Labor leaders convened by the Climate Jobs National Resource Center have spent years working to ensure workers can develop lifelong, unionized careers in clean energy. Their efforts received a major boost from Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, but the Trump administration is now trying to slow the clean energy transition and attack offshore wind, labor leaders said.
The movement has roots in New York after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which prompted unions to realize that climate change would hit workers first and hardest, according to Mike Fishman, president and executive director of the Climate Jobs National Resource Center. At the time, climate advocacy groups focused primarily on emissions reduction without centering worker welfare. Fishman and other labor leaders decided to build political power to ensure any transition to clean energy would create high-quality, unionized jobs.
In 2019, after pressure from labor-led coalitions, then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo adopted an ambitious goal to build nine gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2035. In 2021, the state secured strong labor and equity provisions for renewable energy, including prevailing wage requirements and project labor agreements for large projects. Those wins helped shift union perspectives on wind projects, officials said.
The successful New York model was replicated elsewhere. In 2020, labor leaders formed the Climate Jobs National Resource Center to help groups in other states build similar coalitions. In 2021 and 2022, new coalitions secured support for unionized green jobs in Texas and strong labor standards for clean energy in Connecticut, Illinois, Rhode Island and Maine.
The Biden administration's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided new incentives for clean-energy projects meeting prevailing-wage and apprenticeship requirements. Labor leaders said the law marked the first time labor standards were attached to major climate investment legislation. Now they are prepared to defend those gains against the incoming Trump administration, according to labor officials.
