(Bloomberg) — Union members, who’ve been locked out of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Beaumont refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast since May, accepted the company’s latest contract offer Monday, people familiar with the vote said.
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Approval by the union means Exxon and workers will now negotiate a return-to-work agreement for union-represented employees, ending the nearly 10-month lockout. Temporary workers have been running the refinery since May 1. The approval comes four months after members of the local United Steelworkers union resoundingly turned down a previous deal to end the labor dispute.
The new local contract makes Martin Luther King Jr. a paid holiday and amends some language including the makeup of a workmen’s committee.
Approving a new worker agreement removes uncertainty about having an adequately trained labor force at a time when Exxon is working to expand the 369,000-barrel-a-day site by 250,000 barrels. The expansion will add a new crude unit that could process light, low-sulfur crude from the Permian Basin by 2023, making Beaumont the largest refinery in the U.S.
A six-year labor pact between the USW local and Exxon expired last February without a new collective bargaining agreement in place. The two sides continued to negotiate and the old contract at first remained in effect using 24-hour extensions. Exxon, which made it clear it wanted to control costs and have a flexible work agreement to maintain competitiveness, locked out the 650 union-represented members of USW Local 13-243 at the refinery and adjoining lubricant oil plant in May.
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