June 26, 2001 — Concerns raised by some senators about layoffs at the Hovensa refinery were confirmed by company officials on Tuesday when it was announced that 185 employees of a refinery contractor will be terminated.
The notice of the layoffs comes days before Friday’s Senate hearing on the labor practices of subcontractors at the St. Croix refinery.
In a letter on June 20, Sen. Norman Jn Baptiste told Acting Labor Commissioner Cecil Benjamin of his concerns about a possible merger of companies working on the $535 million coker project that would result in employess being transferred and laid off. In addition, Jn Baptiste said he had information that the laid-off employees wouldn’t be eligible for severance pay or accrued benefits.
Jn Baptiste asked the Labor Department to begin an inquiry into the "numerous complaints" his office has received. In the meantime, Sen. Norma Pickard-Samuel, chair of the Labor and Veterans Affairs Committee, has scheduled a hearing for Friday evening to look into labor issues at the refinery, which have been tenuous in recent weeks.
On Monday, Alex Moorhead, Hovensa vice president for human resources, responded to Jn Baptiste’s concerns. He said that none of the contractors on the coker project is involved in a reorganization or merger. The reports Jn Baptiste has received, Moorhead said, are "probably the result of misinformation concerning a pending change by our company relative to the maintenance of the facility."
Moorhead said Hovensa is set to reorganize its maintenance department, which will entail another contractor taking over work that was being done by Jacobs Industrial Maintenance Co.
Jacobs-IMC currently employs 185 people to hydro-blast mechanical equipment, paint and clean storage tanks. Starting July 2, Triangle Construction and Maintenance will perform those tasks.
The 185 workers, Moorhead said, make up a small percentage of Jacob-IMC’s workforce of 1,100. He also dismissed Jn Baptiste’s concerns that the terminated employees won’t receive severance pay.
It is Hovensa’s understanding that "because less than 50 percent of Jacob-IMC’s employees will be terminated as a result of Jacob-IMC’s loss of the contract for this portion of Hovensa’s maintenance work," the V.I. plant closing law "does not apply to this situation," Moorhead said. "Jacobs-IMC has informed our company that it will nonetheless pay the employees whom it will terminate whatever severance pay they are entitled to" pursuant to its labor agreement with the United Steelworkers of America, he added.
News of the layoffs follows labor unrest at the coker construction site about two weeks ago, when hundreds of workers walked off the job for a day. Steelworkers union members claimed that James International Construction, a Bechtel International subcontractor, had imported workers from Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland while Bechtel laid off more than 60 local workers. Bechtel is the general contractor in charge of the coker project.
In August of 1999, Jacobs Panamerican Corp. and Virgin Islands Industrial Maintenance Corp., the largest maintenance contractor at the refinery, merged to perform the duties of the refinery’s primary maintenance contractor.
Some maintenance tasks that were being done by Hovensa employees at the time of the merger were assigned to Jacobs-ICM. Hovensa workers whose jobs were eliminated in the reorganization were offered similar positions with Jacobs-ICM or offered different jobs within Hovensa.
Hovensa employees who chose not to accept reassignment were given the option of severance benefits.
