First there was the “Miracle in Trainer.”
This morning we are reporting on the “Miracle in South Philly.”
What are we, doing a remake of “Pocket Full of Miracles”?
No, what is happening is saving jobs. Lots of them. At least 400 in Trainer. Now another 850 in South Philly, with the promise of maybe hundreds more to come.
They said it couldn’t be done, that it was impossible. I know. I was one of them who sat in a union hall in Linwood and seriously wondered about the future of refining in this region after Sunoco announced it was getting out of the business, and Conoco followed suit two weeks later.
That was last September. A lot has happened in the last 10 months.
Call it a miracle if you like.
But a lot of people are going to work in this region today in large part because of two men who would not listen to everyone who told them it could not be done.
Instead they decided to tilt at windmills.
Meet the Delco version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Denis Stephano and Jim Savage knew the odds were stacked against them. They decided to enter the fray anyhow. Or maybe they simply refused to let a way of life die.
Stephano heads United Steelworkers Union Local 10-324, representing the workers at the former ConocoPhillips refinery in Trainer.
Savage likewise is the head of United Steelworkers Union Local 10-1, which represents workers at Sunoco’s South Philly refinery. A lot of those workers live here in Delco, as does Savage.
ConocoPhillips and Sunoco. They are two more icons of Delaware County industry that are disappearing.
It was feared that more than 1,000 good-paying union jobs would go under with them.
The companies are going; the jobs are not.
You can thank Savage and Stephano for that.
Delta Air Lines bought the Conoco refinery in Trainer and will operate it under a subsidiary, Monroe Energy. They will produce jet fuel.
Yesterday Sunoco and the Carlyle Group finalized a deal that would set up a new company, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, to run the sprawling South Philly refinery.
That’s a long way from last September, when Sunoco vowed it would seek buyers for both their South Philly and Marcus Hook refineries, and shut them down if none could be found.
Conoco must have liked the way that sounded. Two weeks later they announced they would do the same in Trainer, only they were going Sunoco one better. They were immediately shutting down operations at the Trainer site.
Eventually, the workforces from both refineries were laid off.
The silence that came from the companies for months was deafening. They insisted they were doing everything they could to find potential buyers.
Stephano and Savage weren’t so sure. They joined us a for a couple of our ‘Live From the Newsroom’ live-stream Internet broadcasts and laid out the financial motives for why the companies were getting out of refining, and why they might not necessarily be in all that big a hurry to find a buyer.
They went to Harrisburg. They went to Washington, D.C. Several times.
They kept hammering away at politicians. They forced them to hold public hearings.
They would not let a way of life die.
This week a lot of those men and women whose way of life was in jeopardy are going back to work.
And they can thank two men for it.
Denis ‘Don Quixote’ Stephano and Jim ‘Sancho Panza’ Savage.
Everyone else thought it was an impossible dream.
They proved otherwise.
In Trainer and South Philly, the dream is still alive. In Marcus Hook, it’s a work in progress.
Think it can’t happen?
Don’t bet against these guys.
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