{"id":5037,"date":"2021-04-25T16:53:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T16:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2021-04-25T16:53:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-25T16:53:08","slug":"why-major-unions-are-wary-of-the-move-to-wind-and-solar-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5037","title":{"rendered":"Why major unions are wary of the move to wind and solar jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;\u201cThe fossil fuel industries were unionized in long struggles that were classic labor stories,\u201d said University of Rhode Island labor historian Erik Loomis. \u201cNow, they\u2019re in decline and you have these new industries. But a green capitalist is still a capitalist, and they don\u2019t want a union.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 4 percent of solar industry workers and 6 percent of wind workers are unionized, according to the2020&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/5a98cf80ec4eb7c5cd928c61\/t\/5ee78423c6fcc20e01b83896\/1592230956175\/USEER+2020+0615.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">US Energy and Employment Report<\/a>.The percentage of unionized workers in natural gas, nuclear, and coal power plants is about double that, around 10 to 12 percent unionized (although still not a huge amount). In addition, transportation, distribution, and storage jobs \u2014 which exist largely in the fossil fuel sector \u2014 about 17 percent of the jobs are unionized. Still, the solar and wind unionization rates are in line with the albeit very low national rate of unionized workers in the private sector, which is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/pdf\/union2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">about 6.3 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is one of the big reasons there\u2019s a real hesitancy on the part of many unions and workers to transition from fossil fuel to renewable jobs: They are worried the jobs waiting for them in wind and solar won\u2019t pay as well or have union protections. This has long been a tension point between environmental groups and labor&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22301534\/major-unions-worried-about-wind-solar-jobs\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22301534\/major-unions-worried-about-wind-solar-jobs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;\u201cThe fossil fuel industries were unionized in long struggles that were classic labor stories,\u201d said University of Rhode Island labor historian Erik Loomis. \u201cNow, they\u2019re in decline and you have these new industries. But a green capitalist is still a capitalist, and they don\u2019t want a union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 4 percent of solar industry workers and 6 percent of wind workers are unionized, according to the 2020 US Energy and Employment Report. The percentage of unionized workers in natural gas, nuclear, and coal power plants is about double that, around 10 to 12 percent unionized (although still not a huge amount). In addition, transportation, distribution, and storage jobs \u2014 which exist largely in the fossil fuel sector \u2014 about 17 percent of the jobs are unionized. Still, the solar and wind unionization rates are in line with the albeit very low national rate of unionized workers in the private sector, which is about 6.3 percent.<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the big reasons there\u2019s a real hesitancy on the part of many unions and workers to transition from fossil fuel to renewable jobs: They are worried the jobs waiting for them in wind and solar won\u2019t pay as well or have union protections. This has long been a tension point between environmental groups and labor&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[233,271,443,1058,877,1059,574],"class_list":["post-5037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-jobs","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar-energy","tag-unions","tag-wind-energy","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5038,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions\/5038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}