By Laura Clawson

– The oil workers strike widened over the weekend, with 1,400 workers at two BP refineries in Indiana and Ohio walking out:

The first nationwide strike by oil refinery workers since 1980, the addition of BP’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery and the company’s joint-venture refinery with Husky Energy in Toledo, Ohio, brings the total number of plants with strikers to 11, including refineries accounting for about 13 percent of total U.S. oil refining capacity. The original strike included workers in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington.

The workers are emphasizing safety concerns, with good reason:

In January there were at least four major mishaps at a U.S. pipelines that resulted in costly explosions or spills. In 2013, Texas led the country in oil and gas sector fatalities with 106. Overall, oil and gas workers are six times more likely to die on the job than average Americans. With the recent growth of the industry due to the proliferation of new drilling techniques such as fracking, safety measures can suffer. In North Dakota, which has been at the forefront of the oil boom, the fatality rate for industry workers was three times the national average in 2013.

The companies are using scab labor to staff the affected plants, with one at half capacity due to delayed maintenance. Meanwhile, Shell continues to serve as the lead management-side negotiator for a nationwide contract. Late last week, the United Steelworkers rejected the latest offer from Shell as containing “minimal movement.”

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/09/1363329/-Largest-oil-workers-strike-in-decades-expands