{"id":221828,"date":"2026-08-24T19:39:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T19:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/against-the-wind-despite-trumps-attacks-unions-are-fighting-for-good-us-clean-energy-jobs-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T19:39:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T19:39:55","slug":"against-the-wind-despite-trumps-attacks-unions-are-fighting-for-good-us-clean-energy-jobs-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/against-the-wind-despite-trumps-attacks-unions-are-fighting-for-good-us-clean-energy-jobs-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the wind: despite Trump\u2019s attacks, unions are fighting for good US clean energy jobs – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequality
Ryan McElroen had spent years repairing the New York City subway underground when he got the opportunity to work in the middle of the ocean.
\u201cI had no views other than the darkness at work,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I went polar opposite.\u201d
Two years ago, McElroen began being trained by his union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3, for a job in the emerging offshore wind industry. Since then, he has completed six one-month-long rotations constructing New York\u2019s first large-scale offshore wind projects: four on Sunrise Wind, roughly 30 miles (48km) east of Montauk Point, and two on Empire Wind in the New York Bight, 30 miles south of Long Island.
It was a \u201cwelcome change\u201d, McElroen said. Instead of seeing rats, he has watched seals and dolphins swim past his Sunrise work vessel. And on the Empire project, his shifts would often end with sweeping sunsets over the open ocean.
\u201cI would love to continue doing this for the rest of my career,\u201d he said in an interview at his union\u2019s Electrical Industry Training Center in Long Island City, Queens, days after his most recent Empire Wind stint.
Labor leaders convened by the Climate Jobs National Resource Center <\/a>(CJNRC) have spent years working to ensure that workers like McElroen have the opportunity to develop lifelong, unionized careers in clean energy. Their goals received a major boost from Joe Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act, they say.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to dismantle some of those gains by slowing the clean energy transition, attacking offshore wind<\/a> and attempting to revive the old idea that workers have to choose between good jobs and climate action. But the labor leaders say they are ready to fight back.
The CJNRC has origins in New York after Hurricane Sandy. The superstorm was a wake-up call for the labor movement, said Mike Fishman, president and executive director of the organization.
\u201cWe came to the realization, as you can imagine, that climate change is real and it\u2019s only getting worse, and that workers are getting hit first and worst,\u201d Fishman said. At the time, he was the secretary\u2011treasurer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
In that moment in 2012, however, unions didn\u2019t have much of a voice in climate policy discussions.
\u201cThe climate groups were really all about emissions,\u201d said Fishman. \u201cIt was really about, we\u2019re going to reduce emissions at any cost.\u201d
Lara Skinner, founding executive director of Cornell\u2019s Climate Jobs Institute, had seen a similar dynamic, where climate groups would tout potential jobs created by the green energy transition but not focus on whether they would be high-quality or unionized.
\u201cIf the answer was going to be yes, well, that was going to take work, that was going to require political power,\u201d she said. She approached Fishman and leaders in the New York building trades and transit unions to begin talking about how to build that kind of power. Together, they developed a blueprint<\/a> for a statewide clean energy transition that put workers at the center.
To try to make those plans a reality, Fishman, Skinner and members of the New York City Central Labor Council federation of unions formed a committee to launch Climate Jobs New York. They recruited New York organizations representing 2.6 million workers, including the local SEIU and several building trades chapters, to join their coalition and commit funds to advocating for unionized clean jobs.
The coalition quickly zeroed in on offshore wind as a priority, pushing for a nine-gigawatt buildout that was far larger than what other climate groups were then demanding. Amid pressure from labor leaders, in 2019, the then governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, adopted the coalition\u2019s ambitious vision, committing the state to building that much offshore wind capacity by 2035, and later that year, the legislature enshrined the target in the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act<\/a>.
In 2021, Climate Jobs New York played a key role in securing strong labor and equity provisions<\/a> for renewable energy, including prevailing wage and project labor agreement requirements for large projects, as well as labor peace agreements \u2013 which make it easier for workers to unionize \u2013 on operations and maintenance work.
Throughout the campaign for those protections, more climate groups began to see the importance of strong labor standards, said Fishman. The wins also \u201ccompletely changed unions\u2019 orientation\u201d toward wind projects, said Skinner.
\u201cThey were like, wow, this is going to be union work,\u201d she said. \u201cSo you\u2019ve seen, even up until now, unions are still defending offshore wind.\u201d
The group saw potential to repeat their success in other states. So in 2020, Fishman and other labor leaders formed the CJNRC to help groups in other states build similar labor-led climate coalitions, with help from Skinner and other researchers at Cornell.
These new coalitions quickly gained momentum. In 2021 and 2022, they secured support for unionized green jobs from Texas\u2019s AFL-CIO<\/a> and strong labor standards for clean energy in Connecticut<\/a>, Illinois<\/a>, Rhode Island and Maine.
The coalitions received a boost from Joe Biden, who placed an emphasis on both climate and boosting unions. In 2022, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provided powerful new incentives for clean-energy projects to meet prevailing-wage and apprenticeship requirements, helping make good jobs a central part of the clean-energy buildout.
\u201cOne of the things that was fundamentally different about the IRA, was, in addition to the massive commitment to investing, it was done in a way that supported good jobs,\u201d John Podesta, climate and energy adviser to Biden and board member at CJNRC, said at a New York City convening held by the group. \u201cThat was the first time that ever happened, where labor standards were attached to private sectors.\u201d
Biden also accelerated the development of offshore wind, a sector that had already begun taking shape in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. By September 2024, his administration had approved 10 commercial-scale offshore wind projects totaling more than 15 gigawatts.
Organized labor was excited to take advantage of Biden\u2019s new incentives, and by the end of 2024, the CJNRC group had helped launch coalitions of unions in nine states to help workers do so.
