'Greenmail' a threat to energy projects
Besides the fact that federal grants and loans are distorting the market for renewable energy, we now have another reason to be concerned about the proposed solar and wind projects for the desert: Union groups are attempting to block projects unless they get hiring agreements with the developers.
Observers are calling it “greenmail,” as these groups are using the lengthy, complicated environmental regulations that already make any sort of development difficult in order to challenge the approval of energy projects, but apparently only the projects that don’t have labor agreements.
The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors rejected last week a challenge by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Unions to stop the approval of a solar project in Kramer Junction. Their representatives claimed their concerns were about water use for the project, a claim that nobody with half a brain believes.
Brightsource, the company developing the massive Ivanpah solar project near the border to Nevada, did not face such environmental challenges. Coincidentally, they signed agreement with labor groups for the construction jobs, jobs that will actually be paid for with a $1.37 billion in guaranteed federal loans. So not only have the jobs already been promised non-competitively to a small group within a larger pool of potentially qualified candidates, we all get to pay for it.
Of course, these tactics are not new and not confined to energy projects. Walmart has to deal with environmental challenges to pretty much every single project they attempt to build. They managed to deal with the pointless environmental challenge to its proposed distribution center here in Barstow, but they haven’t broken ground yet because they’re still dealing with the challenges to the stores the center is intended to serve.
And so Barstow has to wait for more jobs to come. The irony that the people hurt most by these labor actions are other laborers is lost on these folks. They don’t grasp that if their actions keep causing projects to be canceled or delayed, this ultimately reduces demand for construction workers, pushing labor value down. Their actions result in laborers getting paid less, not more.
No wonder private sector unions are on the decline in America, down to less than 9 percent, levels not seen since 1932.
