Features the other press e Barbara K. Adamski e opfeatures@netscape.net Protests at Esso Oriana Evans OP Contributor I was filling up my car at New Westminster's 8th Street and 6th Avenue Esso station, gas card in hand, ready to pay the equiva- lence of a week’s worth of groceries, when I heard honking. One honk followed another as cars drove by the corner. Looking over to the origin of the noise, I found the instigators of all the commotion. There stood Dave and three of his friends, each holding up a hand-written cardboard sign with “Esso doesn’t honour its payroll” in bold, black letters. Dave and his drive-by supporters don’t like Esso, or rather they don’t agree with the ethics of this large Fortune 500 oil and gas company. It has been five months since Dave and nine other co-workers received their last paycheque from the former owner of this New Westminster Esso site. Those paycheques were all returned NSE. The ten employees are protesting the lack of co-operation from Esso in regards to reimbursement for the bad cheques. Dave has worked for the former site owner for over five years, and says he has a good personal relationship with him. In pre- vious times, Dave has had cheques from this employer returned NSE only to have the money reimbursed to him the very next day. The former franchise owner has told Dave that he will pay them, as soon as Esso returns the letter of credit he gave them when he first took over the franchise. Esso can hold a letter of credit for up to 120 days from the date franchise ownership is terminated. After five months, Dave is still waiting for the money owed to him and the other employees. “What is $12,000 for payroll when they make billions and billions?” Dave asked. The Esso area representative told Dave that the issue of pay- ment is “between you and (the former owner), not me and you.” She refused to tell Dave if the letter of credit had even been returned. Maybe for a Fortune 500 company with second quarter net earnings of $514 million in 2003, $12,000 is not reason enough for a protest. But for Dave and his friends, the money would go a long way to buy groceries, pay rent, and maybe even gas for their cars. And after so many years of wear- ing an Esso uniform, they at least have the right to know whether the former employer is hiding behind the big corpora- tion or the big corporation is hiding behind the former owner. “Esso doesn't treat their retailers right,” said Dave. “They just ae Page 18 « http://www.otherpress.ca want money, money, money, and that’s all they want and all they care about.” I apologize to Dave because he seems like a really nice guy, and I think my gas card and I are partly responsible for his trou- bles. The more I contribute to Esso’s wealth, the more insignif- icant a few payroll cheques become to a global oil and gas con- glomerate. In 1998, PBS News Hour reported the merger of Exxon and Mobil into ExxonMobil as creating “the largest private oil com- pany in the world. They are the two biggest pieces of what was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911.” ExxonMobil, as it is now known, owns 70 percent of Imperial Oil Ltd., “which is well known for its chain of Esso gas stations,” according to . Imperial Oil's —_-website, , claims “(Esso is) part of the largest gaso- line-retailing network in Canada, with more than 2,000 service stations from coast to coast.” But that is small potatoes when compared to ExxonMobil “which operates in almost 200 coun- tries and territories around the globe.” Twelve thousand is enough reason for Dave to stage a protest, but there is another protest against Esso, slated for November 1, that has to do with money and the environment. Dave Ebner, of the Globe and Mail, stated in his column of October 14 that, “[ExxonMobil...] has called the Kyoto Protocol a ‘seri- ous mistake.’ It says renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have lacklustre potential.” The website is recruiting activists for a day of protest against Esso for its lack of support for the Kyoto protocol, as well as its refusal to invest in renewable resources. For the sec- ond year, the protesters will be targeting the most accessible link in the petroleum chain and are doing so with the Friends of Stopesso blessing. The most notable of supporters for this national day of action are: Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Sierra Club of Canada. The complete list can be found on the Stopesso website. Come November, others may find themselves in the same sit- uation as Dave, but for different reasons. They might be hold- ing a cardboard sign in front of an Esso station in order to persuade the public to boycott Esso stations, a mes- sage that would leave Esso’s pocketbook a little | lighter, just as Esso has left Dave's. October 29, 2003 Photo by Angela Blattmann