Social protection

Remuneration

The portion of the world's oil and gas workforce that is organized and that engages in collective bargaining may be smaller than in many other industries. However, pay and working conditions in these sectors tend to be above average, in large part because the workforce employed in these sectors is more qualified and better trained. The industry's early development in North America, for example, took place in a relatively union-free environment, and that approach was later extended to other countries. Some of the regions rich in oil and gas resources do not have a tradition of collective bargaining. The temporary and migratory character of certain "upstream" (exploration and production) activities lead to high staff turnover, which discourages organization, as does the high proportion of work (up to two-thirds) that is carried out not by oil companies directly but by contractors of various kinds -- geophysical surveyors, drilling companies, construction enterprises, maintenance crews, and others. Some countries where the main oil companies have traditionally been state-owned represent exceptions to this trend, and have had strong unions. Generally speaking, refining has a higher rate of unionization than the upstream part of the industry. Since refineries are fixed, ongoing establishments, they have a more stable workforce and thus lend themselves better to being organized.

Table 3 (Average Hourly Wages (£) in the Oil Industry in the United Kingdom, 2003) shows average hourly wage levels for the oil industry as a whole and compares these figures to average wages for the manufacturing sector and for all industries in the United Kingdom. It also reports differences in wages by occupation.

Similarly, in South Africa, workers in the oil industry have been considered as the highest income earners in South Africa (See Table 4. Wage comparison of oil industry and metal and engineering industry in South Africa, 2002-03). A large oil company states that the maximum salary earned in the bargaining unit is R16,890 per month and the average monthly salary R8,147. Unions argue that although oil workers belong to a group of "highly paid" workers they have not yet reached the top and therefore try to increase their wages.  The table also shows that in 2003 oil workers received on average a 9-per cent pay increase, more than other major economic groups.

Comparative wage rates from a few selected countries with available data series can be seen in Table 5.