Union Hopes

OF ALL THE INTERESTED OBSERVERS of the bid by St. Louis oil man Paul A. Novelly to take over Baltimore's Crown Central Petroleum, perhaps none was more overjoyed than the members of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union, or PACE.

PACE has been in an increasingly bitter fight with Crown and its CEO, Henry A. Rosenberg, since the company locked out union members at its two Texas refineries in 1996. While contract talks have never gotten off the ground, the union and its allies have been on a corporate campaign that resembles a kind of labor jihad. In churches all around Baltimore, fliers and posters criticizing Crown for its union-busting are prominently displayed. The campaign has gotten the support of Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and various other labor, civil rights and religious groups.

What cheered PACE the most about the Novelly bid was his statement, in a letter to Crown's board, about the union fight. Any merger, he said, would rely on the "satisfactory resolution of the boycott against Crown and its subsidiary by the [PACE] Union."

(c) The Washington Post, November 22, 1999