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United Steelworkers

The United Steelworkers, representing more than 30,000 U.S. oil workers, instructed members to reject a seventh labor contract offered by Royal Dutch Shell Plc as the biggest refinery strike since 1980 dragged on.

The proposal, the first one made by Shell since Feb. 5 on behalf of companies including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., “fails to improve safety” in an enforceable way, the USW said in a text message, instructing local units to prepare to join the strike “if called upon.” Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague, Netherlands-based Shell, said the company had no comment beyond saying the two sides met.

Since Feb. 1 more than 5,000 USW workers have walked out of a chemical plant, a cogeneration complex and nine U.S. refineries that account for 13% of the country’s fuel capacity. It’s the biggest strike at U.S. oil refineries since 1980, when a work stoppage lasted three months. The union has members at more than 200 refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines and chemical plants across the U.S.

“We remain committed to reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement with the United Steelworkers,” Fisher said by e-mail on Thursday. The USW said in its text message that it was at “the table ready to bargain.”

The USW rejected Shell’s seventh offer because the proposal failed to address concerns about companies replacing union workers with contractors at refineries, three people familiar with the talks said on Thursday, while asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

The national union has called strikes at Tesoro Corp. plants in Martinez and Carson, California, and Anacortes, Washington; Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky and Galveston Bay site in Texas; Shell’s Deer Park complex; LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston facility; and BP Plc’s Whiting and Toledo refineries in the Midwest.

United Steelworkers members operate refinery units, perform maintenance and work in labs at the plants.

One of the three Tesoro refineries on strike, the Golden Eagle site in Northern California, halted all fuel production by Feb. 6. The plant already had about half of its output offline for maintenance before the strike and shut completely after the walkout began.

The national agreement, which addresses wages, benefits and health and safety, serves as the pattern that companies use to negotiate local contracts. Individual USW units may still decide to strike if the terms they’re offered locally don’t mirror those in the national agreement.