Summary
Consolidated Refineries, Limited (CRL) owned and operated the Haifa oil refinery, a subsidiary of what was then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and later became British Petroleum; its refinery workforce was one of the main arenas of Arab-Jewish labour interaction in 1943-48 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3959).
Details
- Construction of the Haifa refinery began late in 1938, at a site about seven kilometers north of the center of Haifa, on the Haifa-Acre highway, not far from the railway workshops; the refinery would allow processed Iraqi crude to be used to refuel British warships in the eastern Mediterranean and enhance the position of British oil companies in the world market (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3959).
- Production of refined petroleum products began in 1940, though it was another year before the refinery reached its planned capacity of two million tons; by 1944 its capacity had been expanded to handle some four million tons of crude petroleum a year (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3959).
- By the middle of 1943 the refinery employed about a thousand workers; the Palestine Arab Workers Society had a strong base among the Arab refinery workers, the communist-led Federation of Arab Trade Unions and Labor Societies also had substantial support, and only about thirty Arab refinery workers belonged to the Palestine Labor League; Jews made up only about one-third of the workforce but held a much higher proportion of skilled and clerical jobs, and only half the Jewish refinery workers were Histadrut members (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3961).
- The Haifa Workers’ Council initially sought CRL management recognition as exclusive representative of all the refinery workers; when that bid failed, joint-committee talks with the PAWS and FATULS foundered over the Histadrut’s demand for Jewish-Arab parity, and in spring 1943 the Histadrut’s unilateral dispute won, through Labor Department mediation, the cost of living allowance’s extension and recognition as representative of the Jewish workers (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3963).
- In fall 1945 the PAWS and the Histadrut negotiated jointly with CRL management and won many of the demands of the refinery workers, who now numbered 1,800 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3965).
- In mid-January 1947 a spontaneous strike of hundreds of CRL workers, pressed by Arab Workers’ Congress-influenced workers and the Hashomer Hatza’ir-dominated Jewish workers’ committee, was ended within days by the PAWS; the Arab CRL workers’ committee then met at the local Hashomer Hatza’ir branch rather than PAWS headquarters, and later publicly denounced the PAWS’s high-handedness, undemocratic character, compromises with management and sabotage of petroleum-worker unity; at the end of April 1947 the CRL union formally severed its connections with the PAWS (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3973-3981).
- At the end of 1947 the refinery employed some 1,700 Arab and 270 Jewish manual workers, in addition to 190 Jewish, 110 Arab, and 60 British clerical workers (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 4079). See Haifa oil refinery massacre.
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Haifa, Palestine Arab Workers Society, Histadrut, Iraq Petroleum Company, Haifa oil refinery massacre