Mike Groll/AP Photo
A rotor blade for a General Electric wind turbine is moved at the Port of Albany in Albany, New York, October 29, 2007.
During the postwar boom, when unions were more powerful and worker rights were better enforced, General Electric had decent relations with its unions. Its manufacturing workforce was about 70 percent unionized. But under “Chainsaw Jack” Welch, who became CEO in 1981, GE turned viciously anti-union and outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Welch once stated, “Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge.” Under Welch, the closing of unionized factories was especially devastating to upstate New York, where GE plants were concentrated.
Thus, it was a remarkable turnabout when GE and the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), a unit of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), announced a labor peace agreement last May. The implication is that GE will not resist unionization, though details remain to be negotiated.
CWA has pushed GE to go all-union in two proposed new offshore wind turbine production facilities in the Hudson River port of Coeymans. It was the first such labor peace agreement signed by GE, and it represented a 180-degree reversal from Welch-era GE labor tactics. Even President Biden sent a note of congratulation.
In late October, GE went on to win the bid from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to build turbine blades and nacelles (which house generating facilities). The turbines will be sufficient to generate 4.6 gigawatts of offshore wind energy.
The two new factories will create close to 1,000 direct union jobs and another thousand construction and indirect jobs. New York state is putting subsidies totaling $300 million into the deal.
Offshore wind turbine blades are so large, about the length of a football field, that they cannot be transported overland. Manufacturing facilities must be located either at ocean ports or on the banks of navigable rivers. Blades from GE’s new plant at Coeymans, south of Albany, will literally be floated down the Hudson to be shipped to domestic and foreign customers, much the way tree trunks from the upper Midwest were sent downriver into sawmills in the 19th century.
GE’s original announcement last January of its plan to build offshore wind turbines near Albany offered partnerships with 24 local educational institutions, as well as a commitment to train and hire local disadvantaged youth. But conspicuously absent was any mention of labor peace.
However, the CWA-IUE was able to leverage its close alliance with pro-union officials in state government coupled with President Biden’s strong support of unions. It gradually became clear to top GE officials that a labor peace agreement was an important aspect of their winning the bid.
“This is a huge advance for the labor movement, and particularly for CWA-IUE, to win organizing rights in the manufacturing supply chain,” says Lenore Friedlaender, director of Climate Jobs New York.
All this is part of a longer-term New York state program supporting a zero-emission electricity system aiming for 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. By then, New York will have 10,000 megawatts (MW) of distributed solar energy using rooftop panels and community solar projects. Large-scale solar will have reached around 16,000 MW and onshore wind capacity 4,000 MW. Offshore wind aims to achieve 9,000 MW of wind energy by 2035, enough to power up to six million homes.
President Biden’s pro-union industrial policies and state-level policies like New York’s have produced an important change in the collective-bargaining climate.
In past rounds of solicitations for renewable-energy proposals, NYSERDA specified project labor agreements only for construction as well as a labor peace requirement for operations and maintenance. NYSERDA also requested bidders to commit to creating good permanent jobs in New York state, and put a pot of $500 million on the table for offshore wind supply chain facilities, with the implication that union-friendly projects would be a plus. Since then, the legislature passed a 2023 law that attaches labor peace requirements to investments from the newly created New York state Climate Action Fund created by a cap-and-invest program, estimated to raise about $5 billion.
When Andrew Cuomo was governor, there was a lot not to like. However, Cuomo was good on climate and on the goal of bringing unionized manufacturing back to New York. The governor appoints the board of NYSERDA, which tends to follow the governor’s lead.
While federal subsidies and labor conditions were not part of this particular deal, GE credits the tax subsidies in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for allowing the company to expand its plant in nearby Schenectady to increase production of onshore wind turbines. The first turbine was completed at GE’s new assembly line there in mid-November. Although GE brutally downsized during the Welch era, the remaining workforce has been steadfastly union.
So the combination of Biden’s pro-union industrial policies such as the IRA, and state-level policies like New York’s, have produced an important change in the collective-bargaining climate. They provide unions with additional leverage.
“IRA matters and the state provisions both matter,” says Michael Fishman, the longtime union leader who now serves as president and executive director of the Climate Jobs National Resource Center. As Fishman makes clear, this only works when combined with militant union activity on the ground.
GE is one of only three major global producers of large turbines for offshore wind, and the only domestic one. The other two are Vestas, based in Denmark, and Germany’s Siemens. Both have benefited from significant subsidy by their governments.
New York is an emblem of national success in linking climate, labor, and domestic production goals. The work is part of a larger project in which trade unionists and environmental activists are beginning to realize their long-term goal of strategic alliance.
For example, in Maine, union leaders and progressive legislators last July forced Gov. Janet Mills to sign legislation she initially opposed requiring labor standards on offshore wind projects. The law requires all wages to be paid at collectively bargained rates, and bars the use of independent staffing agencies. The law also targets three gigawatts from offshore wind by 2040.
These successes have required state and national industrial and supply chain policy to all pull in the same direction, with active collaboration of union, community, and climate activists. It’s a rare good-news story for progressive politics and policy.
