women.6
Labor demands spurred changes in the offshore workforce. By 1970, US
oil and gas fields had matured and were in decline, and the government
eliminated import quotas. This brought the United States squarely into the
global energy market to face the extreme geopolitical and market volatility
of the 1970s and 1980s.7 The Middle East oil embargo against Israel’s
allies in 1973, the drop in production by the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the quadrupling of oil prices through
1974 had immediate effects in the United States as drilling activity
expanded rapidly, particularly in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico
and on Alaska’s North Slope.8
The increased labor demand coincided with a period of significant
changes in US federal policy. President John F. Kennedy established the
Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. The US
Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to eliminate wage disparity
based on sex. The following year, the Civil Rights Act addressed discrim-
ination in employment, voting, public accommodations, and education.
The confluence of social expectations, legal requirements, and a
booming industry facing worker shortages led companies to actively recruit
and hire women to work offshore. This was especially true for the major oil
companies as they were quite visible to regulators. Education and training
programs, such as the petroleum technology programs at the University of
Southwestern Louisiana (USL) in Lafayette9 and Nicholls State University
in Thibodaux, Louisiana, began more actively recruiting women students.
Nevertheless, male employers and workers continued to resist the hiring of
women and the small numbers of women who worked offshore were lar-
gely confined to jobs in housekeeping and the galley.
In the 1980s, the global downturn in oil and gas prices brought
accelerated industrial growth to a rapid halt and resulted in layoffs,
bankruptcies, and major industry reorganization. Negative effects of the
downturn reverberated throughout the Gulf of Mexico region; into the
twenty-first century the period is identified as “the bust.” Women with low
seniority feared they would be laid off, though some companies kept their
less expensive junior personnel. Kim was born and raised in Lafayette and
worked in the industry from 1983 until 2005. She talked about the effects
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 403

of the downturn. “That was when they first started doing a round of huge
layoffs in the industry, as well as early retirement programs for the more
senior people. I remember going to work and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, you
know, I got in just in time.’ And then I started thinking, ‘Okay, last one in,
first one out.’ But, they kept the younger hires and it seemed like they were
going after the older people.”
The major oil companies did no significant new hiring until at least the
1990s. Despite the success of some women executives to “break the gas
ceiling,” as one journalist has dubbed it,10 the proportion of women
working offshore—and especially outside of clerical and housekeeping
positions—remained very low; well into the twenty-first century men and
women who participated in interviews remembered only a handful of
women who worked in their companies through the 1990s, frequently
recalling the “first” woman with whom they had worked. This pattern
reflects a national trend where, despite early gains, especially in professions
and managerial occupations, the closing of the gender gap slowed by the
late 1990s.11

THE OFFSHORE LIFESTYLE

The offshore oil and gas industry shares many characteristics of onshore
exploration and development. Work availability is subject to industry
cycles, wages vary based on skill and demand, and some jobs are among the
most dangerous in the United States. According to the US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, for example, the death rate for drilling workers between
2003 and 2007 was eight times the national average for all workers, with
roughnecks facing the greatest risks.12 The oil and gas industry has seen a
major shift in employment from operators to contractors, and from
long-term to contingent labor. Contract companies may work for few or
many operators, in one or many industries, and on few or many rigs or
platforms at a time. They and their employees must be versatile and adapt
to both the physical and social environments in which they work. This has
resulted in more precarious circumstances for many contract employees
who provide the “just-in-time” labor that companies need when they get a
new contract to construct or repair a vessel, drill a well, or fix a broken
pipeline. Key factors that influence the effects of the offshore industry on
individuals and households, as cited by workers and their family members,
include the stability and vulnerability of employment, wages, and oppor-
tunities for advancement, patterns of work scheduling, and safety.13
404 D.E. AUSTIN

Offshore, work is done on relatively small, isolated metal structures over

open water, often many miles from shore, or on the vessels and helicopters
that transport workers and equipment. The structures range from decades
old rusting steel platforms operated by skeleton crews to modern
drilling/production units operated by hundreds of company and contract
employees. Transportation to and from work is one of the main hazards
workers face. Because of the time, expense, and danger involved in
transport, and the increased distances as the industry moved farther off-
shore, over the years companies reduced the number of trips by shifting
from the standard 7 days at work and 7 days off (7-and-7) offshore
schedule, with each day divided into two 12 h shifts, to employing workers
on hitches of 14-and-14, or longer.
Offshore work poses particular challenges. People have to work together
and live in close quarters, often sharing bunks with the individuals who
hold their jobs on alternate hitches or shifts. In addition, various people
come and go on shorter rotations: to conduct inspections, make repairs,
and install specialized equipment. As a result, the routines of daily life can
be and are frequently disrupted. And, in contrast to places like the North
Sea, where government, industry, and labor all have played a role in
negotiating working conditions and compensation for offshore work, labor
unions have never gained a foothold.

THE WOMEN
The women whose stories anchor this essay represent a variety of back-
grounds, jobs, and experiences in the offshore oilfields of the US Gulf of
Mexico. Ten of the women entered the industry by the start of the 1980s
downturn and the remaining four entered between 1982 and 1996. All 14
women are white. Given that the US states along the Gulf of Mexico are
within the US south, the participation of women in the offshore oil and gas
industry there has been significantly influenced by southern attitudes,
policies, and practices.14 While there would be much to learn from the
stories of African-American women,15 as will be discussed in greater detail
below, white women first gained entry into offshore positions closely
behind African-American males; at the time, African-American females
were still struggling to get hired in the oil and gas industry at all. As noted
on the Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP website, even into the
1990s, the oil and gas industry was “generally considered to be seriously
behind in minority employment.”16 Between 1970 and 2000, other
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 405

non-white groups such as Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and

Asian Americans comprised very small proportions of the overall regional
population, and even men from these populations were rare in most off-
shore jobs.
The women interviewees worked for oil companies—primarily in pro-
duction—or for service companies. Two women worked on drilling rigs,
one for a mud company and the other employed by a catering company,
but notably absent are drillers and many workers, from roughnecks to
crane operators, who keep drilling rigs running. Drilling is the most
labor-intensive, volatile, and dangerous phase in oil and gas operations, and
although technology has made the tasks less physically demanding and
safer, few women have found jobs on drilling rigs, especially outside the
galley.
Amy, who worked offshore as an operations assistant on a production
platform for 8 years starting in 1989, summed up the sentiments of many:
“Drilling is very dangerous, so it’s sort of like the cowboys of the Gulf.
They’re the rough and rugged. I’ve never worked in drilling, but my
husband has… It’s a real man that goes out to drilling. Not that production
men aren’t real men, but it’s more of an operator, overseer to make sure
everything’s going smoothly.… I would imagine drilling [is] a tougher
breed.” In 2003, she observed, “It has been all men up until probably the
late ‘90s. Now they’re startin’ to have some lady drilling engineers and drill
reps that go out. But [it has been] really a guy’s kind of place [where they]
tease you, harass you. Whereas in production you had such a mix of people;
you may have foreigners, you may have young people, old people…”

