Jul. 06, 2005 - 21:55 MDT

Familiar Strain

An article in the Rocky Mountain News business section this morning surely raised my hackles. It is by Gargi Chakrabarty of that paper. In full:

Chinese labor eyed

EnCana explores bringing in workers for Colo. Gas fields

�EnCana, Colorado�s top gas producer, is exploring the option of hiring Chinese companies to build and operate oil and gas drilling rigs in Garfield County�s sprawling Piceance Basin.�

�Hiring Chinese rigs and crews would cut costs for the Calgary, Alberta based company at a time when drilling rates have nearly doubled since last year. But it also could raise immigrant labor concerns.�

�EnCana, however, says it has no immediate plans to bring in Chinese contractors.�

�This is not something that EnCana is actively pursuing,� said Doug Hock, spokesman for the company�s U.S. subsidiary, EnCana Oil and Gas (USA), headquartered in Denver.�

�And if we did, it would serve as a short-term solution to deal with increasing demand for rigs and crews in the Piceance Basin.�

�EnCana executives told analysts during a recent tour of the company�s gas fields in the Piceance Basin, which covers thousands of acres in Garfield County, that drilling rates have jumped to $1,4 00 a day from $8,500 a year ago. Those executives mentioned the hiring of Chinese companies as an option, Hock said.�

�EnCana has 23 operating rigs in the Piceance Basin.�

�A Canadian newspaper recently quoted a spokesman saying that EnCana is exploring the possibility of having rigs built in China and then imported to the United States, along with crews to run them.�

� Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., likened the Chinese entry into the U.S. energy industry to the Saudis buying farmland here in the 1970s and the Japanese buying high-tech compaines in the 1980s.�

�This is the emergence of an economic competitor for America that is to be watched and competed with,� Clark said. �American workers are increasingly comfortable compteing in international market-places. This would come as no surprise to them and certainly would be something they will respond (to) in kind.�

� However, a labor union representative cautioned that hiring of Chinese crews could raise issues much like the controversy raised in the 1800s when Chinese laborers were used to build most of the West�s railroads.�

�Chinese participation was limited after 1882, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese workers from entering the and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for citizenship. The law was repealed in 1943 when China became an important ally against Japan in World War 2. �

�If American people are losing jobs (to the Chinese), I could see some form of labor unrest,� said Howard Arnold, business representative of the United Association of Pipefitters Local Union No. 208. The union represents roughly 1,800 members, mostly employed by contractors in and around Denver. But most of the crews on rigs don�t belong to unions.�

�China exports labor and equipment to everywhere; it won�t surprise me to see them in oil rigs,� Arnold said. �However, everybody would be affected directly and indirectly if they import Chinese labor.�

�If Americans lose jobs, we won�t have money to pay taxes that support our schools and hospitals. The list goes on and on.�

�Duane Smith, professor of Southwest studies and history at Fort Lewis College in Durango (Colorado) , said American labor unions in the 1800s had fiercely resisted Chinese immigrant laborers in the mines of Colorado, including those in Leadville and Silverton. In fact, unions physically drove out Chinese workers from the mines in Caribou, near Nederland (Colorado).

�One of the bases of that was certainly racism,� Smit said. �But there were economic reasons, too. The Chinese worked for less. There was a feeling that if Chinese men came to a mining district, there wouldn�t be much ore left, and white men couldn�t make a living any more.�

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"Most of the crews on rigs don't belong to unions," a sad thing for a union man to say. In other words, according to his idea, if you don't belong to a union you don't deserve a thing.

There are those of us who looked with horror on allowing any foreign entity to buy into any US company or buy land here. Personally, although our big industries have had their foot in many European companies, even during World War 2, I don't condone that either.

The ever present friction between employer and employee is still here with us alive and kicking. But for how long will working folks have a voice in what happens to us ?

I remember working in a factory where if a man developed on his own, a way (shortcut perhaps) to make a bit extra on piece-work, immediately there would be a time study man with his clipboard and stop-watch timing the operation so as to set a higher quota for that operation. So, through his own sweat and ingenuity and extra effort he was making a bit more than before, suddenly he had to meet the new quota or facing discipline and possible firing.

Always the employers had an eye out for workers from foreign lands as they knew that they could pay less and threaten more if not implicitly obeyed.

Seeing in the article that, �EnCana, however, says it has no immediate plans to bring in Chinese contractors.� Right, immediacy is in the mind of the one spouting and the definition is what they decide I guess.

Obviously the brass has been discussing such a thing. And to my mind they have let it leak out to the oil patchers what they are considering. Makes an oily, tired, sweaty guy who sometimes drives many miles to a rig to earn a days living feel secure, doesn�t it ?

Makes it quite simple for that type of thing, you can�t send oil wells overseas, but looks as if one can bring aliens and cheaply made equipment in and leave the American worker out in the cold, hungry world.

There is a question in my mind also, - - - - - �Drilling rates increase,� just how much of that increase is due to an increase in the wages paid people who do the actual work on the rigs ? ? ? ? ? The way wages in our country have been going is down, down, down � so I expect that said increase was not due to labor.

As far as that goes, prices at the pump for fuel keep going up too, and if we lose jobs or opportunities how long before we can�t afford the gas to go to the unemployment office ?

Having read History of through the ages, it seems that those who have, get and often those who have make sure the little guy stays little and, by the way, hungry, ill housed, poorly clad with little savings to meet demands that come up. Thinking about the miners in our country, even the foreigners who were brought over were poorly paid and worse treated, the women in the sweat shops in New York and other places suffered, the young people in the textile industries who had to work too many hours a day for too little pay also had ailments from inhaling lint all day.

It is an understood fact that low skilled employees are paid less than those with super-expertise. Fact of life. But I see no excuse for anyone to go hungry, without a job, without any income whatsoever. Seems to me that the way things are going, after NAFTA, and CAFTA we of the United States are going to get the Final SHAFTA.

The music beat on logs at first and then joined by instruments as they were invented has apparently been composed by those who undeservedly have great gobs of bucks and it is, oh such a FAMILIAR STRAIN . . . . . . . . . . .

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