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Lawmakers take testimony on slope hiring
Representatives of Alaska oil companies who back Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed bill to cut oil taxes as a way to spur production got a chance Sept. 8 to tell state senators how they’re doing hiring Alaskans for jobs on the North Slope.
The Senate Labor and Commerce Committee took testimony on the oil tax bill and invited oil companies, contractors and labor unions to speak at the Anchorage hearing.
The state House narrowly approved the tax measure last session but it stalled in the Senate, where leaders said they did not have the information needed to make a sound decision. Committee Chairman Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, said no decision has been made on including incentives for Alaska hiring in the tax bill.
“We’re just fact-finding,” he said.
Employment on the North Slope is at an all-time high, according to Department of Labor statistics, but “unsettling” information has already emerged, Egan said.
“In 2010, more non-Alaskans were hired than Alaskans for new oil industry jobs in the state,” he said, and some companies operate with 100 percent non-residents.
Good business sense Representatives of ConocoPhillips, BP and Exxon Mobil representatives testified that it makes good business sense to train and hire locally and that they are committed to doing so.
Claire Fitzpatrick, chief financial officer for BP in Alaska, said company policy is to always hire the best candidate for the job but that BP has mostly been able to do that with a qualified Alaskans.
“During the last five years, we’ve consistently employed 80 percent Alaskans in our employee work force of more than 2,000 people,” she said.
To maintain Alaska hire, she said, the company needs a trained pool of workers. BP over the last five years has invested nearly $21 million to develop Alaska education and work training programs, she said.
Repeating a theme common during both hearings, Fitzpatrick said the best way to increase the number of Alaskans employed in the industry is to increase the level of oil field activity, which would create more jobs.
Labor questions statistics AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami told the committee he questioned statistics that had been presented on Alaska hire. Anecdotes from workers make it nearly impossible to trust the methodology or accuracy of industry claims of 75 percent or more resident-hire rates, he said.
Resident hire should be the No. 1 issue in considering whether the tax structure should be changed.
“The bottom line here is jobs for Alaskans,” he said. “This should be the first question answered before going one step further in considering what at this point, I think, can only be referred to as a bill that gives our state’s oil wealth away.”
A smaller tax burden on the industry, he said, does not translate into more barrels of oil produced, but would take a slice out of the $3 billion state capital budget that has provided construction jobs throughout the state, Beltrami said.
“Any state revenues that, let’s say, are diverted out of the state coffers and back into the hands of the oil producers, kills capital budget projects, and the jobs that are associated with those,” he said.
—The Associated Press
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