Image source: https://www.instagram.com/mkaplanphoto/
The BP Whiting lockout has now lasted more than 6 months, with little to no movement in negotiations. About 800 USW Local 7-1 members have been locked out since March 19 after rejecting BP's sweepingly anti-union contract proposal. Negotiations finally resumed in September, but the lockout is still ongoing and major issues remain unresolved. BP is doing everything they can to squeeze workers into submission. Meanwhile, the union’s symbolic pickets and calls to end the lockout have done little to materially hurt BP. Workers will have to do more to wield their power if they want a chance not only at defending the hard-fought gains of workers' past, but at advancing their own demands and winning new gains.
For workers, it has been six months without a paycheck. They have survived limited assistance from the union and unemployment benefits. These benefits, with a maximum weekly allowance of only $390 can only be collected for up to 26 weeks and are now drying up. To get by, some workers have started interviewing for other work and left the picket line for new jobs. Morale has taken a hit.
Workers also suspect their health insurance is under threat. BP hired Jordan Marcks and Chris DellaFranco, former ExxonMobil managers involved in the 2021 lockout of refinery workers in Beaumont, Texas that resulted in major losses for workers. During the 10-month lockout, unemployment benefits expired, workers lost their company health insurance after six months, and many were forced to take second jobs or leave Exxon altogether. It is not a coincidence that BP hired both of them, these despicable and ruthless attack dogs, to do the same at BP.
While BP workers are struggling, it would seem that the lockout would also be hurting BP, especially with the inefficiencies of scab labor. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. BP has kept Whiting operating and exceedingly profitable during a period of high oil and gas prices. In the first half of 2026, BP reported $8.93 billion in underlying replacement-cost profit, already exceeding its full-year profit of both 2024 and 2025.
The union continues to call on politicians to intervene and end the lockout, workers run out of unemployment benefits and are forced to find other work, while BP continues to operate and make billions. Who is really being pressured in this struggle? That is why workers cannot simply wait for negotiations to produce an acceptable contract. Pickets should be fortified and used to impact production. They should be used to make the capitalist owners hurt, not just uplift workers demands.
In the summer of 1973, Harlan County miners were limited to six workers on the picket line. To add numbers and militancy, their wives mobilized. They eventually stopped scab labor from entering the plant, directly disrupting production and helping win the strike. In 1989, Pittston Coal workers faced an injunction limiting their picket. Their legal pathways to fighting the capitalist offensive were slim, so they chose to break it. They blocked roads leading into the mines, organized a sit-in inside the plant, and used other militant tactics against company vehicles. After nearly a year of struggle, workers maintained their health care and retirement benefits and also secured a wage increase.
As talks of bringing in a mediator loom, time is of the essence to turn the fight from defensive to offensive. The Whiting refinery is the largest refinery in the United States and accounts for roughly 63% of BP’s total U.S. refining capacity and about 25% of its global refining capacity. Threatening BP’s ability to produce could have massive impacts, not just on BP’s profits but on the entire American economy. That kind of pressure has the potential to bring the company to its knees, on workers’ terms.
We are calling on workers to take the offensive necessary for victory over the bosses. The bosses already view this as a battle to win. They recognize we are at war. Workers must recognize the same. To win, workers must see the bosses as class enemies and use every mechanism to impact their ability to fortify their supply routes and field more soldiers. The power of workers comes from the simple fact that all of BP’s profits come from workers. We make facilities run and we can shut them down. With clear thinking and strategy, victory is possible! It is these struggles that prepare us to one day seize all that is rightfully ours.
It’s their profits or our lives.