250 North Slope Oil Workers Vote to Join Steelworkers Union

About 250 ConocoPhillips oil field workers on Alaska's North Slope voted to join the United Steelworkers union, delivering what a National Labor Relations Board official described as a "blowout" victory that left company representatives dumbstruck, according to the USW.

Of 220 ballots cast, 165 workers voted to form a union associated with the Kuparuk and Alpine fields, NLRB data shows. The workers voted to form two unions in total. The USW put the broader organizing drive at 267 workers united across several remote North Slope sites.

The vote came roughly a year and a half after ConocoPhillips began cutting wages, slashing benefits and eliminating jobs, according to USW International President Roxanne D. Brown, who wrote about the victory in a post on the union's Stronger Together blog. The company had also disclosed in September that it planned to lay off up to a quarter of its global workforce, about 3,250 employees, and acknowledged in October that layoff notices had begun reaching some North Slope workers specifically.

Bryan Goode, who works at the Alpine oil field, a site accessible mainly by bush plane and ice road, helped lead the organizing drive. "We'd had enough," he said. "We needed some means of protection. We wanted more of a voice." Goode was blunt about the source of his frustration: "Without us, there is no ConocoPhillips," he said, describing his disgust that the company bragged about stock buybacks and dividends while cutting the workers who actually produced the oil.

Organizing 267 people scattered across remote Arctic worksites was itself a formidable task. Workers live at far-flung sites during their shifts and commute to permanent homes during off weeks. Goode's own home is in Seattle. "We couldn't get together," he said, noting that half the workforce lives outside Alaska entirely. A co-worker, Will Kholeif, built a website to support the effort, and Goode worked through a network of contacts developed over decades across multiple North Slope employers.

ConocoPhillips spokesperson Megan Olson confirmed the outcome in an emailed statement: "A majority of the North Slope operations and maintenance employees who participated in the union election voted to join the United Steelworkers." The company said it will bargain in good faith over wages, benefits and other terms.

ConocoPhillips Alaska is the leading oil producer in the state and reported net income of $1.3 billion last year, a figure that workers like Goode found difficult to square with wage cuts and benefit reductions on the slope. Workers also cited job security, safety and health protections, higher living costs and industry ownership changes as reasons they sought union representation.

Brown framed the victory as a template. The workers, she wrote, overcame whiteout conditions, wind chills reaching 100 below zero, 12- to 18-hour shifts and a workforce split across remote sites and multiple states to claim their power, showing, in her words, how workers can fight back against unfair treatment on the job. Contract bargaining with ConocoPhillips is the next step.