Dems’ climate measure ties tax credits to prevailing wage, apprenticeship

September 22, 2022 by

Matt Campanario, executive director of the Carpenters Training Institute, leads Sen. Tina Smith on a tour of the LJ Shosten Training Center in St. Paul, which houses the union’s pile driver and millwright apprenticeship programs.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, promises the most aggressive action to combat climate change in U.S. history, a $369 billion investment that aims to reduce carbon emissions by 40% this decade.

But what most excites some union leaders about the IRA are long-sought provisions that will ensure the transition to a cleaner-energy economy creates and sustains union jobs – and taps into the job-training capacity of unions’ registered apprenticeship programs.

In a win for Building Trades unions, businesses looking to claim tax credits available under the IRA must commit to paying prevailing wages and employing a minimum number of registered apprentices on their jobsites.

The requirements apply to most tax credits that were greatly expanded by the historic legislation, which Democratic majorities spent months shepherding through Congress.

The tax credits will spark private-sector construction of energy-efficient commercial buildings, housing and electric vehicle charging stations, as well as investments in energy sources outside of fossil fuels.

An analysis released by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst projects the IRA’s climate and energy investments will create 9 million jobs over the next decade.

By insisting on strong labor provisions, said Adam Duininck, director of government affairs for the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, Biden and other lawmakers ensured those investments will create good-paying jobs for skilled American workers.

“The expanded tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act will benefit businesses that pay prevailing wages and hire our apprentices,” Duininck said. “Paying workers prevailing wages will further support our communities where workers live and spend their money. This will give local businesses and our public services like education, public safety and well-maintained infrastructure the financial backing they should be receiving from hard working, middle-class workers.

“Our communities miss out on billions of tax dollars by unethical business practices of dishonest contractors. It is great to see support for those who conduct business in a manner that benefits people rather than lining the pockets of only a few individuals.”

Carpenters apprentice Amanda Heiser tells Smith recently passed infrastructure and climate bills “definitely provide a more stable future” for apprentices like her.

The IRA also includes penalties for firms that pledge to pay prevailing wages but don’t follow through, requiring them to make workers whole – plus interest.

Meanwhile, industrial unions hailed domestic content requirements included in the IRA, which will encourage the use of American-made batteries, solar and wind components and other technologies on clean energy projects.

The requirements will stimulate job growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector, said Jason Walsh, director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which brings together unions and environmental groups.

“Few pieces of legislation this century have come close to such sweeping job creation potential,” Walsh said. “This bill’s investments offer an opportunity to support and create good union jobs and for workers and communities to reap the economic gains of the clean economy.”

For the Biden administration, the IRA delivers – again – on a campaign promise to make union jobs the focus of its economic policy.

A $1 trillion infrastructure law, which Biden signed in November 2021, is already creating work for union tradespeople in Minnesota. Over 100 projects statewide have tapped into $1.4 billion in federal funding available through the bill so far, including a $22 million project at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Prevailing-wage rates are set by the federal government and vary by location. The rates reflect the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in that area.

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Cutting-edge geothermal system keeps Local 455 training center cool

April 4, 2022 by

Tony Poole, St. Paul Steamfitters and Pipefitters Local 455’s business manager, explains how a geothermal system cools the union’s Apprenticeship Training Center in St. Paul.

At its Apprenticeship Training Center in St. Paul, Steamfitters and Pipefitters Local 455 prepares the next generation of union members to work in a changing energy landscape. But the union’s training center itself stands as a testament to the potential for emerging energy technologies to create jobs in the pipe trades for generations to come.

Last summer, Local 455 used a newly installed, cutting-edge geothermal system to cool the facility, located off L’Orient Street and Maryland Avenue. Despite running on a limited capacity while ironing out some mechanical issues, the new system cut the union’s cooling costs by 85%, according to an analysis facilitated by Xcel Energy.

“We think it’s probably going to be the future of cooling,” Local 455 Business Manager Tony Poole said. “It virtually provides our building with free air conditioning. The only costs that we pay are for the electricity to run the pumps that cycle water through the building.”

Poole projected the union will recover the costs of installing the geothermal system within seven years of bringing it online.

“We were looking to promote clean-energy projects that pipefitters and steamfitters work on, so we decided to put a geothermal energy system into our training center and showcase it,” Poole said. “It’s good for reducing greenhouse gases and emissions, but it’s also good to promote the work we do in the clean-energy field.”

Initially, Local 455 considered a traditional geothermal system that would have required digging some 70 wells on the property – at the temporary expense of parking space.

Instead, the union connected with a Minnesota-based company that has pioneered a new kind of geothermal technology, one that embeds a heat exchanger into the aquifer. The pump cycles 52-degree water into a hydraulic cooling system throughout building.

Water enters the training center’s cooling system at 52 degrees and typically exits a degree or two warmer.

Just four wells are enough to cool the 100,000-square-foot facility.

“We’re not taking any water out of the aquifer,” Poole explained. “We’re just using the temperature of the water in the aquifer to cool the water coming in the building.”

The technology is so new that Local 455 needed a variance from Minnesota’s Department of Health before installing it. The union hopes that data collected from the site will help determine whether the geothermal system becomes part of the state’s regular permitting process.

“This is the first building of its kind to use this technology in the world that we’re aware of,” Poole said. “We wanted to be on the forefront of this, and we are.”

The local union isn’t being shy about showing off its new system, either. Local 455 welcomes local and state officials and politicians to tour the facility and learn more about the hydraulic cooling system – in the hopes that the pipe-heavy geothermal approach gets more attention as lawmakers look to invest in and encourage green energy solutions.

