A decision made by the company that owns the Lima Refinery to hire out-of-state workers is causing major concerns for local tradespeople.
Cenovus has decided to use out-of-state workers for the fall maintenance turnaround at the Lima Refinery this year. This is typically a six-week job that will employ 3,000 workers during that time.
Lima Building Trades contractors are usually the people put to the job, but this time around the refinery has hired a so-called turnaround specialist contractor and will be bringing people to work from outside of the state. The president of the trades council says this isn't just a problem for the trade workers, but also impacts the community.
"With, you know, the people coming from out of state working, they're not the ones here that will be paying property taxes, they're not the ones that are going to be here buying a car from the local dealership, they're not going to the store and buying the shoes, they're not out at the restaurants, that's why it's a total impact to the whole community,” says Rick Perdue, President of Lima Building Trades. “It's not just our members."
Lima Mayor David Berger was also at the conference on Thursday with the Lima Building Trades to show support. Allen County Commissioners, Mayor Berger, Senator Sherrod Brown, and the Ohio Building Trades Council all reached out to the refinery to voice their concerns. Lima Building Trades has meetings planned for March 12th and next week with the refinery to continue the discussion.
Statement from Cenovus Energy: We have started planning for a turnaround in the fall of 2021, which is critical for safe and reliable operations and will include inspections, cleaning and replacing equipment. Much of this work requires specialized contractors and we conducted a thorough selection process, which included unionized contractors. This temporary work is specialized and most of the qualified workers are based outside the local area. This has been true for our turnarounds whether workers are represented by building trade unions or not.
Contractors are selected based on a number of criteria, including safety, technical expertise and related experience. We hired contractors for this work who best met our criteria.
I would add that our permanent refinery workforces at Lima and Superior are unionized, as is our embedded maintenance contractor at Lima. Our Superior Refinery rebuild project in Wisconsin as well as the West White Rose offshore project in Atlantic Canada are predominately using building trade union contractors. We are also currently hiring a new process operator class at Lima, which will be local residents and permanent employees, represented by a union.
Cenovus and the Lima Refinery are invested in a long-term relationship with the community. Our employees and contractors are key to our safe and reliable operations.
