Just Transition Alliance Podcast
The Just Transition Alliance Podcast centers the experiences, insights, and demands of frontline workers and fenceline communities united for justice. Episodes feature movement topics and intersectional justice struggles, as we share and learn from our collective knowledges and experiences to continue building people power toward just transition. In the episodes to come, we’ll interview Just Transition Alliance (JTA) board and staff members and will speak with sister alliance members and other groups that align with and inform JTA's work. In addition to interviews, we plan to share updates on our popular education and policy advocacy—from local initiatives to transborder mobilizations. These interconnected efforts and relationships are dedicated to the collective refusal of extractivism and greenwashed false solutions, while co-creating pathways toward frontline-led just transition.
Just Transition Alliance Podcast
"The Basic Problem Is We're Not Synced": USW's David Campbell Shares Labor Organizing Insights about the Upcoming CA Refinery Closures and Beyond
United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675 Field Director, First Vice President, and former Secretary-Treasurer David Campbell talks about the upcoming California refinery closures and the challenges of phasing in and phasing out industries. He highlights the crucial, indispensable role of frontline workers in co-creating and implementing transition plans and recounts some past experiences that show pathways toward just transition. The interview concludes with David reflecting on the importance of humor, fun, and play in organizing and making community among workers. Don't miss David's smart insights, based on years of labor movement building!
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Note: This interview was recorded in May 2025, when David Campbell held the position of USW Local 675 secretary-treasurer.
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Hello and welcome to the Just Transition Alliance Podcast. This show strives to center and consensually amplify the struggles of frontline workers and fence line communities united for justice. I'm Catalina de Onís, the Communications and Training Associate at the Just Transition Alliance, or JTA. On today's show, we're joined by David Campbell, who is Secretary Treasurer of the United Steel workers Local 675, which represents oil refinery workers, the Carwasheros, industrial and service workers in California, and hospitality workers in Nevada. Dave also is a JTA board member. Today we're talking about the upcoming refinery closures in California. Welcome to the show, Dave.
David Campbell:Thank you very much, Catalina, for having me.
Catalina de Onís:Well, it's wonderful to be able to speak with you, Dave, especially on such important topics related to just transition. To get us started, we're recording our conversation in late May 2025. California has two upcoming refinery closures, Phillips 66 in the LA area, set to close by December 2025, and Valero Benicia north of San Francisco, set to close by spring 2026. These closures are going to have major impacts, including job losses, higher gas prices, and many other concerns. I've heard that gas prices could reach $6 per gallon after the first refinery closure and as high as $9 per gallon after the second refinery closure. What anticipated impacts concern you most about this and why?
David Campbell:I don't quite know where to start, but one of the things that our union, our local unions, co-sponsored several years ago was a Pollin Report out of the University of Massachusetts Political Economy and Research. Dr. Robert Pollin put together this report. And the report was basically a roadmap for achieving California's climate goals and maintaining the economy. And unfortunately, we tried to popularize that, if you would, through a coalition called the California Labor for Climate Jobs, which we co-founded. And the idea was to try to get an alliance of industrial unions and public sector unions that would be impacted by climate change to build political hegemony in the state of California that could overcome that of the oil companies and the building trades. Unfortunately, we were not successful in doing that when the latest federal election occurred. And now, as you know, in the U.S. Senate, the House has already passed, but they're considering a continuing resolution that is going to basically gut California's plan to convert the vehicle fleets off of fossil fuels. And another thing that occurred recently is the California State Labor Federation had their annual joint conference with the building trades in Sacramento, and one of those events at that conference was a showcase for the Democratic candidates for governor, and all of them basically are tail-ending the oil industry now. My main concern is for the economy. While I am concerned about the impact of all this on my members, even losing our jobs with no transition, if the economy is so messed up that there is very high unemployment, it's the worst of all worlds for us. The lack of any planning is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. So I'm concerned overall for California's overall economy, the well-being of everybody, all the citizens of California, and the lack of planning. These Democratic candidates who have no plan other than to tail -end the oil industry. And again, it all comes back to a lack of planning for a phase out of one industry as you phase in another. Obviously, we're not ready in California for a shift to zero emissions vehicles yet, and with the lack of funding, the gutting of renewables at the federal level and so on and so forth, it doesn't look like we're going to be ready for quite some time. The basic problem is we're not synced to phase out one industry because the other one hasn't phased in yet, and then there's no plan to shift workers from one industry to the other. One thing that concerns me is financial reporting data from Valero indicates that they're not only shutting down the Benicia, California, refinery, but they're preparing to shut down their Wilmington, California, refinery as well. They have to, under California law, they have to notify the state a year in advance before they shut down a refinery. They haven't done that yet. But all the financial data is indicating that that's what their plan is to shut down Wilmington as well. I'm not sure whether California even has the capacity to import that much product. You know, to import product, you have to have mooring for the ships, the tankers, you have to have pumps and pipelines, you have to be connected to tankage. And if you take the entire capacity that we have right now to import finished product, I don't think it can make, meet the gap. It's entirely possible, more, even if imports is decided that imports has to be the solution, there may be more facilities that have to be built. And the timeline to build them is you can't just snap your fingers and do that. It takes at least three, four, five years, even with an accelerated plan to build them. In the meantime, California economy is going to suffer the effects of this lack of planning. Another possibility, I had, did have, a conversation with LA City Councilman Tim McOsker, who raised with me the fact that there were some within the state of California talking about the state taking over refineries. At the time, I said I thought that would be a bad idea, but I've reconsidered. I think that if the state took over refineries by eminent domain and had it, the refineries operated by the workers. And by the workers, I mean not only the hourly workers, but the local managers that are there right now, basically the same people that are operating the refinery, refineries today, and they created some sort of mechanism for community control and input that might work to produce the product for the benefit of society owned by the state and under the workers' control. That all sounds pretty radical. But maybe nine dollars gasoline would get people to be pretty damn radical. I don't know.
Catalina de Onís:Yeah, well, I think we're we're going to find out as as all of this unfolds. You had mentioned a problem with a lack of infrastructure and capacity within California and also all the infrastructure that's needed for transporting this fuel. In thinking about Texas, what potential impacts do you see, especially for environmental justice communities that are in Texas and other places that are going to be these sites of continued extraction, in particular if California relies on these places for fuel?
David Campbell:They're going to have greater pollution if their, if their, refineries there are going to ramp up to produce more gasoline. I'm not even sure that they can produce California Air Resources Board gasoline. That's another thing I don't know how. There is a refinery in Jamnagar, India. It's the largest refinery in the world, and it can produce 600,000 barrels a day of California Air Resources gasoline. I think that the Texas option would be importing, importing intermediate product to blend in California into California Air Resources for gasoline. But obviously, refining more petroleum product in Texas is going to negatively impact the communities Corpus Christi, Texas, and Galveston, and all those areas where the communities are already burdened down with a high load of pollution. I think it just shifts the environmental burden onto other communities. It doesn't do anything. In fact, it makes the problem of climate change, pollution towards climate change, even worse. And then, of course, the labor standards of enforcement are not the same elsewhere as they are in California, particularly if the, if the , if the product that winds up coming from India, very poor labor standards. I call it kind of greenwash NIMBYism. We want to use the product, but we don't want it produced here because it's too dirty and too yada, yada, yada. I don't see much difference between that and NIMBYism.
Catalina de Onís:You've addressed the importance of a phase out and a phase in and worker and community control. And I'm curious if you could elaborate more on what would really need to happen for a just transition in this case and your insights just based on your years of organizing work and as a worker yourself as a movement leader. What would you argue needs to be done for an actual just transition in this case?
David Campbell:Again, the Pollin Report included recommendations. Naturally, I would like to our our workers who are close to retirement get them a bridge to retirement. A lot of our members are high school graduates. Some of us have associate's degrees, and some of even have college degrees, but most of us high school graduates, we can be retrained. We're generally okay with mathematics, not, you know, calculus or anything, but algebra, certainly. And I would like to see the opportunity for people to follow their interests. For example, something along the lines of an educational program, if they'd like one, to be able to go to school while they're getting a paycheck, and being able to feed their family, much like GI's did after World War II. And not necessarily ...There it seems to me that there's gonna be a mismatch in a number of jobs that were highly unionized under the, the dirty fossil fuels compared with the jobs that are gonna be available in a clean energy economy. Once a solar panel plant is built, the operations and the maintenance of it is very small. Same with the wind farms. There are the numbers of jobs that are gonna be generated in those clean industries are not the same as in the old industries. But there are gonna be things that we need to adapt to climate change. For example, I think that there's gonna be, and the Pollin Report says this, there's gonna be a big need for civil engineering as you need to raise the levels of highways and raise the levels of ports and so on and so forth. There's gonna be a lot of civil engineering type work that needs to be done. Now we're not qualified to be civil engineers without, you know, going to four-year college and maybe more, but we are probably qualified with some training to be surveyors, which, you know, is they make, the surveyors make somewhat less than we do now, but it's a comparable and their jobs that are, you know, good family supporting jobs. So we need to have plans like that to transition our workers. Some people may want to open up their own business, so there should be some support for that if that's what they want try. But the way it's all going now, it's, it's totally chaotic. No plan for anything.