“Everybody talks about wind, everybody talks about solar because those are things people can see and understand,” Poole said. “People need to be talking about geothermal, and things like carbon capture and clean hydrogen. Our members want to hear elected officials talking about those technologies.

“All the piping throughout this building is what we work with every day as pipefitters.”

The geothermal cooling system may be just the start of a clean-energy makeover at Local 455’s training hall. Poole said the union has already removed 26 natural-gas-powered rooftop cooling units, installed when the building opened in 2015. That frees up space for a new kind of heating system.

“We’re actually working on quotes with a contractor right now to get thermal solar panels for our roof,” Poole said. “The technology puts a coil inside the thermal panel, which heats the water, and it could supplement the heat from our boilers.”

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Building a clean economy ‘on the high road’

March 5, 2020 by

When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PRO Act last month, the labor movement celebrated – and for good reason. The measure would give working people a fairer shot at organizing unions, bargaining better wages and fighting back against rising income inequality.

But the PRO Act would be a win for the planet, too. That’s according to the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA), which lobbied for the PRO Act on behalf of 13 labor and environmental organizations.

Why? To address the climate crisis, the U.S. and other countries will need to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, and they will need to do it quickly. Mustering public support for that kind of massive political effort won’t happen, BGA Executive Director Jason Walsh said, unless there’s something in it for working people.

“We have to rebuild our infrastructure, we have to retool our manufacturing and we have to repower our grid with clean sources,” Walsh said in an interview for the March 2020 issue of the The Union Advocate. “That’s daunting, but it’s also an opportunity. And if we do it right, if we build this clean-energy economy on the high road, we have the ability to make this a more just and equal country and economy.”

Jason Walsh is executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance.

UA: The BGA works to advance policies that protect workers and the environment. That seems like divisive terrain right now. Where do you see potential to cut through the tension?

JW: Environmentalists and labor activists agree on much more than we disagree on. There have certainly been fights and disagreements. I’m not ignoring that. Those are hard, and they’re hard right now in places like Minnesota. But fundamentally, our labor partners and our environmental partners understand the interconnectedness of the fight for workers’ rights and environmental protection.

The PRO Act is an example of that. It’s obvious why our labor partners would support the PRO Act. Our environmental partners understand workers who are organized and empowered fight not only for their wages and benefits and job security, they also fight for things like making sure their plants don’t blow up, making sure that industries are not egregious polluters. Unions like the Steelworkers were some of the most important supporters of our bedrock environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act, because their members lived it and worked it.

UA: What does the clean-energy economy look like, and how do those jobs need to change?

JW: Not enough of the jobs created or promised are family-sustaining jobs. In 2019 only 4% of workers in solar electric power generation were union members, and only 5% of workers in wind power generation were union members. Obviously, the clean economy is much bigger than that, but those are the two fastest-growing sectors within it.

Companies within the clean-energy economy have just flat-out violated their employees’ rights to unionize. There’s Tesla, of course. There was also a solar company, Bright Power, in New York City, where workers were trying to join IBEW and were fired. And last year we saw at a company called Gestamp Wind in Texas, the company unlawfully firing and suspending employees, making threats, engaging in surveillance… It was so egregious that the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration ordered them to bargain with (Plumbers and Pipefitters) Local 404.

Why do those companies do that? They do it because they can, because our existing labor laws are completely toothless. That is why the PRO Act is so important as we make this monumental shift to a clean-energy economy.

UA: What’s the scope of this change our economy will need to go through?

JW: We’ve barely scratched the surface. We’ve seen a shift in the last 10 years within the power sector to renewable sources, but zero-emission power is still below 20% of the total. We have a transportation sector that is now the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. And we’ve got an industrial sector that is the fastest-growing source of emissions.

We’re going to have to shift all of them to zero-emissions sources by 2050, and we’ve never done anything at that scale before in this country.

UA: What potential is there for working people?

JW: To give a taste, just take the offshore wind industry, which is potentially enormous. There is, at this point, one offshore wind facility in this country, off of Block Island, Rhode Island, and it was built with union labor. This was just five turbines, but it created 300 jobs – electricians, welders, ironworkers, pile drivers, backhoe operators. That wind farm is now producing enough clean, local electricity to power 17,000 homes. We’ve got to do that by orders of magnitude more across the country.

There is a ton of work here, but we’re at this inflection point as to whether we’re going to continue what we’ve seen – mostly low-road, often low-quality jobs, almost exclusively nonunion – or build this economy along the high road.

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At Washington conference, McCollum calls for investments in clean energy

April 25, 2013 by
Rep. Betty McCollum addresses the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference. (photo submitted)

Rep. Betty McCollum addresses the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference. (photo submitted)

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District outlined a vision for “using the power of American manufacturing to secure America’s energy independence” in remarks made at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference in Washington, D.C. last month.

The conference, now in its sixth year, met April 16-18, bringing together leaders from labor unions, environmental organizations and businesses united behind the idea of growing a clean-energy economy that fosters social, economic and environmental justice.

McCollum called for “smart” public investments in infrastructure and the energy grid, as well as “targeted tax credits” that will spark private investments necessary to “make America a powerhouse in the green economy.”

“Our responsibility as federal legislators is to create an environment that encourages that growth,” McCollum said. “If we want homegrown energy and homegrown jobs, we need to plant the seeds.”

McCollum also pledged to fight for legislation that would make federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, more energy efficient.

“My door is always open to you, and I’m here to work with you,” she told conference goers. “But we need to get more members of Congress on board!  You need to spread the message.”

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