Hundreds of IBEW members in Wisconsin stand to benefit from an agreement with the state’s four largest investor-owned electrical utilities that prioritizes hiring union workers on renewable energy projects.
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| The Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act helped drive a union-utility agreement in Wisconsin, leveraging big tax credits to help incentivize the hiring of union workers like these on large renewable energy projects.
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"The IBEW has already had good working relationships with these utilities over the years,” said Dean Miller, business manager of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, Local 388 and president of the IBEW Wisconsin State Conference. “The new agreement builds on those relationships and strengthens them.”
The utilities’ pledge covers workers who are represented by the IBEW, as well as workers from other unions. “We have a lot of experienced journeyman wiremen in the state,” Miller said. A dozen IBEW locals have jurisdiction over inside construction electrical work throughout Wisconsin.
The unions, with support from the Wisconsin Building Trades Council, had pressed Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric, WEC Energy Group, and Xcel Energy to make the pledge — the first of its kind in the U.S., Miller said — to seek union workers on all of their utility-scale solar, wind and battery-storage projects “to the fullest extent possible.”
A crucial driver of this agreement, Miller noted, was the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. One of President Joe Biden’s signature pieces of legislation, the IRA includes tax credits worth up to 30% of the cost of large-scale renewable energy projects. These credits include special incentives for employers to hire union workers on the projects, as well as for ensuring that a portion of that work goes to registered apprentices.
IBEW members have long worked on construction and maintenance at many of Wisconsin’s coal- and gas-fired power plants, Miller said. But too often on renewable energy sites, jobs had been going to nonunion workers from out of state.
This new union-friendly pledge comes at a great time: According to the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, at least 95 renewable energy campuses in Wisconsin that are being built now are under review or are set to start soon. The utilities estimate that these facilities, once they’re all fully operational, will add to the state’s power grid at least 10 gigawatts of solar, 1.2 gigawatts of wind and 4 gigawatts of battery storage by 2030.
The Wisconsin Public Service Commission projects that nearly 19,000 electricians will be needed to build out these new clean energy developments.
The IBEW is more than ready, Miller said. “We’re doing well with open calls in Wisconsin,” he said, adding that organizing is “phenomenal.” A recent job fair in Madison, for example, yielded 120 apprenticeship applications.
Miller stressed that the Wisconsin agreement is not related to the IBEW’s national pact with the Laborers and Operating Engineers unions. That tri-trade agreement, signed last October by International President Kenneth W. Cooper and the presidents of the other two unions, is designed to help smooth out working relationships with solar developers and contractors on the construction of utility-scale solar projects across most of the U.S.
Meanwhile, the potential benefits resulting from the Wisconsin agreement are expected to extend well beyond the unions and the investor-owned utilities. A study by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute and the University of Wisconsin estimated that a $1 billion investment in renewable energy helps to locally generate about 2,700 jobs and $1.63 billion in economic activity, with $153 million in state and local tax revenue.
Miller said the Wisconsin union-utility pledge should help make utility-scale renewable energy projects more competitive and attractive for local workers. “We’re laying out a plan with the other unions to make this new agreement work for all of us,” he said.
“Our members are pressing hard to get this work and keep it.”