WOMEN’S ENTRY INTO OFFSHORE WORK

The women whose stories are featured in this essay, whose entry offshore
spanned a period of more than 25 years, all reported being among the few
women in their position or at their place of work. Julia, born and raised in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, first went offshore in 1976 with a degree in
petroleum engineering. She observed, “People were supposed to have
women. And there weren’t enough women. So pretty much every com-
pany I applied to had to offer me a job. … but it was hard because I didn’t
know who really wanted me. Legally, because they didn’t have enough
women working for them, they had to say they had tried.” In 2010, Bill,
whose wife, Kim, joined him in his business selling offshore leases in 1985,
echoed the sentiments of many, “It’s a male dominated field. It’s purely a
406 D.E. AUSTIN

tip of the hat to whatever employment discrimination laws that you may
have. Same thing with minorities. I mean it was purely token… It was a
good ol’ boy, you know…. Women could certainly handle it—Kim’s a
shining example of that—but it was LONG and slow, I think, coming to
where women were really accepted in the industry.”
Of the 10 women interviewees who entered the oilfield by 1981, all but
one noted that the company for which they worked had to hire women.
But that does not explain why the women made the choices they did.
Given the expansion of opportunities for women at that time, why did they
seek work offshore? Women reported being drawn to work offshore for the
same reasons men did—money and time off. In addition, women were
attracted by the excitement in the oilfield that enticed many men, especially
because in the small towns of southern Louisiana, women’s employment
options were limited.17
Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, and brothers facilitated entry, either
directly through their contacts, or indirectly as role models. Even when the
men did not intend for their female relatives to get into the industry, their
knowledge of the industry and contacts proved significant. College edu-
cation was becoming more important, but even people with degrees started
out in entry-level positions and worked their way up. Growing up in the
early years of the women’s liberation movement, several of the women
benefitted from their fathers’ decisions to treat their daughters the same as
their sons, or from employers’ or coworkers’ positive attitudes toward
women. Many women took advantage of the training offered by companies
and schools. The following excerpts illustrate the complex and varied ways
that family, societal expectations based on gender, company needs, and
individual aspirations coalesced in women’s decisions to work offshore.
Lillian was home from college in Texas in 1973 trying to find a job and
make enough money to go back to school. Her father, who had worked at
a major fabrication company since moving his family to southern Louisiana
from the Midwestern US in 1960, told her of a catering company that was
hiring women. To show him she was serious about getting a job, she
applied. She went to the personnel office every day for a month until her
father convinced a superintendent to give her a chance for at least one
hitch. She was sent out on her first job in the galley with several other
women and was the only one to stay with the company. Having studied
chemistry in college, she got the mud engineer to show her how to run the
mud tests and was hooked. “I thought, ‘Wow, this would sure beat making
two dollars an hour as a galleyhand’.” She studied mud manuals and would
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 407

run the mud tests and compare her results to the mud engineer’s. “But I
did something else probably every women’s libber in America would hate
me for. When it was cold and miserable, and I was off-duty, I made
brownies and hot chocolate and took it up on the drill floor ‘cause I knew
how miserable they were. In exchange for that, every time they came in the
galley when I was on-duty, they told me how deep we were, the mud
pressure, the casing pressure.” She later was invited into the 7-and-7
program at Nicholls State University, where students attended classes
during their 7 days onshore, and earned her Associate’s degree in
Petroleum Technology, while working on a production platform.
Julia changed her major from education to engineering in 1976: “[I was]
bored. I’m a sophomore in college, and it hit me that this is not what I came
to college for, this is not challenging, and I don’t want to do this… [I saw an
opportunity] to make more money and have more time off …I was good in
math and science. I felt like engineering would be challenging. My older
brother was a petroleum engineer, and I looked up to him. And I can tell
you when I walked on that rig floor, I was fascinated. And I still am.” She
noted, “There was also a lot of new technology because people had money.
Like in a war, you develop weapons, when you have an economy that’s
gonna drill wells, [you have] lots of new techniques, new drilling fluids, new
production facilities, all kind of new tools and stuff came out because of that.
So that was all exciting.” She and her husband quit their jobs and started a
consulting business in the 1980s when oil prices dropped.
In 1977, companies were still struggling to hire women when Jill, a
native of Lafayette, asked an engineer with her employer’s drilling
department to help her get work offshore. He tried to dissuade her, but she
argued that she wanted to work 7-and-7 and make better money, so he
called a contract company to get her an interview. Her father and
brother-in-law worked for drilling companies, but she noted, “[N]ow you
have to remember I was a secretary, so I went in high heels and a little
business suit and I weighed like 95 lb. I’m five feet three. The guy looked
at me and thought, ‘No way!’ [Chuckling] I said, ‘No really, I wanna work
offshore. I know I can do this.’ He said, ‘I tell you what, we need to hire
women, and so I’m gonna hire you, but I don’t give you six weeks to last.’”
Jill worked for almost 2 years as a mudlogger. “[I am] very proud to say I
was one of their best mudloggers and I proved that guy wrong. And I
loved the job, REALLY loved the job. I thought it was SO interesting.
I realized that it was about the only job I could have done offshore, ‘cause
408 D.E. AUSTIN

it IS a lot of physical, very dirty work. My work got dirty sometimes, but it
wasn’t terribly physically demanding.”
In addition, the 1980s downturn put many people out of work; some
women sought employment when their husbands lost their jobs or had
their hours or pay cut.
Amy was born in Port Sulphur, Louisiana, in 1959. Her father worked
first as a diesel mechanic for Gulf Oil and then on offshore vessels.
Commenting on her experience as a young wife: “We reached a point in
our young married lives where my husband just couldn’t make good
money doing insurance jobs or sales jobs, so he went to work on a drilling
rig and worked 7-and-7. The money was nice for working half a year. At
some point he needed surgery and we knew we would need extra money,
and an income comin’ in, while he recuperated, so I sought out oilfield
work, too, through a contract company… So [in 1989] I went to work as
what’s called an ‘operations assistant’ or a secretary offshore on a pro-
duction platform.”
Sharon was raised near Dallas, Texas, and had wanted to fly since
childhood. “Actually, I applied for a job as a stewardess when TWA was up
in Chicago about 25 years ago. Didn’t get accepted and the guy says,
‘Well, I can give you a million and one reasons why you’re not going to
qualify as a stewardess. Just off the record,’ he says, ‘Your appearance just
doesn’t quite fit up to our image of stewardess.’ I said, ‘That’s all right,
‘cause I really want to fly them, not just stand around in ‘em’. [Laughter]”
She flew helicopters for the timber and tourist industries before meeting
some offshore pilots from Mississippi and heading to the Gulf Coast region
in 1996.

WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OFFSHORE

Navigating Physical and Social Spaces

Each woman’s encounter with the offshore environment was as unique as
the process she went through to get there, but commonalities in the physical
and social conditions across structures and vessels led to many shared
experiences. Much of the work required manipulating heavy equipment,
everyone had to get on and off rigs and platforms, and the living quarters on
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 409

the platforms and vessels were small and shared. Especially in the early years,
women had to convince their potential employers that they could not only
do the work but also live offshore and among mostly men.
Claire grew up in Carencro, Louisiana; her father worked for an oilfield
fabrication company. She completed her degree in secondary education in
1974. After teaching a few years, she became frustrated with the school
system and convinced an oil company to hire her. Describing her first trip
out to the production platform, she recalled, “I remember going [to the
dock], and you’re kind of scared because you don’t know what anything’s
going to be about. The weather was too windy so we couldn’t do the
helicopter, so we had to do the crew boat. On the crew boat I also remember
that I could not allow myself to be seasick because I felt like if I was to show
weakness as a female, it just kinda was gonna be used against me.”
Amy’s discussion of trying to physically keep up on the production
platform captures the tensions the women experienced. “I was a whole
105 pounds at the time and didn’t have the strength of a man. I had always
been taught in my training that if somethin’s too heavy, you don’t lift it,
you ask for help. And I was in this line and when they started passing
five-gallon water bottles, I just looked at the person handing it to me like,
‘I can’t really do this.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘You’re one of us.’…
There was such a feeling of inadequacy at that point that I couldn’t tote my
weight… It’s very much a job that a woman can do, I’m not trying to give
that impression, but physically I was a weakling. … So for that reason, for
those reasons, I chose to move into something that was a little more
ladylike, but still had the opportunity to keep the schedule, keep the good
pay and benefits.”
By the 1990s, as the industry moved farther offshore, vessels, rigs,
platforms, and other equipment had increased in size. While initially this
created greater problems for women (and small males), as the equipment
became too large for even men to handle safely, automation and mecha-
nization reduced the differences between what men and women could do.
Space is at a premium on rigs and platforms, and most of it is devoted to
the machinery and equipment needed to locate and extract oil and gas
from deep within the Earth. When women first went offshore, most
workers shared living quarters; roustabouts slept many to a room and
shared bathrooms, and only supervisors had rooms to themselves. Some
women fought to bunk with men of their own status to avoid conflicts with
410 D.E. AUSTIN

