Bucking the Odds
Organized Labor in Gulf Coast Oil Refining
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5703293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tyler Priest (Houston Community College System), Michael Botson (Houston Community College System) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 100-110 |
| Publication date | 2012-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jas085 |
| OpenAlex | W2161861897 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
The Gulf Coast of the United States has long been home to the world's largest concentration of petroleum refineries and chemical plants.These sprawling, interconnected complexes of crude oil tanks, distillation columns, fractionating towers, lubricating oil units, alkylation units, dewaxing units, and monstrous catalytic "crackers" churn out the gasoline and other petroleum products that have helped sustain modern American society.Shortly after the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop, Texas, the region's first large refineries, owned by Gulf Oil and Texaco, sprang up in nearby Port Arthur and Beaumont.With subsequent discoveries along the Gulf Coast, refineries spread southwest to Houston and Corpus Christi, and east to Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, Louisiana.By 1941 the Gulf Coast accounted for 28 percent of national refining capacity, rising to 32 percent by 1956, and 36 percent by 1976. 1 Refineries depended on a large and stable work force-more than two hundred thousand people nationwide by 1955, in nearly three hundred refineries of all sizes in thirty-nine states-to keep the units running smoothly, around the clock.One-third of these workers were employed on the Gulf Coast, most of them concentrated in fourteen major refineries on the upper Texas coast and in Louisiana.Working-class people in the Gulf Coast region coveted refinery jobs, which were equivalent to positions in northern automobile or steel plants.Except for a brief period during World War II, these jobs went exclusively to men.Into the 1960s almost all the higher-paying skilled jobs were reserved for whites, which along the upper Gulf Coast included both Anglos and Cajuns.The jobs paid well, included generous benefits after World War I, and offered a means of upward socioeconomic mobility.Minorities, too, including African Americans as well as Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans, found desirable wage-labor work at refineries, albeit in segregated classifications.Job losses in the oil industry during the Great Depression, however, forced white and minority workers alike to organize.The union movement in oil targeted refining, the least isolated and geographically dispersed sector of the industry.As was the case across the Jim Crow South, labor organizing in refining consisted of a dual
Biology · Fishery · Logistic regression · Odds · Refining (metallurgy · American Environmental and Regional History · Chemistry · Internal Medicine · Medicine
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A Tale of Two Gulfs
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,64 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |