As the state navigates the energy transition, it needs a clear and comprehensive plan to provide real support for refinery workers and communities affected by closures.
“I have a lot of concerns about what will happen to the workers at Valero if it shuts down, based on the experiences of workers at Marathon Martinez, and the fact that the permanent workforce at Valero is not represented by a union,” Hammerling says.
An unlikely alliance of labor and environmental-justice groups is working to ensure the region is prepared for a future without big oil.
Last month, officials with Valero Energy announced they would be closing the company’s 170,000 barrels-per-day oil refinery in Benicia, California—a city of 25,000 residents, east of San Francisco. The plant, spread across 900 acres, employs over 400 workers, and is scheduled to close in April 2026.
“We do not currently have the plans in place to ensure a just transition, but we have learned a lot over the last couple of years about and learned from workers and communities who’ve been affected by closure so far about what a transition can and should look like and how to actually make it happen,” said Jessie Hammerling.
Researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center recently concluded that “Contra Costa County and California as a whole must begin to prepare for widespread refinery transition.”
A study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that even a year after closure, a quarter of the workers were still unemployed. Those that were employed earned a median of $12 less than their previous jobs.
A 2023 study from the University of California Berkeley Labor Center found the majority of unionized oil workers laid off from a refinery in Northern California in 2020 were able to find new work — mostly in the petroleum industry — after the facility suddenly shuttered, but took pay cuts amounting to nearly a quarter of their previous salaries. Only 43 percent of their new jobs were unionized.
“These are traditionally male-dominated jobs, and so they’re subject to the same forces as the rest of the economy that make it hard for women to enter” and the best way to solve the problem is through apprenticeships, said Carol Zabin, a labor economist at the UC Berkeley Labor Center who has studied the solar industry.
“We don’t really have a great plan for building high-quality, unionized jobs in the clean economy in the industrial sector,” said Sam Appel, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center who wrote a report finding that around $13 billion out of $32 billion in state climate investments isn’t connected to workforce standards.