their coworkers. Citing concerns from wives as well as male workers, most
companies separated the women from the men and would not allow them
into men’s quarters, which meant that the women frequently displaced
senior personnel. Where possible, companies sent two women offshore at a
time and placed them on opposite shifts so they could share a room.
In 1976, Julia’s employer took several measures to accommodate her
when she was undergoing her engineering training offshore. The company
constructed a portable building with a bed, sink, and closet which they
moved from platform to platform for her to use. On the rig, the drilling
foreman had to give up his room because it had a bathroom, “…but all of
‘em were real nice about it.” The company also assigned a man to make
sure she was safe offshore. “But I didn’t know that. He told me he was
there to watch the facilities. If I had known he was protecting me, I
would’ve felt awful…. I felt like I was doing it all on my own. [Laughs]”
While some companies made special efforts to house their new women
employees, even into the late 1990s lack of adequate living facilities on
some rigs and platforms meant lost opportunities for women working for
service companies.
The women responded to the challenges by being flexible, knowing
their limits, and finding ways to work around those limits. Lynda had
grown up in the Bahamas and was in graduate school in Oceaneering when
she started working as a cook and deckhand on offshore service vessels.
Though the males on her vessel were initially hesitant about her being
on board, she quickly established herself: “I remember the first time I was
on board and we pulled into a dock and I handled the stern line without
being told. [Chuckles] And the guys kind of went, ‘Oh, okay.’ It wasn’t
like they had to break me into the job.” Onshore, too, she simply
demonstrated she could do the work. “I remember we pulled into Dulac,
[Louisiana] and there was a hardware store across the street, and the
engineer gave me a list of pieces to buy to fix something. I had to go back
there in the storeroom where they had all the pieces for the shrimp boats,
find them, identify them, bring them up to the front. [Chuckles]… I think
the guy was laughing when I was out there picking all the pieces of pipe,
but also, I think the culture of south Louisiana where the women did work
on the shrimp boats did help out. It was not unusual to have a woman go
in and know what she wanted for the engine room.”
Concerns with safety have been a major factor keeping both men and
women out of the oil and gas industry. Offshore workers are routinely
exposed to loud noise, heavy equipment, and large moving objects, as well
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 411

as the dangers associated with helicopter and boat travel. They also expe-
rience fires, hurricanes, and blowouts. Several of the women reported
having seen coworkers seriously injured or killed, and five of the women
interviewees became involved in safety. Tyrelle worked offshore for a major
oil company for 21 years, advancing from maintenance specialist to
instrument technician. She was chosen as the only female instructor at her
company’s fire school at Grand Isle where she trained people how to
protect themselves and help minimize danger for other employees. Shortly
before she was injured so badly she had to quit work as a gauger on a
production platform, Lillian and a male coworker began to develop a safety
training program—a task she returned to after the Deepwater Horizon
explosion in 2010.
Despite the dangers and sometimes unpleasant working conditions,
many of the women emphasized the awe they experienced offshore.
Though several of the women noted that men, too, appreciated the beauty,
the women said they were not afraid to bring it up. Carolyn wrote poems
and took photographs, sharing them with others who were interested.
While flying crews to and from the rigs and when on the platforms, Sharon
pointed out the cloud formations, colors on the horizon, and wildlife:
“The guys just sit quiet, then over time they get used to me speaking of
this…. It’s awesome. It’s just incredible. And [the guys]’ll come to get me
and I’m pointing, ‘Look at the dolphins, look at the dolphins.’ And they’ll
stop and they catch themselves and then they’ll start looking. A few days
later, they come back and go, ‘I have gotten to where I just lean over the
guard rail and look for the dolphins ever since you’ve been out here.’”
Claire provided an ear to men who wanted to share: “The roustabout kind
of had a little feminine side to him and he wrote poetry. Well, he could
never reveal his poetry to the other guys because there’s this male testos-
terone thing there.”

Managing Reactions and Interactions

Because women have always made up such a small portion of the offshore
workforce, most of their interactions have been with men. The Gulf of
Mexico has long been recognized for its “cowboy culture,”18 and from
their initial hiring interviews onward, the pioneers confronted stereotypical
expectations about both male and female behavior, and sometimes hos-
tility, often from senior personnel.19 During the interview she referred to as
her final “interrogation,” Carolyn was asked if it would bother her if some
412 D.E. AUSTIN

of the men did not use the correct fork when eating. Claire’s interviewer
reminded her that she would not be able to run out to the store if she
forgot her tampons. The challenges continued on the job. Both women
described seeing men lined up their first day at work, as Claire noted, “like
they’re waiting, either to check me out or to watch me fail or fall or scream
or cry.”
Many women learned they were either with or just a step behind
African-American males. Claire observed, “The only ones that really made
me feel good were the other two roustabouts because they were new to the
thing too and they were black, so I felt an affinity with ‘em. They were the
underdogs too, you know, in our society.” Like other women who per-
sisted and were promoted, Carolyn was challenged each time she moved to
a new position. “One of the things when I became an operator, I had to
bid for the job. [The supervisor] told me it was a sad day because a woman
was becoming an operator. It was just a notch under the foreman. I said,
‘Bro, females and blacks are here to stay.’ It was changeover day. He gave
my seat [in the helicopter] to a contractor. I had to wait till the next
chopper, so I was late.”
Plenty of women—just like many men—did not last more than one
hitch offshore. Women who did continue and showed they could “carry
their weight” also carefully navigated their relationships. In the same way
that women established reputations based on their ability to handle off-
shore work and the physical aspects of their environment, they also became
known for their ability to handle men. Several women reported problems
with men who made unwanted sexual advances—and with females who
had accepted such behavior. In 1973, when cleaning bedrooms on her first
rig while it was still in the shipyard, Lillian was cornered by the toolpusher,
slapped him, and quit on the spot. He saw her leaving and told her, “‘You
can’t do that, it’s three kilometers across this shipyard. You’ll get raped and
killed.’ I said, ‘What’s the difference getting raped and killed out there or
on this rig?’ And I just proceeded to start walking across the shipyard.”
Four years later, after Jill had been working offshore for more than a year
had nothing but positive experiences, she was cornered by a company
man in his office. She told one of her coworkers, who reported the incident,
and the company sent out investigators. “I believe the man got fired. They
came out there and they did all kinds of interviews with people. It turned
out he had been harassing the other women in the galley. But it was the
only, only time in all my offshore experience that happened, and it was
[Slight pause] bizarre, I can’t say I was scared, I was like, so shocked.”
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 413

Tyrelle noted most of the guys were welcoming but a few were resistant
to women offshore. However, even in the late 1970s, her company had no
policies for dealing with a hostile work environment. Though faced with
supervisors who behaved inappropriately, she was “too ashamed to say
anything” and did not want to “stir up anything because that would only
make it harder.” One time she tried to report an incident and the situation
became much worse. When her life was threatened she recruited a cow-
orker to serve as her bodyguard until the man who threatened her was
removed from the platform.
Several women noted that their biggest problems came from contract
workers who were not regularly connected with the rig or boat to which
they were assigned. Not only did Lynda’s coworkers come to her defense,
but, like Lillian, she took action that earned her a reputation. “[T]hey were
sitting down in the galley, grinding their cigarette butts out on the clean
galley floor, making obscene comments about me. So I went into the tool
box, pulled out some onions and some liver, started fixing lunch. [Pause]
They spent the rest of the ride hanging over the side. [Chuckles]
Everybody thought that it was hilarious…. I remember one came back, and
he looked at the other guy that was with him, a new guy, and he says,
‘Don’t mess with the cook, she’s mean.’”
Several women found the men’s behavior offshore was better than what
they had experienced doing clerical work onshore, noting, for example, that
offshore men would refrain from cursing—and admonish others who did
not. Having worked as a secretary, Jill had prepared herself for the worst, “I
was terrified in a way to go out there because we all had heard these stories
about these roughnecks and how crude they could be and all. I was very
scared about maybe the harassment I might get, so I bought clothes that
were very big on me, and I had determined that I would conduct myself
very carefully, that I would be kind to everyone, but I would really watch
my behavior and not curse and not tell any off color jokes or things like
that, things that they did in the office all the time. Amazingly, I go offshore
and… I always felt I was treated more like a lady than I ever had been in my
life… I knew I had kinda arrived, if you will, or they weren’t lookin’ at me
as some kind of oddity anymore, when they started playing some of the
jokes on me that they played on the other men.”
Prior to coming to the Gulf, Sharon had flown helicopters in many
all-male environments and found the pilots she worked with in the oilfield
to be very supportive. She also was aware of how important it was to
engender trust in her passengers. “These men come and go into a very
414 D.E. AUSTIN

unfriendly environment,” she noted. The challenge was to make them feel
like they were in capable hands while distracting them from the ride. “So I
get to babbling a lot,” she commented, “talking, enjoying, and the next
thing they know, they are on their platform and they haven’t even realized
it. I want them to be comfortable…and not even realize that ‘She has got a
lot to deal with up here and she is handling it.’”