\u201cThe IRA solidified our ability to work with the environmentalist groups on the same side to fight climate change by creating good, family-sustaining jobs,\u201d said Chrissy Lynch, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.
Lynch is also chair of Climate Jobs Massachusetts, which shortly after its launch in 2024 worked with green groups to win climate legislation that includes labor standards for workers on all future clean-energy projects.
\u201cBy the time the attacks from Trump began, we were married to the environmentalists,\u201d she said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t on the same page about everything but we were used to working together.\u201d
The clean jobs bonanza the IRA helped set in motion met major roadblocks when Donald Trump<\/a> was re-elected in 2024. Since returning to office, the president has moved to dismantle much of Biden\u2019s climate agenda, including by targeting the federal incentives that helped drive clean-energy investment.
The president also singled out offshore wind, claiming it causes cancer, kills birds and other wildlife, and destroys property values. In 2025, the administration also moved to accelerate the phaseout of the IRA\u2019s clean-electricity tax credits for wind and solar projects. And it moved to halt projects under construction, first ordering work on Empire Wind to halt in April 2025, then targeting Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut in August, and in December ordering a stop to New York\u2019s Sunrise and Empire Wind, Massachusetts\u2019 Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind, and Virginia\u2019s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.
McElroen was on the job at New York\u2019s Sunrise Wind farm when news of Trump\u2019s stop-work came down. Many workers were forced to halt their work immediately, he said, but \u201celectricians were considered essential to make sure that things weren\u2019t deteriorating in the ocean while the shutdown was happening\u201d.
\u201cThey didn\u2019t want to just completely abandon the place, so we were just out there making sure things could still function,\u201d said McElroen. \u201cBut it was a crazy, uncertain feeling.\u201d
As soon as the stop-work order was announced, McElroen\u2019s union, the IBEW Local 3, and the rest of Climate Jobs New York set out to mobilize against it.
\u201cThese weren\u2019t theoretical jobs we were facing losing, it was people looking at actively losing paychecks,\u201d said Chris Erikson, the local\u2019s business manager. \u201cWe had press conferences, we rallied, we brought attention to the issue.\u201d
Unions in other states pushed back<\/a>, too. In Rhode Island, workers and labor leaders joined<\/a> state officials to oppose the halt to Revolution Wind, which threatened about 1,000 union jobs. In Massachusetts, unions and state officials rallied against the December order targeting Vineyard Wind.
Trump succeeded in temporarily disrupting construction, with workers sent home and developers incurring additional costs. But ultimately, courts blocked each of the stop-work orders and each project has continued.
McElroen said he was grateful for the continued job opportunities. He feels good about contributing to the clean energy economy, and the work has been financially beneficial to him, too. When he began working in offshore wind, he set a goal of saving up for a down payment on a future home. During his interview with the Guardian, he received a text.
\u201cGood news,\u201d he said. \u201cI just got prequalified for my mortgage.\u201d
The Trump administration did not successfully halt existing offshore wind projects. Vineyard Wind is now completed<\/a> and fully operational, while Revolution Wind began sending power to the grid in March. Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is also progressing and began generating power for the first time in March. And Sunrise and Empire Wind in New York have resumed construction and are moving toward completion.
But Trump\u2019s moves have had a \u201ccomplete chilling effect\u201d on future offshore wind development, said Erikson of IBEW Local 3. This year, the administration spent $2.7bn in taxpayer dollars<\/a> to cancel 12 offshore wind leases in five deals with developers.
When Trump was re-elected, market researchers with BloombergNEF projected the US would bring 39 gigawatts<\/a> of offshore wind capacity online by 2035; its October projections put that figure at just 6 gigawatts, meaning no new projects \u2013 or jobs \u2013 were likely to come online. The dropoff has been devastating for unions that have spent years selling the new sector to their members and training them for new jobs, said Fishman.
\u201cBy some estimates from some of the building trades, there\u2019s been a loss of 3bn work hours<\/a>,\u201d he said.
Erikson has seen that impact first-hand. In New Jersey, several proposals have collapsed amid market and regulatory uncertainty.
\u201cSo now there\u2019s zero offshore wind happening off the coast of New Jersey, where there\u2019s thousands of IBEW members and where our New York members could have worked,\u201d he said.
He fears the damage done to the domestic offshore wind industry will be long-lasting \u2013 that if the US tries to restart its progress under a new administration, it will be harder and more expensive. Years of investment have gone into building a domestic supply chain, but companies need a steady pipeline of projects to keep investing in ports, vessels, factories and workers.
But unions have continued to notch climate wins, said Fishman. This year, CJNRC worked with state federations of unions to launch climate jobs coalitions in five states and the United Kingdom, while successfully pushing for policies to support clean energy jobs across<\/a> the<\/a> US<\/a>. And ultimately, growth for offshore wind is inevitable, said Fishman, because of its potential to quickly and reliably generate large amounts of electricity near coastal demand centers.
\u201cThe wind will change direction on offshore wind,\u201d he said.
When the sector is revived, unions and environmentalists alike would be prepared to fight for the rights of workers, he said.
\u201cThe work we\u2019ve done across the country \u2026 has set a completely different tone in the industry and in the climate world,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople now incorporate thinking on wages and jobs into their thinking about building new energy and dealing with emissions. Every governor is talking about affordability.
\u201cNone of that is going away.\u201d
The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation<\/a>. The Guardian\u2019s coverage is editorially independent<\/em>
<\/span> This article was amended on 24 August 2026 to correct the spelling of Chris Erikson\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n

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Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequalityRyan McElroen had spent years repairing the New York City subway underground when he got the opportunity to work in the middle of the ocean.\u201cI had no views other than the darkness at work,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}