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Chapter 28: Corporation Personnel Department and

Chevron Overseas Petroleum, Inc.

Step by step, I continued to try to ensure fair and equitable treat-
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one block at a time. For example, if local schools were inadequate over-
seas or, in some cases, covered only elementary grades, it was often nec-
essary for children of foreign service employees to be sent elsewhere,
usually to the States, to continue their education. Chevron was paying
only $600 per year for students who had to leave their overseas homes
under such circumstances. The actual cost to the employee might be
$1,000 to $2,000 above the assistance provided by the company. I ar-
gued that, since it had been agreed that an employee in foreign service
should be equated to a domestic employee, then the company should
pay the full cost for a child sent away to school. Since we were not com-
paring ourselves to people who were sending their children to elite prep
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there was an association of private secondary schools in the Midwest,
which seemed like a reasonable yardstick. We proposed that employees
be reimbursed for actual school costs up to a maximum of the average
charges by these Midwest schools. No one was able to challenge the
fairness of that yardstick and I was able to get the company’s policy on
educational assistance to be adopted on that basis. Since we equated
housing costs overseas against U.S. housing costs, and U.S. housing
costs included property taxes to support local public schools, the equity
of my proposal carried the day.

Chevron subscribed to a service that regularly surveyed hous-
ing costs and living costs at the various locations where we had for-
eign service employees. Many other oil companies and other American
companies operating internationally had the same need, and therefore
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