OFFSHORE WORK IN THE CONTEXT OF WOMEN’S LIVES

When the oil and gas industry moved into southern Louisiana in the 1930s,
it took advantage of a labor force characterized by poverty, low levels of
literacy, and limited alternatives. Workers also offered diverse skills,
entrepreneurism and willingness to take personal and financial risks, and an
ethic of hard work and loyalty, and they came from large families with
strong social networks.20 By the 1970s, the industry was firmly a part of the
region’s culture.21 It coexisted alongside the fishing sector, and many men
moved between the two, buffering the economic cycles.22 The women
differed from men in this regard; they took over family responsibilities
when they were not working.

Balancing Work and Family

While employed offshore, women interviewees were responsible for their
own children, their nieces and nephews, and their aging parents. Many
men, too, had responsibilities at work and home, but the women inter-
viewees were more likely to have had to arrange the care of family members
in their absence. They described a range of strategies for meeting their
family needs, for example, coordinating childcare among their husbands,
parents, and babysitters. Though the concentrated work schedules com-
mon to offshore work created childcare challenges, and especially for
couples who both worked offshore, some families found that the long
periods at home improved the quality of their interactions. For families
with long experience in the industry, and in communities that are industry
hubs, flexible childcare arrangements were not unusual.
Coworkers played a major role in women’s experiences, regardless of
company policies. Tyrelle had worked offshore for 10 years when her son
was born in 1988; she worked up until a month before his birth. She was
working on a platform with one other person, and when he complained to
the supervisor that he was worried he would have to deliver the baby,
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 415

Tyrelle was moved to the main platform. She did not receive maternity
leave but was able to use her sick days and returned to work 9 weeks after
her son was born; at that time, male employees got one full paid day off if
their wife had a baby and three paid days off if she had a C-section. For the
first couple hitches when Tyrelle returned offshore, she was breastfeeding,
so she would pump and store milk offshore to take home. Though it was
hard for her to be away from her son a week at a time, she was able to
spend entire days with him during her weeks home. She found it partic-
ularly challenging to find a sitter when her son started school and relied on
her parents and family members to help care for him.
Several women interviewees opted to homeschool their children and
were able to offer their children opportunities to travel and apply their
learning in the family business which, though challenging at times, offered
great rewards. Others quit working offshore when they began to have
children of their own or when their aging parents needed extra support.
However, many women, like their male counterparts, took jobs offshore to
support themselves and their families and, if they left the industry, generally
could not find work that paid as well. Two women specifically noted that
one of the benefits of working offshore was that it relieved them of some of
the domestic responsibilities they were expected to perform and allowed
them to escape the confines of small-town expectations.
The transition between onshore and offshore could be rough. Both men
and women developed rituals that helped them ease that transition.
Donna23 worked offshore from 1996 to 1999 and described coming in
from a diving job, “Usually I’d always take a couple of days off after I came
in. One day to rest, one day to do laundry and pack my bags again. I’d get
back in my house or jump in my truck and go to Lafayette and shop, buy
myself something. Just the fact that you know you can do it.”
For both women and men, maintaining family ties has required more
than delaying work or leaving the oilfield after a few years. Sarah’s story is a
familiar one: “I really took a lot of heat because I did not want to move
into a management position because then they controlled where you live,
and when you reported to work.” She recalled a boss telling her “The
closer you stay to the well, the more you control your career.”

Leaving
The 14 women in the sample worked offshore from 1.5 to 41 years; 10 of
them had worked offshore more than 5 years at the time they were
416 D.E. AUSTIN

interviewed. Sarah noted that few women who worked in production

remain in the field for long or finish their careers offshore. Instead, they
move into administrative or supervisory positions or transfer to safety or
office jobs. She also observed that women had a harder time than men
getting another job if they lost one.
As the women aged, both the physical challenges of the work and the
many competing demands they faced in their lives increased. Injuries,
threat of injuries, and other health concerns were the leading causes the
women cited for leaving offshore work. Some women, like many of their
male colleagues, moved to onshore positions where they took a pay cut but
could continue working, at least for a while. Amy moved to an onshore
position after 8 years offshore, citing various health concerns, such as noise
exposure. “I knew that if I ever wanted to have children I wanted to be
able to hear them cry and not have my hearing so impaired. Even with
hearing protection there is some hearing loss that’s incurred typically. And
so I knew that if I wanted to have my goals as a woman and as a mother,
that I could make this oilfield work much better if I went in the office than
out in the sun and the elements and things.”
Donna, too, stopped going offshore after 8 years: “My knees. They just
went bad on me. I couldn’t handle climbing up the stairs, squatting,
bending… At the beginning, the women had to prove themselves 110%.
When I first started, it was nothing but a men’s field, and that was the way
it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be hard. They would say if it was
easy they’d have women doing it. Then it dawned on me, why am I doing
this [trying to prove myself]? Why am I hurting myself?”
Despite the challenges of the work, leaving was not without some
regrets. Carolyn had worked offshore for 11 years and summed it up, “I
left when it was time to leave. It was time for a younger woman to come
out. I hated to leave. I hated not going back to the water. I miss the water,
the rough water, hanging on by the seat of our pants. It was something to
be out there in rough water. [When I decided to leave, I thought,] ‘I’ll
miss this cold and lonely place.’”
Like many of their male counterparts, some women who were attracted
to challenges in the industry were turned off by the automation. Claire
described the change on production platforms, “The old technicians were
hands-on people because the old equipment had to be looked at individ-
ually and you had to go to each tree and do different things, whereas the
[new platforms had the latest equipment] and the new technicians were
behind computers and screens and just sat there. That didn’t seem too
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 417

appealing to me.” After her mentor’s son was killed in an accident offshore
and she had two close calls herself, Claire decided it was time to leave the
industry.

Lessons for Life

Working offshore provided more than a job, or even a career, for many
women. Women who had the courage to enter and succeed in a
male-dominated environment found strength to take on other challenges.
Given the predominance of the offshore oil and gas industry in southern
Louisiana, women’s experiences offshore helped them understand their
spouses, their students, and their clients in ways that would not have been
possible had they not been there themselves. Working and living with
others in close quarters provided women opportunities to develop skills
they might not have had elsewhere. Most of the women commented on
the importance of working together. Claire contrasted the teamwork of the
offshore platform to a typical school environment, “I think this was the first
time where I had a job where it was like I was part of a team. And after this
whole experience of my life, I feel like whenever you approach projects and
you’re a team, it feels so much better than if you’re just alone doing the
thing. It feels so good, you’re working as a team, there’s human, there’s
camaraderie, and stuff like that, and so I felt like that was a really good
experience for me…. I was so happy when they needed me…. I mean that
felt real good. To belong. A sense of belonging!”

THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: WHAT HAS CHANGED

AND WHAT STAYS THE SAME

This essay has focused on the experiences of women working offshore in

the Gulf of Mexico in the latter half of the twentieth century. Despite the
successes of some women, workplace changes, and efforts to recruit
women, particularly in professional positions such as engineering, women
still made up only a small fraction of the offshore workforce in 2016.
Sharon L. Harlan and Brigid O’ Farrell distinguished between the pioneer
era in women’s employment when individuals and minorities struggled
individually for access to predominantly male jobs, and the post-pioneer era
after equal employment opportunities were institutionalized; they found
that organizational barriers impeded women’s access to and advancement
in traditionally male jobs.24 While the women whose stories are told here
418 D.E. AUSTIN

demonstrate it is possible to overcome barriers, significant change will

require more than the efforts of individual women pioneers or even
innovative companies.
As late as 2014, after having worked offshore for 17 years between 1980
and 2014, Sarah noted that, in her experience, a man and woman with the
same years of experience would walk onto a new rig, and the people already
there would assume that the man knew what he was doing and how to do
it well while the woman would have to prove herself to every new super-
visor and in every new location.25 The continued imbalance in the number
of males and females working offshore has had subtler effects as well. One
of Sarah’s greatest challenges was not having access to the close relation-
ships that many men shared. While concerns about mixing work and
pleasure are present in any job, in the offshore environment, where
everyone was a coworker, women spent long periods of time alone. Most
importantly, in the isolated offshore environment, men and women must
rely on one another to solve problems. When social bonds are contingent,
or weak, safety is compromised.
As she advanced in her career, Sarah relied on her male coworkers to
defend her work ethic and ability to others who might question her
presence on the rig, but their efforts generally did not extend beyond that
structure. People working for contract companies are exposed to many
environments and groups of people, so it is not surprising that women can
experience a range of work environments, from the “cowboy culture”
which characterized the industry in the boom years to the more
female-friendly “safety culture” of the twenty-first century. And, as illus-
trated by the sample of women highlighted in this essay, despite some
commonalities, the women come to the industry from a variety of back-
grounds and with different expectations. Thus, even on platforms recog-
nized in the 1990s for their commitment to disrupting masculine
environments, encouraging men and women to acknowledge their physical
limitations and theirs’ and others’ feelings, admit their mistakes, and focus
on the goal of safety and well-being for all workers, women made up only
about 10% of the workforce more than a decade later and were found
mostly in housekeeping and catering.26
The restructuring of the offshore oil and gas industry in the 1990s and
into the twenty-first century led to significant changes in many aspects of
the industry as it operates in the Gulf of Mexico, including an expansion of
the use of contract companies and contingent labor; continued globaliza-
tion of the industry, with both operators and service companies working
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 419

across national and regional boundaries; and increased attention to safety

and the promotion of worker-friendly policies.27 The Deepwater Horizon
disaster, which began in April 2010 with the blowout of the Macondo Well
80.5 km southeast of the Mississippi Delta, led to additional changes.
These changes, followed by a drop in oil prices, sent individuals and
companies scurrying to respond.
Lessons of the past are still relevant. Andrew Clark28 concluded that
people value many aspects of work, both the external rewards such as pay
and promotion as well as the intrinsic ones such as relationships, and that
men and women may differ in what they value most. Gloria Miller noted that
the strategies women adopt in masculine environments may result in
short-term individual gains but fail to change the masculine values of the
company or industry overall.29 In a global survey, 25% of women who
worked offshore reported not feeling welcome in the industry.30 At the 2013
Offshore Technology Conference, US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel
observed that the population of the country is far more diverse than that of
the industry and remarked that the industry had a lot more work to do.31

CONCLUSION
This essay has explored the question of women in the offshore oil and gas
industry in the Gulf of Mexico. It has focused on the period from the early
1970s, when companies began to hire women to work offshore, through
the 1990s, and has examined women’s motivations to take jobs offshore,
their experiences offshore, and the circumstances that affected the duration
of their work. Several factors, including the labor shortages in the industry
as activity rapidly increased, the incorporation of gender workplace equality
into the broader civil rights discourse of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the
desire on the part of women for greater employment options, led to sig-
nificant pressure on companies to hire women. Yet, while oil companies
actively recruited women, and women actively sought nontraditional
employment, offshore work remained largely out of reach for women.
Why look at women? Even as technology has reduced the physical
demands of offshore work, and as other male-dominated industries have
seen significant increases in the number of female employees, the offshore
oil and gas industry has struggled to attract and keep women. It faces
another transition, one being dubbed “The Great Crew Change,” as many
420 D.E. AUSTIN

people retire and companies search for the next generation of workers. The
women’s stories provide a look at how the offshore oil and gas industry has
confronted difference and change. They illustrate the range of responses
they encountered, from supportive to indifferent to hostile.
In addition, the industry is facing renewed calls for increasing safety,
most recently as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Safety culture
and disaster preparedness depend on workers, their attitudes, and their
accumulated knowledge and expertise. Some companies have successful
policies and practices to protect workers, but the industry as a whole, with
its cycles and heavy reliance on contract workers, continually challenges
individual efforts. Women can and do change men’s behavior; an envi-
ronment that is friendly and supportive of women is also likely to be
supportive of men—and safer.

NOTES
1. Betty participated in an oral history interview with the intent that it be
placed in university and community archives, so I use her real name. Unless
specifically noted, all names are real and the recordings and transcripts of
the interviews can be accessed in the archives of the Offshore Oil and Gas
History Project (“Archives,” accessed March 31, 2016, http://www.
gulfoil.bara.arizona.edu/oral-history/archives).
2. A pseudonym.
3. This work has been funded by the US Department of the Interior’s
Minerals Management (MMS), renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management (BOEM) in 2011. The studies have extended from
Brownsville, Texas to Gulf Shores, Alabama and incorporated ethno-
graphic, historical, and demographic research to examine the social impacts
of the industry on individuals, families, and communities.
4. Research on female oilfield engineers includes Gloria E. Miller, “Frontier
Masculinity in the Oil Industry: The Experience of Women Engineers,”
Gender, Work and Organization 11, no. 1 (2004): 47–73; and Clem
Herman and Suzan Lewis, “Entitled to a Sustainable Career? Motherhood
in Science, Engineering, and Technology,” Journal of Social Issues 68,
no. 4 (2012): 767–789.
5. Major oil companies include the largest publicly owned oil and gas com-
panies that, through recent mergers, now make up “supermajors” such as
ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Shell.
6. Diane E. Austin, “Women’s Work and Lives in Offshore Oil,” Research in
Economic Anthropology 24 (2006): 163–204.
 DOUBLY INVISIBLE: WOMEN’S LABOR IN THE US GULF … 421

7. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
8. Diane E. Austin and Thomas McGuire, “The Great Crew Change?
Structuring Work in the Oilfield,” in ExtrACTION: Impacts, Engagements
and Alternative Futures, ed. Kirk Jalbert et al. (New York: Routledge, 2017).
9. Renamed the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL) in 1999.
10. Rebecca Ponton, “Breaking the Gas Ceiling,” 2013, accessed March 31,
2016, www.breakingthegasceiling.com/magazine-article/.
11. See, for example, Ariane Hegewisch and Heidi Hartmann, The Gender
Wage Gap: 2014. Institute for Women’s Policy Research Publication C433,
September 2015 and Kim A. Weeden, “Profiles of Change: Sex Segregation
in the United States, 1910–2000,” in Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide
Segregation of Women and Men, ed. Maria Charles and David B. Grusky
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 131–178.
12. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Oil and
Gas Extraction: Occupational Safety and Health Risks, last updated
December 13, 2012, www.cdc.gov/niosh/programs/oilgas/risks.html.
13. Diane E. Austin, Thomas R. McGuire, and Rylan Higgins, “Work and
Change in the Gulf of Mexico Offshore Petroleum Industry,” Research in
Economic Anthropology 24 (2006): 89–122.
14. Austin, “Women’s Work,” 168–170.
15. Janice D. Yoder and Lynne L. Berendsen, “‘Outsider Within’ the
Firehouse: African American and White Women Firefighters,” Psychology of
Women Quarterly 25, no. 1 (2001): 27–36.
16. “Roberts v. Texaco,” accessed January 6, 2016, www.blbglaw.com/cases/
0008. Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann represented African-
American employees in a lawsuit brought against Texaco, resulting in the
largest discrimination settlement in US history. The story was told by
Bari-Ellen Roberts in Roberts vs. Texaco: A True Story of Race and
Corporate America (New York: Avon Books, 1998).
17. Austin, “Women’s Work,” 168–170.
18. Jane Lewis, Marilyn Porter, and Mark Shrimpton, Women, Work and
Family in the British, Canadian and Norwegian Offshore Oilfields
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988).
19. Austin, “Women’s Work,” 175–181.
20. Austin, McGuire, and Higgins, “Work and Change,” 92.
21. Robert B. Gramling and E. Joubert, “The Impact of Outer Continental
Shelf Petroleum Activity on Social and Cultural Characteristics of Morgan
City, Louisiana,” in Outer Continental Shelf Impact, Morgan City,
Louisiana, ed. Emmett Francis Stallings and Timothy Frank Reilly (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, 1977),
106–143.
422 D.E. AUSTIN

