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WASHINGTON – Two of President Joe Biden’s overriding priorities – tackling climate change and protecting workers – collide as his administration prepares for a green and sweeping restart of the U.S. economy.
Biden’s attempt to move quickly to electric cars, renewables and clean manufacturing highlights lingering tensions between unions and environmentalists, two reliable Democratic constituencies whose interests don’t always converge. Those are the millions of well-paying jobs that underpin America’s middle class, but are concentrated in heavily polluting industries that Biden hopes to eliminate.
The ‘green against blue’ divide focuses as Biden prepares a multibillion-dollar infrastructure and jobs package intended to boost the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, even as his administration pauses on pipelines and some oil and gas drilling projects that offer the promise of high paying jobs.
No one is seriously questioning Biden’s pro-work good faith. After campaigning on the vow to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” he made a dramatic down payment this week by publicly supporting Amazon workers in Alabama who are voting on whether to unionize.
Likewise, most climate hawks couldn’t be happier with Biden’s commitments to aggressively cut greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes and power plants. But efforts to support the nascent green industries needed to achieve this have sometimes come at the expense of workers.
“The clean tech industry as a whole, whether you’re talking about renewable energy or other clean tech, is generally made up of low-wage, non-union jobs – and that needs to change,” said Anna Fendley, director of the regulation at United Steelworkers, which has endorsed Biden and whose members over one million include oil and gas workers.
Take electrical energy. Biden, in an executive order a week after taking office, set a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector to zero by 2035, a lofty goal that requires a rapid ramp-up. wind and solar power. He also wants workers who do so receive the prevailing wages and have the right to join a union.
Here’s the catch: As it is, wind and solar jobs just aren’t that well-paying. A power plant operator, for example, earns an average of $ 79,400 per year, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to $ 46,900 for a solar installer and $ 56,700 for a wind turbine technician.
Overall, it’s still better than the average job available these days for someone looking for work in an economy hampered by a pandemic. But the drop in wages, relative to wages offered for fossil fuel jobs, complicates efforts to find new jobs for those who lose their livelihoods as the United States wipes itself off from dirtier fuels.
One reason may be that almost all wind and solar jobs are not unionized. In facilities that generate electricity from natural gas, 11 percent of workers are unionized and 10 percent are coal. That drops to 6% in wind power production and just 4% in solar power, according to 2020 data from the US Energy and Employment Report, an annual survey.
“Laying a pipeline or becoming a coal miner were not always good jobs. They’ve become good jobs through decades of organizing, ”said Robert Pollin, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and consulted for the Department of Energy. .
Wind and solar jobs are mostly concentrated in the facility, which means there are fewer long-term jobs once the sites are up and running than for oil and gas. And much of the equipment is imported from overseas, including China, rather than made by American workers, energy analysts said.
While the industry has taken shape over the past two decades, wind and solar companies have argued that with high costs and tight profit margins, they cannot grow and replace coal and gas as quickly. if they paid union wages at the same time.
“This argument is false,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which aims to unite labor and environmental groups. He said higher wages are not a major factor in how quickly renewable energy can develop, as the projects are capital intensive with most of the budget spent on purchasing solar panels. and wind turbines – not labor. “Even if you pay workers a salary to support their families, it won’t really increase the overall cost of the project.”
Likewise, Biden wants Americans to move away from their gas-guzzling vehicles to electric cars and trucks, targeting the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States: the tailpipe. Since Biden took office, General Motors has announced plans to go all-electric by 2035, and other major automakers have taken similar steps.
For workers who have relied for decades on skilled, well-paying auto jobs, this change creates serious uncertainties in their future. This is because electric vehicles, which use simpler electric motors rather than multi-speed transmissions and combustion engines, might require significantly fewer workers to build the same number of cars. The United Auto Workers union has previously said up to 35,000 jobs could be at stake.
All electric vehicles made in the United States are currently either made with a non-union workforce, like Tesla’s, or with most imported parts, failing Biden’s “American made” test. Even the core of electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, are largely outsourced to other companies who supply them to automakers, but may not pay the same salaries and benefits.
“Electric vehicles have some of the lowest overall content in the United States and Canada,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry at the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research.
Biden’s decision to cut the Keystone XL pipeline also caused early tensions with some elements of organized labor. TC Energy Corp., the Canadian company that aims to build the controversial pipeline, said it laid off 1,000 people after Biden’s decision in January.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, which endorsed Biden, criticized the president for not preparing other jobs for these same workers when he rejected the pipeline, although Trumka and other top executives unions have also welcomed Biden’s climate and employment plans.
As the Biden administration prepares to focus on the jobs and infrastructure package after the completion of the pandemic relief bill, lawmakers and labor groups are already considering how best to ensure the dual purpose of the president to protect workers and the climate does not materialize. everyone’s costs.
A sweeping climate bill unveiled by the chairmen of House Democratic committees this week that would demand an increase in the use of renewable energy included a provision requiring the money spent to go to entrepreneurs who don’t pay ” not less than the prevailing local wage ”- a rate set by the Ministry of Labor. Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Told NBC News this week that she plans to reintroduce a bill that would provide Medicare and free higher education to unemployed coal workers.
Last month, Biden met with key union leaders on infrastructure and pledged that good jobs should not be sacrificed. And Gina McCarthy, her home climate czar, told Vox in a recent interview that “well-paying union” jobs would be at the heart of the package, adding that “President Biden doesn’t think it’s a secondary consideration.”
“Biden has the playbook,” said Walsh of the BlueGreen Alliance. “Now let’s see them do it.”
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