See a real-life example.

The union's offer to Nabors for a 15% wage increase and $2.50 added to a worker's pension plan for each hour worked was turned down. Nabors' response was "due to the current business climate hands do not warrant any change in wages or benefits". 

Read the facts and determine the truth for yourself.

Nabors Industries is the biggest land-drilling contractor in the world. The company employs nearly 18,000 people and has annual revenues exceeding $2 billion. In 1995, Nabors' Alaska employees began joining together in a union to address safety and pay concerns. While workers have taken pay cuts in the last two decades, Nabors CEO Eugene Isenberg was paid $126 million over the last two years. LIUNA: Get Active: Nabors Alaska 

For the nine months ended 9/30/03, revenues rose 23% to $1.39 billion. Net income rose 35% to $127.4 million. NBR: Profile for NABORS INDS LTD

Nabors said its outlook for the fourth quarter and full year 2003 remains in line with consensus estimates. Analysts expect the company to earn 43 cents per share in the fourth quarter and $1.25 for 2003. Nabors Q3 EPS beats Wall Street's view

The five highest compensated Nabors executives received option grants with a total present value at grant date of $137.3 million. Those five executives hold 74.2 percent of all unexercised options granted under current equity plans.  Laborers’ Union Leads Effort  Read what administrators for Nabors earned. NBR Officers and Directors

Nabors is seeking shareholder approval to issue an additional 3.5 million shares of common stock for the purpose of providing stock-based compensation to employees. How much stock-based compensation do you hands receive?  Union asking Nabors shareholders to reject employee stock plan

How are the Unions trying to help? 

Campaign Launched:September 03, 2003
Employees of Nabors Alaska face life-threatening hazards on top of the world's most hostile climate. Employees have suffered chemical burns, severed limbs and death working for the world's largest land-drilling firm. More than seven years ago they began their effort to improve their lives and help Nabors be a more responsible company by organizing with the Laborers' Union -- but Nabors continues to ignore their efforts, refusing to negotiate a contract even though a majority of workers have voted to join together in the union. Meanwhile, the injuries continue.
Take Action: Fight for Nabors Alaska Laborers 
Read the statement a Nabor worker made to a Congressional Committee

In an effort to rein in executive pay at Nabors Industries, Ltd., the Laborers International Union of North America said today it is asking fellow shareholders to vote against the company's proposed 2003 Employee Stock Plan at its June 3rd annual meeting in Houston.
PR Newswire: Laborers' Union Leads Effort to .to Rein in Excessive Executive Pay at Nabors Industries
Union asking Nabors shareholders to reject employee stock plan

What is the real reason for Nabors move to Bermuda?
Mr. Isenberg, the CEO of Nabors Industries, a company planning on moving has been paid $126 million, including profits from the sale of stock options over the last two years. His company has $2 billion in annual revenues. The $126 million is enough for him to do many of the things he and his family could not do if they earned less money. There are lots more things they'll be able to do following the move. That is because his contract pays him 6 percent of the company's cash flow. By reducing taxes, the company's cash flow will increase significantly and so will Mr. Isenberg's salary. The increased cash flow should cause share prices to increase, thus enabling Mr. Isenberg to make dozens of millions more on his stock options, the exact number of millions depending on how high the price of the stock goes.
Windfall for Executives, But Not for Shareholders 

Nabors Industries, the largest oildrilling services company in the United States, is one corporation preparing to use the tax-avoidance techniques. It has proposed to its shareholders an incorporation as a Bermuda company that would have its legal residence in Barbados. To qualify the company as a resident of Barbados, the Nabors CEO, Eugene Isenberg, simply has to meet with his directors once a year on that island, experts said. Because of the tax treaty, dollars can be moved untaxed from the company's taxable American pocket to its Barbados pocket, from which 99 % of the money can then move on to tax-free Bermuda and remain in the hands of the company. The company is then free to invest the money anywhere.
New offshore maneuver sidesteps U.S. corporate tax 

    At Nabors Industries of Houston, the world's largest operator of land-based oil drilling rigs, Mr. Isenberg could see his pay rise by tens of millions of dollars each year if shareholders approve on June 14 his plan to incorporate in Bermuda and establish the company's legal residency in Barbados, said Brian Foley, an executive compensation lawyer who analyzed Mr. Isenberg's employment contract.
    Mr. Isenberg is already well paid. Over the past two years, he made more than $126 million, including profits from the sale of stock options, from a company with $2 billion in annual revenues.
    That is partly because his contract pays him 6 percent of the company's cash flow — a measure of profits before certain charges are subtracted — once cash flow exceeds a certain amount. The company's No. 2 executive gets 2 percent of this cash flow.
    The company expects the Bermuda move to increase cash flow significantly. Mr. Foley and five other compensation lawyers said that beginning in the year after the Bermuda move, the related payments to Mr. Isenberg and his deputy also should begin rising.
    What is more, Mr. Foley said, details of the Nabors stock option plan indicate that Mr. Isenberg will make an additional $100 million on the exercise of his 10.3 million options of Nabors shares, currently at $42.99, rise by $9.72. The company has said that lower taxes and higher cash flow should increase share prices, but has not said by how much.
Mr. Isenberg owns 1.1 million shares outright, but it is not known how many of these are in retirement and charitable accounts, which would shield his gains from taxes. Mr. Isenberg declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the company.
Officers May Gain More Than Investor in Move 

    Some days, I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or go in for a brain scan.
    That's how I felt when I read about the jaw-dropping corporate chutzpah of an outfit named Nabors Industries, physically located in Houston. I say "physically located" because Nabors is one of these notorious corporate abdicators that have legally uprooted themselves from America and formally reincorporated in the tax havens of Bermuda and Barbados.
    Thanks to a slick loophole slipped into our country's bizarre tax laws, Nabors Inc. can simply maintain a mail drop and a legal letterhead in these offshore islands and -- hocus pocus! -- escape paying taxes, since technically, it's no longer an American corporation. Last year alone, this Bermuda shell game allowed Nabors to dodge $10 million in taxes owed to the red, white, and blue.
    But now this fair-weather patriot suddenly wants Uncle Sam to treat it like an American corporation! Not for tax purposes, of course, but for the purpose of getting some shipbuilding business that is reserved by law for U.S. companies. Nabors wants to have its cake in America, but eat it in Bermuda. A family-owned shipping firm in Louisiana that has to compete with Nabors calls it "grossly unfair that we pay taxes for certain services, and this big corporation goes foreign and they get the benefit of the same services without paying for them."
    Yet, Nabors has a hotshot high-dollar Washington lobbyist trying to ram through a behind-the-scenes law that would let it both abandon America and take American business from taxpaying American companies. The lobbyist even is disdainful and insulting to the taxpaying companies that oppose Nabors' power play, saying, "Those are the guys we like to call the whiners."
    Well, the lobbyist and executives of Nabors Industries are the guys I like to call treasonous greedheads! Why would Congress even consider helping them take business from family-owned American companies?
The Austin Chronicle: Playing America for a Sucker..

Several Unions have offered help to Nabors Hands. These Unions want to see you get a fair contract. Call all or any of the Union people below to let them know that you want a fair contract. Ask them why your fight for a contract with Nabors is important to them.