5 December, 2011
The ICEM Brazilian affiliate, Federacão Única dos Petroleiros (FUP), or Oil and Gas Workers’ Unified Federation, carved important new safety protections for deepwater oil platform workers in a new collective agreement recently approved.
The union twice came to the edge of beginning strike actions, but postponed walkouts when the Brazilian state company agreed to better pay and more FUP and worker involvement in safety matters on the platforms in the Campos and Espírito Santo Basins, as well as across the company nationally.
Following the FUP General Board accepting a revised company proposal that spells out specific safety requirements on 22 November, the contract won favour from 35,000 oil workers in local meetings, many coming on 26 November.
The new contract stipulates mandatory union representation of 150 safety specialists on platforms in the Campos Basin, for instance, and it requires three annual inspections per rig. Petrobras is underway with a US$225 billion investment in downstream and upstream projects, including exploration and development of 19 new wells next year in the deepwater Campos Basin off São Paulo state.
FUP leaders throughout seven rounds of bargaining called for the same safety criteria that Norwegian state company Statoil has with ICEM affiliate IndustriEnergi (IE). Since the 2001 killing of 11 workers in the explosions and subsequent sinking of its P36 platform in the Roncador offshore fields, Petrobras has seen some 80 workplace fatalities, including one in September from a fire on a diesel fuel tanker.
The FUP in 2010 forced suspensions on both Platforms 33 and 35 off Brazil, and the company itself shut operations on different vessels in both January and February this year over safety concerns.
Worker safeguards in the agreement came only after FUP set a second strike deadline of 16 November. Following a first strike threat some weeks before, Petrobras agreed to improve health and pension fund benefits for workers.
The pay package, another key issue throughout talks, will see Petrobras oil workers get a 10.71% pay rise, which represents 3.4% in real wages when factoring in Brazil’s inflation rate.