Courtesy/Maine AFL-CIO
Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO.
March 1, 2022
Unions form coalition to create renewable energy jobs
By Jessica Hall
Organized labor groups in Maine are banding together to launch the Maine Labor Climate Council, a new coalition aimed at creating union jobs in the renewable energy field.
“We see climate change and economic inequality as two very big challenges that the state faces,” Maine AFL-CIO Executive Director Matt Schlobohm told Mainebiz. “There is a need to create high-quality, good paying jobs with benefits and a voice. To date, the kinds of jobs created in the renewable energy field have been uneven.”
The coalition follows other efforts in states such as New York, Rhode Island and Texas, Schlobohm said.
“The labor movement historically has been deeply involved in the energy sector, with the start of coal miners. There’s a lot of work than can and needs to be done to raise the quality of jobs around the renewable energy sector,” Schlobohm said.
In 2020, in Maine the median wage for a weatherization installer and technician was $14.05; for floor, ceiling and wall insulation workers in Maine it was $16.14 and the median wage in Maine for solar photovoltaic installers it was $19.09, the coalition said.
The coalition also unveiled a comprehensive Maine climate jobs report from researchers at Cornell University that outlines policy recommendations around which the coalition intends to organize. If all of the recommendations in the report are implemented, it would create 10,000 to 20,000 good jobs annually for the next twenty years in Maine, depending on the scale of implementation and duration of the projects, the coalition said.
“The twin crises of climate change and inequality demand bold and urgent action,” said Maine AFL-CIO President Cynthia Phinney. “We believe that the choice between good jobs and a livable planet is a false one.”
“The Maine Labor Climate Council is committed to tackling inequality and climate change together and being laser focused on creating good jobs as we develop Maine’s clean energy economy,” Phinney said.
“There are tens of millions of dollars on the table right now in our state budget surplus thanks to federal infrastructure investments and ARPA funds, and the Maine Labor Climate Council is organizing to make sure we invest this in both our renewable energy future as well as our current and future working families,” said Jason Shedlock, President of the Maine State Building and Construction Trades Council and regional organizer with the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
The report from Cornell researchers lays out ways to reduce the carbon footprint of Maine’s economy, ensure that the new jobs adhere to high labor standards in terms of pay, benefits, training and job security. It also urges clean-energy companies to, as part of recruiting, cultivate underrepresented groups by offering apprentice and pre-apprentice programs.
The plan focuses on key moves such as electrifying all state and local vehicles, including school and city buses, by 2040, building a high speed rail corridor from Bangor to Boston while connecting to Lewiston/Auburn, and installing 25,000 public electric vehicle charging stations by 2030.
The coalition is also supporting state Rep. Scott Cuddy’s (D-Winterport) bill, LD 1969, which attaches labor and equity standards, including prevailing wage requirements, to all state-assisted renewable energy projects over 2 MW in size. The bill also encourages renewable energy contractors to use registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs when constructing utility-scale projects.
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