22. Diane E. Austin, Karen Coelho, Andrew Gardner, Rylan Higgins, and
Thomas McGuire, Social and Economic Impacts of OCS Activities on
Individuals and Families: Volume I: Final Report. OCS Study MMS 2002–
022 (New Orleans: US Department of the Interior, Minerals Management
Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 2002); Woody Falgoux, Rise of the
Cajun Mariners: The Race for Big Oil (Thibodaux, LA: Stockard James,
2007).
23. Falgoux, Rise of the Cajun Mariners.
24. Sharon L. Harlan and Brigid O’Farrell, “After the Pioneers: Prospects for
Women in Nontraditional Blue-Collar Jobs,” Work and Occupations 9,
no. 3 (1982): 363–386.
25. Sarah’s observation has been demonstrated in a large number of controlled
experimental studies and reviews of actual decision-making processes. See
National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling
the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (Washington,
DC: National Academies Press, 2006).
26. Robin J. Ely and Debra E. Meyerson, “An Organizational Approach to
Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms,” Research
in Organizational Behavior 30 (2010): 3–34.
27. Austin and McGuire, “The Great Crew Change.”
28. Andrew E. Clark, “Job Satisfaction and Gender: Why Are Women So
Happy at Work?,” Labour Economics 4, no. 4 (1997): 341–372.
29. Miller, “Frontier Masculinity,” 48.
30. Gene Lockard, “NES Survey: What Women Say About Working in the Oil,
Gas Industry,” Rigzone, April 14, 2014, accessed March 31, 2016, www.
rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/132552/NES_Survey_What_Women_
Say_About_Working_in_the_Oil_Gas_Industry.
31. Robin Dupre, “Women Fill 40 Percent of Vacancies in Oil, Gas,” Rigzone,
July 4, 2013, accessed March 31, 2016, www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/
a/127452/Women_Fill_40_of_Vacancies_in_Oil_Gas.
 INDEX

A Association of Oil Industry Staff

Abadan, 18, 19, 30, 72, 73, 78–82, 87, Employees, 72
89, 90, 94–96, 192, 195–200, Atyrau oblast/region, 370–373, 397
204–208, 211, 213–225, 315
Abd al-Latif Kekhya, 319
African-American, 8, 229, 232, 234, B
235, 237, 238, 241, 259, 263, Bahmanshir, 205, 215
267–270, 278, 348, 404, 412, 421 Bakhtiyari, 192
Agip, 137, 150 Baku, 16, 285, 287, 288, 369,
Ahmadabad, 205, 217 374–376
Alcoholism, 52, 299–301 Bangladesh, 12
Algeria, 158, 328 Barrancabermeja, 40, 44, 46–49,
Ali Gabriel el Kubti, 329 51–57, 59, 62, 64–67, 165, 182
American Federation of Labor (AFL), Basra, 198, 221
233–235, 240, 244, 257, 264–267, Baytown, 228, 233–235, 237, 238,
270, 271 242, 253, 254, 283, 321
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), Bazargan, 73, 77–79, 82, 84, 95, 96
17, 191–193, 217–219, 222, 225 Bedouins, 324, 325
Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), Beirut, 329, 343–346, 348, 350, 355,
7, 193–205, 207–210, 212–214, 357, 359–362, 364, 365, 367, 368
219, 220, 222 Belgium, 320
Anti-communism, 341 Benghazi, 316, 317, 323, 326, 329,
Arabs, 204, 364 330, 332–334
Aramco, 221, 223, 340–342, 348, 351, Bombay, 193, 195–198, 202, 209, 216,
365, 366 222–224
Aruba, 321, 329 Bowardeh, 205
Arnold, Muriel, 322, 334 Braim, 205
Asef Bayat, 88, 94, 98 Brezhnev, 8, 286, 291, 294, 295, 297,
Assalouyeh, 30 299, 302, 304, 305, 307, 309

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 423

T. Atabaki et al. (eds.), Working for Oil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56445-6
424 INDEX

Britain, 114, 194, 195, 197, 200, 211, Communists, 18, 23, 24, 42, 53, 105,
220, 317, 320, 331 147, 216, 217, 225, 239, 266, 290,
Brown & Root, 108, 269–273, 275, 309, 319, 333, 341, 383
282, 283 Company town, 5, 8, 9, 18, 19, 22, 26,
Burawoy, Micheal, 29, 395 28–30, 40, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 55,
Burma Oil Company, 191–194 63, 204, 222, 313–316, 321–324,
Burtynsky, Edward, 12, 28 328, 329, 333
Confederazione Italiana Sindacato
Lavoratori (CISL), 319
C Congress of Industrial Organization
California, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 153, 183, (CIO), 229, 230, 234–240, 253,
232, 235, 239, 240, 248, 280, 317, 254, 263–265, 267, 280
320, 363, 366, 393, 401 ConocoPhillips, 137, 420
Canada, 25, 38, 42, 46, 47, 56, 58, 60, Constitutional amendments, 178, 179
63, 153, 319, 320, 384, 385, 387 Contentious politics, 132, 134, 135,
Caspian Sea, 369, 373, 374, 383, 392 148
Central Council of Federated Trade Contract employees, 20, 31, 70, 74,
Union (CCFTU), 216, 217 106, 108, 109, 139, 200, 274, 403,
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 16, 404
294, 319, 333, 342 Coronil, Fernando, 21, 22, 31, 182,
Chemical and Atomic Workers Union 393
(OCAW), 7, 230, 231, 240–251, Corruption, 6, 22, 23, 25, 33, 100,
253, 256 131, 141, 142, 146, 155, 371
Chemical Construction Company, 320 Council of the Islamic Revolution
Chevron, 137, 148, 150, 158, 280, Committees of the Islamic
370, 385, 386, 390, 391, 420 Revolution, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85,
Chittagonian Indian, 199 87, 92, 96
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 402 Cyrenaica, 316, 320
Colombia, 5, 37–47, 53, 57–67, 165,
167, 262
Colonialism, 4, 189, 205, 218, 317, D
332, 340, 354, 363, 366 D’Arcy, William N., 191, 192, 202, 214
Colorado, 40, 60, 63, 233, 256, 319 Democratization, 34, 132, 140, 145,
Common Syndicate of the Employees 151, 152, 155, 286
of the Iranian Oil Industry, 72, 80, Denver, 236, 253, 319
90 Discrimination, 4, 40, 50, 53, 74, 214,
Communism, 4, 301, 341, 398 236–238, 251, 259, 263, 264, 267,
Communist Party Partito Comunista 268, 278, 314, 318, 326, 330, 361,
Italiano (PCI)/Italian Communist 388, 389, 402, 406, 421
Party (PCI), 333 Divers, 3, 102
 INDEX 425

