Union Members Need a Seat at the Table

Bryan Gross

Bryan Gross, United Steelworkers Union, born and raised in Southeast Texas, born and raised in Orange. Spent 17 years at a oil refinery in Port Arthur and recently came on staff for the Steelworkers, officially in January. So I want to talk a little bit about the steelworkers and, because our organization is a little different than the building trades unions, we don’t have apprenticeship programs. What we do is we have labor contracts mostly in this area with the plants and the refineries and the chemical plants. So we have contracts—so we have to rely on who the companies hire and then they become members, or we attempt to get them to become members, because Texas is a right-to-work state, so they don’t have to join if they don’t choose, but unfortunately we have to represent those people regardless.

So I have about 3,000 members in the area that I represent between Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Port Neches. I can tell you most of those people are climate deniers, unfortunately, because it’s their livelihood. It’s a struggle to educate them. You know, it’s like you don’t see any of the industry here today to talk about anything. So that’s always a ongoing battle.

Elected officials are important. Two weeks ago Jay Kleberg was here that’s running for land commissioner. He talked about some of the things that was talked about today. Along the whole Gulf Coast $8.4 billion was not handed out from the storms and it was according to him mainly because of Democratic coastal counties and minority counties. The money was given to the counties just inside the coast that were predominantly Republican, predominantly rich ranchers further south. So that’s always a issue.

What else do I wanna talk about? The future: so carbon capture is a big topic. It’s gonna be a big topic. It’s going to affect all of our refineries, all of our plants going forward and it’s jobs, it’s good opportunities for people. But it’s gonna be, it’s a long-term plan that’s going to take a long time to get accomplished. But we’ve got to start somewhere. But yeah I think the biggest thing is the politicians and electing people that put us at the table. We need a seat at the table whether it’s union, whether it’s whatever organization it is, we need to have a say and have an opinion and we need those people to support our opinion. Thank you.

Bryan Gross earned two associate degrees from Lamar Institute of Technology, worked 6+ years as a heavy equipment/truck mechanic and 16+ years as a machinist at a local oil refinery, and now serves as United Steelworkers International Staff Representative.