What with big news such as the Super Bowl and its advertisements, you may have missed the smaller news that large numbers of American oil workers have walked off the job. They have.

Oil prices are currently in the toilet. That does not bode well for ground-level employees of oil companies, some of whom are bound to be laid off in the near future as the companies try to lower their production to meet demand. At the same time, the United Steelworkers union is negotiating new contracts for thousands of workers in oil refineries, pipelines, and factories. It isn't going well. The union has called its first major strike in 35 years. So far, the strike has spread to "plants accounting for 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity," Bloomberg reports—but "a full walkout of USW workers would threaten to disrupt as much as 64 percent of U.S. fuel output."

Disrupting two-thirds of U.S. fuel output would be just the thing to raise oil prices again. Strikes work!

[Photo: AP]