Offshore Industry Liaison Committee
The Offshore Industry Liason Comittee (OILC) is a trade union set up in the United Kingdom in response to the deaths of 167 workers on the Piper Alpha platform on 6th July 1988.
(Later that year (September 22nd) another worker was killed when the Ocean Odyssey rig had a blowout after a series of criminally irresponsible decisions by the rig's management.)
The OILC has a website at .
The present 2004 General Secretary of the OILC is Jake Molloy. The previous (and first) General Secretary was Ronald ('Ronnie') MacDonald.
The OILC has always been controversial, partly because it's very existance has been a challenge to the American-dominated and extremely anti-union oil industry, but also because the establishment of a new trade union was a great threat to established unions, who perceived an implicit criticism of their previous failures to constrain the behaviours of the oil companies. This latter reason is poorly founded - the 167 corpses of our colleagues were a very EXPLICT criticism of the back-biting and factional in-fighting that typified the response of established trade unions to the first 20 years of the UK offshore industry. Since the OILC had to establish itself in the teeth of opposition from the Conservative government's anti-union laws, and opposition from the established trade unions, entry of the OILC into the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was prevented. What they probably haven't noticed is that after the first couple of years of the OILC's existence, we haven't been asking to enter.