Catalina de Onís:And you were talking about ways that this needs to happen, and you've actively participated in these efforts for folks, workers retooling their skills and educational opportunities. Can you mention one or two examples of how you've directly worked to create these pathways for and with workers?
David Campbell:It wasn't really related to just transition, but when 1997 a company called then called Tosco bought Unocal. Unocal is today the Unocal refinery in Los Angeles is now the P66 Refinery. But that was the first, it was an asset sale, so that meant that Tosco only bought the refinery itself, they didn't buy the contract and all that stuff. Because we had more than 50% of the employees, they, Tosco, had to recognize the union, but we had to start negotiations from with a blank page. When they came in, Tosco let one third of the employees go. And it was totally out of line of seniority. They kept a few people with disabilities, but most of them with disabilities got let go. They kept a few old workers, but most of them that were older got let go. So we started self-help groups at the local level, and we kept the union hall open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we had a kitchen where we provided, you know, cheap comfort. And, and so it's a place for them to give each other emotional support, which is very important when workers get laid off and lose their jobs because it's very isolating, particularly if you're a shift worker and you've been a shift worker for say 20 years and you're rotating nights to days twice a week. It's a very isolating lifestyle. So the workers form these self-help groups, and among the self-help groups was one group that focused on getting jobs as telephone linemen, another group focused on getting certified as water treatment operators, another group focused on getting certified as welding inspectors, they successfully placed themselves, but they were given a chance to.
Catalina de Onís:This is very hard work that you and others do each day, Dave. And it takes a lot of strategizing and thinking about different tactics. And in another conversation, I was really impressed about how you talked about the importance of having fun or this element of play to challenge violent power and to re-enliven movement energies. Can you provide an example and explain why you think this effort matters for organizing and building interconnected worker and environmental justice power?
David Campbell:At least as an organizer, I have found that humor is a very effective weapon. The other side doesn't really have a good way to respond to humor. They can act like a spoil sport and you can declare victory on that, or they can laugh with you and you can declare victory on that. Either way, you win. So that's why I like to use humor as an organizing tool. The other advantage is that humor undermines the air of authority that people in power try to portray, and it's kind of revolutionary, if you will. It gets the average person thinking, well, uh, what authority, you know. Yeah, and I think the other thing is that people want to have, I always try to make our actions fun for the members, and there's a political point to it, but I still want it to be fun. People are attracted to having a good time and having some laughs about life. Life can be very difficult and tense, and laughter is a way to kind of release that, and it's also a bit of collective therapy, I think.
Catalina de Onís:Yes, thank you very much, Dave. Is there anything else you'd like to add as we wrap up our conversation today?
David Campbell:Well, not really. I'll probably think of something five minutes later, but ...
Catalina de Onís:Well, we can continue the conversation another time. Thanks so much, Dave, for sharing these important insights and experiences with us. We've been listening to a conversation with JTA board member and United Steel workers Union organizer Dave Campbell. Among other topics, we've been discussing how workers need to be able to collectively and democratically control the process of phase outs and phase ins of different industries for just transition, as they're indispensable guides in this process. They are on the front lines, they're most impacted, and they know their work best. And also, Dave shared some important insights on the role of humor, fun, and laughter as a form of relief and release and this shared experience, a collective therapy to use Dave's language. I'm JTA Communications and Training Associate, Catalina de Onís. We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Just Transition Alliance Podcast, where we center the experiences of frontline workers and fenceline communities united for justice. Until next time.