Domesticity, 315 Gender, 4, 5, 8, 9, 293, 314, 316, 323,

Domestic workers/servants, 193, 195, 334, 365, 403, 406, 419–422
278, 317, 324 Gender gap, 403
Dutch disease, 24, 100, 142 George Washington University, 327
Germany, 94, 153, 317, 384
Guess, Leverett, 325
E Gulf of Mexico, 9, 108, 272, 399–402,
Ed Kashi, 12, 28 404, 411, 417–419, 421, 422
Egypt, 98, 262 Gulf of Sirte, 321, 327
Employment in oil and gas, 12 Gulf Oil Port Arthur Refinery, 228,
Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), 328 232, 237, 243
Ente per la colonizzazione della Libia,
316
Equal Pay Act of 1963, 402 H
Esso Libya, 313, 316, 321, 323, 327, Health, 46, 49, 50, 53, 84, 107, 111,
333 112, 127, 129, 146, 156, 166, 169,
Expatriate, 2, 4, 9, 13, 15, 18, 19, 27, 179, 183, 207, 231, 248–250, 293,
139, 147, 148, 155, 314 349, 350, 416, 421
Exxon, 122, 253, 280, 330, 335, 336 Houston, 7, 8, 227, 229, 232, 233,
Exxon (Jersey Standard/Humble) 236, 244–246, 250, 252–267,
Baytown Refinery, 253, 280 269–284, 401
Hughes Tool, 260, 263, 264, 268, 269,
279, 280
F
Fanon, Frantz, 29
Fascism, 316, 332 I
Fawley, 320 India, 7, 191–199, 201, 202, 205, 208,
Federación Obrera de Colombia, 57 210, 213, 217, 219–222
Ferguson, James, 26, 29, 34 Indian workers, 191, 196, 198,
FETRAPEC, 159–163, 167–180, 183 207–210, 216–218, 220, 223
First World War, 7, 14, 29, 117, 118, International Bank for Reconstruction
195, 196, 201, 204, 208, 211, 213, and Development (IBRD), 316
221, 224, 229, 230, 232, 236, 241, International Confederation of Free
260, 263 Trade Unions (ICFTU), 319
Florence, 223, 319 International Federation of Petroleum
Fordism, 39, 49, 52, 278 Workers (IFPW), 246, 319
Friedmann, Harriet, 13, 14, 22, 29 International Labor Organization
(ILO), 60, 115, 129, 150, 155, 178,
332
G International Oil Companies (IOC), 2,
Gachsaran, 71, 73, 194 3, 6, 17, 18, 22, 100, 122, 123, 219,
Gazar, 200 261, 317, 318
426 INDEX

International Petroleum Corporation, Labour bureaucracy, 19, 27, 286, 403

37, 58 Labour flexibilization, 3, 14, 169
Iran Fada’is, 72, 90 Layoffs, 127, 168, 169, 242, 244, 245,
Iran Ministry of Petroleum, 20, 30 258, 402, 403
Iran Mojahedin, 72 Lebanon, 329, 337–348, 350–356,
Iran/Persia, 17–21, 29–31, 69–71, 74, 358–368
75, 77–79, 84, 86, 88, 90, 93–95, Libya, 8, 272, 313–321, 323, 326–328,
97, 98, 142, 153, 189, 191, 330–336
193–197, 199–204, 208–210, 213, Libyan General Federation of Trade
214, 218–221, 223–225, 278, 375 Unions (LGFTU), 319
Israel, 78, 272, 328, 402 Libyan General Workers Union
Italy, 314, 316, 317, 319 (LGWU), 319
Louisiana, 101, 228–232, 235, 244,
246, 260, 321, 399, 401, 402, 405,
J 406, 408–410, 414, 417, 421
James Ferguson, 26, 29, 34, 184
Japan, 273, 317, 341
Johns Hopkins University, 327 M
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, 41 MacFarquhar, Neil, 324–326, 329,
334, 335
Magdalena River, 47, 50, 52, 59, 61
K Mahmud Sulaiman al-Maghribi, 327
Kangan, 19 Management systems, 123, 125, 338
Kazakhstan, 9, 369–372, 375, 377, Marco Fidel Suárez, 42, 43, 54,
379–381, 383, 388–398 59, 60
Khomeini, 18, 19, 70, 72, 73, 76–86, Marsa el Brega, 313, 320–330, 333,
89–96 334
Khuzestan, 29, 82, 96, 191, 202, 207, Masjed Suleiman, 18, 191, 210
213–216, 222 May Day, 211, 216
Knight, O.A. Jack, 235, 239 Media campaign, 8, 286, 288, 295,
Kosygin, 287, 293–295, 307 296, 299
Kurzman, Charles, 75, 91, 94, 98 Mesopotamia, 189, 191, 199
Mexican American, 229, 241, 252, 259,
268–270, 278
L Mexico, 37–39, 43, 45, 47, 58, 59, 62,
Labor Law, 20, 21, 27, 129, 149, 150, 153, 181, 182, 272, 273, 381
161, 174, 178, 253, 318, 319, 325, Middle East, 2, 29, 30, 98, 135, 197,
347, 355 216, 219, 221, 224, 225, 283, 315,
Labor market, 3, 14, 15, 19, 20, 27, 317, 326, 329, 331, 332, 334, 335,
199, 202, 231 341, 342, 344, 364, 366, 402
 INDEX 427

Milford Haven, 320 Nigeria, 6, 12, 22, 31, 131–133,

Mitchell, Timothy, 15, 16, 29, 92, 134, 136–140, 142, 143, 147, 149–151,
153, 237, 335, 339, 358, 363, 365, 153–158, 278, 304, 394
367, 393 North Sea oil, 101, 104
Mobil, 102, 106, 108, 110, 114, 122, Norway, 6, 25, 99–105, 108, 109,
126, 253, 280, 319, 355, 359–361, 112–114, 117, 119–122, 126, 127,
420 129
Mobil Oil Canada, 319 Nupeng, 139, 140, 143, 144, 149, 150,
Mohamad Ahmad Farooqi, 216 157, 158
Mohammareh (Khoramshahr), 191,
193, 197, 204, 209, 210
Mommer, Bernard, 22, 31 O
Muammar Qaddafi, 9, 315 Oasis, 325
Occidental, 173, 328
Offshore oil, 9, 73, 100, 124, 129, 399,
N 400, 401, 403, 404, 417–422
National Iranian Oil Company Offshore oil and gas, 9, 129, 399–401,
(NIOC), 17, 20, 70 403, 418–420
Nationalism, 4, 45, 60, 98, 173, 174, Oil, 1–422
182, 207, 211, 213, 219, 221, 223, Oil and Gas trust/organization
315, 327, 337, 352, 353, 363, 364, (Glavtyumenneftegaz), 288
367, 397 Oil anti-politics, 170, 175
Nationalization, 2, 7, 16, 17, 26, 39, Oil bust, 304
44, 138, 164, 165, 169, 171, 191, Oil curse, 31, 33, 100, 131, 132, 134
217, 218, 225, 315, 327, 331, 354, Oil embargo, 327, 402
374 Oil field, 3, 9, 16, 23, 40, 71, 73,
National Labour Relations Act of 1935, 77–79, 86, 94, 106, 109, 115, 181,
219 190, 196, 221, 230, 232, 233, 268,
National Nigerian Petroleum Company 275, 287, 291, 313, 317, 318, 320,
(NNPC), 138, 140, 154 325–327, 331, 338, 348, 370, 372,
National Oil Companies (NOC), 2, 3, 374, 377, 378, 381, 386, 389, 391,
6, 18, 22, 24, 26, 30, 58, 61, 100, 392
122, 123, 135, 219 Oil patrimony, 159
National War Labor Board (NWLB), Oil Services Company of Iran (OSCO),
263 70, 94
Neoliberalism, 28, 32, 181, 182, 393 Oil Workers International Union
Neoliberalization, 7, 161, 162, 182 (OWIU), 7, 228, 234, 236, 253,
New Brega, 330 254, 267
Niger Delta, 6, 12, 22, 28, 31, 32, Organization of Petroleum Exporting
146–148, 155–157, 394 Countries (OPEC), 402
428 INDEX

P 201, 202, 218, 219, 223, 286,

Palestine, 340 288–291, 305, 376, 381
Pengassan, 139, 143, 144, 148–150, Refinery, 7, 16, 18, 19, 63, 71–73,
158 78–82, 90, 95, 96, 100, 162, 165,
Persia/Iran, 17–21, 29–31, 69–71, 74, 166, 168, 169, 175, 176, 181, 183,
75, 77–79, 84, 86, 88, 90, 93–95, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 199, 200,
97, 98, 142, 153, 189, 191, 204, 205, 208, 211–213, 215, 216,
193–197, 199–204, 208–210, 213, 224, 227–233, 237, 238, 240–245,
214, 218–221, 223–225, 278, 375 251, 252, 254, 256, 258, 260, 262,
Petro-citizenship, 163, 164, 167 268, 273–275, 277, 279, 304, 320,
Petroecuador, 159, 162, 167, 169–179, 321, 333, 343, 346, 359, 361, 372,
182, 184 376, 381
Petroleum Code of 1919, 41 Refining, 7, 16, 38, 41, 75, 134,
Petroleum Law, 43, 317 139, 140, 168, 175, 181, 227–230,
Petroleum Workers Union (PWU), 233, 240, 243, 249–256, 258,
319, 361 261, 260, 262, 268, 273, 274,
Petro-nation, 177, 179, 180 278, 282, 328
Philippines, 98, 321 Refining technology, 7, 41, 241, 250,
Pipeline, 3, 5, 13, 14, 16, 28, 32, 58, 277, 304
64, 65, 78, 80, 134, 144, 147, 160, Regulations, 2, 4, 23, 25, 41, 59, 102,
163, 167–169, 172, 173, 177, 181, 103, 105, 112, 117, 178, 125, 130,
189, 233, 270, 272, 288, 296, 299, 139, 161, 176, 178, 252, 260, 273,
302, 313, 320, 325–328, 337–345, 291, 359
349, 353, 358–362, 364–366, 368, Rentierism, 164
375, 381, 387, 394, 403 Rentier state, 24, 31, 33, 152
Port Workers' Union American Resource curse, 21, 24, 25, 31, 33, 157,
Federation of Labor-Congress of 158, 394
Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), Resource nationalism, 173
257 Revolution, 6, 16, 17, 19, 21, 29, 38,
Privatization, 20, 21, 121, 123, 125, 43, 44, 52, 53, 56, 57, 60, 62, 69,
150, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167–170, 70, 74, 76, 79–82, 84–86, 88,
172–175 91–93, 134, 197, 211, 220, 224,
Punjab, 195, 198, 200 327, 331, 335, 395
Revolutionary Command Council
(RCC), 327
R Reza Shah Pahlavi, 202, 213,
Race, 4, 8, 22, 173, 229, 235, 237, 224, 225
263, 281, 324, 366, 381, 421, 422 Riot, 208
Racial segregation, 64, 207, 316 Robert Vitalis, 28, 153, 314, 331, 363,
Raúl Eduardo Mahecha, 53, 54, 56 396
Recruitment, 47, 53, 98, 106, 109, Rome, 322
118, 139, 189, 191–193, 195, 199, Royal Dutch, 137, 243, 255, 280
 INDEX 429

Russia, 32, 153, 197, 220, 286, 304, Soviet Union, 9, 215, 224, 285–289,
306, 310, 372, 381, 384, 387, 388, 291, 294, 295, 297, 298, 303–305,
392, 394–396, 398 307, 319, 341, 370–372, 374,
380–383, 386, 389–392, 393–398
Spaght, Monroe, 243
S Standard Oil of New Jersey, 16, 37, 38,
Sabotage, 134, 144, 173, 214 40, 44, 57–59, 228, 232, 326, 333
Safety, 17, 50, 53, 78, 100, 102, 103, Statoil, 102, 114–116, 121–126, 129,
107, 111–113, 124–127, 129, 130, 130
231, 233, 245, 248–250, 252, 321, Strike, 3, 6, 8, 9, 16–20, 38, 40–42, 44,
390, 403, 410, 411, 416, 418–421 46, 53–57, 59, 60, 62, 65–67,
Salim Shita, 319 69–82, 85–87, 89–96, 100,
Santiago, Myrna, 28, 62–64, 314, 331, 106–118, 120, 138, 141, 143, 147,
363, 395, 396 149–151, 154, 158, 161, 166, 169,
Sanusi tribe, 316 178, 179, 208–212, 214–217, 224,
SAVAK, 71, 74, 83, 90, 94, 95, 96 225, 227, 230–233, 235, 238–240,
Second World War, 7, 105, 111, 203, 243–248, 250–252, 255, 257–260,
214, 230, 244, 245, 257, 258, 261, 263–267, 271, 276, 277, 279, 281,
263, 280, 285, 287, 316, 321, 340, 283, 327, 337, 340, 343, 346, 347,
347, 371, 375, 376, 380, 391, 401 350, 353, 355, 358–362, 368
Sectarianism, 340 Suez canal, 314, 317, 340
Segregation, 9, 64, 207, 222, 238, 241,
280, 314, 316, 321, 323, 325, 326,
333, 348, 349, 421 T
Shafaq-e Sorkh, 213, 225 Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, 16, 239, 266,
Sheikh Khaz‘al, 204, 205, 210, 213 282
Shell, 137, 144–147, 150, 157, 227, Tallman, Richard H., 321
232, 236–238, 240, 242–252, 255, Tehran, 30, 71, 72, 74, 76–83, 87, 91,
256, 258, 268–269, 273–277, 279, 93–97, 95–97, 191, 207, 209, 213,
280, 283, 284, 347, 355, 359, 360, 214, 216, 217, 219–222, 224, 225
420 Tengiz, 9, 369–371, 373, 374, 378,
Shell Oil Deer Park Refinery, 242 380, 383–391, 393, 396–398
Shift work, 293, 387 TEXACO, 164, 165, 228, 236, 260,
Siberia, 8, 285–299, 301–303, 280, 421
305–310, 383, 388, 393 Texas, 28, 101, 228, 230–233,
Sikh, 198, 200, 210, 217 235–239, 242, 243, 246–248,
Sikh-Lane, 205 252–255, 258–262, 265–267, 270,
Singapore, 321 271, 275, 276, 279–280, 282, 283,
Six day war, 326, 327 321, 325, 333, 335, 344, 367, 401,
Sonatrach, 327 406, 408, 420
Sovereignty, 41, 43, 142, 163, Texas Railroad Commission, 259, 280
170–173, 177, 180, 197 Tinker-Salas, Miguel, 22, 28, 331, 333
430 INDEX

Tobruk Higher Petroleum Institute, 265–267, 277, 278, 280, 283, 322,
328 331, 333, 338, 341, 343, 347, 348,
Training, 17, 46, 80, 112, 125, 139, 353, 363, 364, 402, 403, 421
151, 178, 181, 193, 196, 202, 213, University of California at Los Angeles
245, 289, 319, 325, 327, 328, 348, (UCLA), 363
381, 396, 402, 406, 409–411 US State Department, 313
Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline), 9,
337
Tri-partite system, 99, 100, 108–111, V
120, 124, 127 Venezuela, 21, 22, 28, 31, 37, 39, 45,
Tripoli, 316, 317, 321, 323, 327, 47, 58, 59, 62–65, 153, 182, 246,
330–335, 342, 343, 346, 355, 359, 262, 278, 320, 325, 326, 331, 393
360, 367, 368 Virginia School of economics, 130
Tripolitania, 316, 319 Vitalis, Robert, 28, 29, 153, 314, 331,
Tropical Oil, 5, 38, 41, 43–53, 56–58, 363, 366, 396
61, 62, 64, 65
Tudeh Party, 72, 80, 91, 216, 225
Tunisian, 319 W
Watts, Michael, 12, 13, 22, 28, 31, 154,
157, 158, 372, 394
U Welfare capitalism, 9, 346–348,
Union, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16, 18, 20, 21, 27, 350–352, 354, 358, 362, 365
42, 54, 60, 80, 87, 100, 104–107, Wheelus, 332
110–116, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, Whitegate, 320
129, 138–141, 143, 147–150, 152, Women, 2, 4, 9, 11, 14, 49, 119, 139,
155, 157, 161, 164, 165, 167, 171, 140, 215, 237, 238, 251, 293, 294,
175, 178, 183, 210, 211, 215, 223, 314–316, 324, 325, 329–331, 334,
228, 234, 235, 237, 239–246, 248, 376, 400–422
250, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259, Worker health and safety, 53, 107, 111,
265–268, 270, 271, 273, 275, 281, 112, 249
285, 286, 288, 289, 291, 294, 297, Workplace alienation, 170, 171
298, 303–305, 307, 314, 318–320,
325–327, 333, 338, 341, 346,
351–353, 355, 357, 359–362, Y
370–372, 374, 380–383, 389–391, Youth organizations (Komsomol), 289
396, 404
Unionism, 233, 234, 236, 254
Unión Sindical Obrera, 53, 63–65 Z
United Nations (UN), 66, 115, 314, Zelten, 317, 320, 327
331 Zholdaskhali Dosmukhambetov, 369
United States, 2, 49, 59, 61, 153,
228–231, 252, 259, 260, 262, 263,