Since elementary school, Aidan Boyd has learned about how climate change will reshape Colorado’s future — how aridification will dry streams and summers will become increasingly hot.
Now 24, he hopes that training to be an electrician will help him be part of the solution to the environmental challenges that he believes are the most critical problems society faces. He also wants to continue his parents’ legacy of union membership.
“I’d like to someday start a family and own a home, and I’d like to be able to do that with a career that can make a difference,” said Boyd, who is waitlisted to begin training as an electrician apprentice at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Joint Training Center in Denver.
Boyd is exactly the kind of worker a new coalition of unions across Colorado hopes to help find a stable and sustainable career that involves mitigating climate change and building the new infrastructure needed for a cleaner economy.
Announced last week, Climate Jobs Colorado is a new organization dedicated to promoting union labor as part of the green energy movement. Using union workers for climate work — like building solar panels or new power lines — not only helps the environment but also creates well-paying, stable jobs for Coloradans, coalition leaders said.
The coalition will address several of Colorado’s most pressing problems: environmental degradation, wealth inequality and the rising cost of living, said Nate Bernstein, executive director of Climate Jobs Colorado.
“Our mission is to educate and mobilize workers and the public to enact policies and practices that build a clean energy economy at the scale that climate science demands and create good union jobs and more equitable communities,” Bernstein said at a news conference Thursday announcing the coalition.
Climate Jobs Colorado is one of 10 similar statewide groups nationally and the first in the Rocky Mountain West.
A key problem labor unions face in Colorado is companies using state and federal grant money to build clean energy projects, but using out-of-state contracts and workers, said Jason Wardrip, business manager of the Colorado Building and Construction Trades Council. The coalition will work to create partnerships with companies building similar projects and also advocate that state dollars come with a promise to hire Colorado workers, he said.
“They need to be hiring our workers in the state of Colorado, supporting our economy and our workers and underserved communities,” he said.
The rollout of Climate Jobs Colorado coincided with the publication of a report by the Climate Jobs Institute at Cornell University that examines the future of climate labor in Colorado. The report says new President Donald Trump will likely erode workers’ rights and progress on clean energy during his second administration, which means that state and local governments “must take up the mantle of climate and labor leadership.”
Done correctly, the energy transition not only could help the environment but also could mitigate Colorado’s wealth gap, the report argues. According to a 2018 study, the top 1% of Colorado earners make more than 20 times as much as the bottom 90% earn.
“Thus far, renewable energy has primarily created lower-quality jobs across the country,” the report states. “Unlike the contracts won by generations of coal workers, wind and solar jobs in the state have been largely low-wage with little safety or training standards.”
The report’s authors recommend that Colorado policymakers strengthen the state’s contract bidding process to require more robust labor protections and create more robust requirements about hiring from apprenticeship programs. Among other recommendations, the report also advocates for prioritizing hiring workers who formerly worked in oil and gas.
Coalition leaders applauded recent legislation passed by state lawmakers, including a 2023 bill that implemented stricter labor protections for energy projects that use tax dollars.
Colorado is already a leader in climate change mitigation, said Melissa Shetler, the author of the report and a senior training and education associate at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell.
“However, for Colorado to maintain its leadership, these measures must be implemented in ways that protect workers and communities, particularly in areas where labor has been historically overlooked,” Shetler said, citing renewable energy construction projects as an example.
Many union workers also bear the brunt of the effects of climate change while working, Wardrip said. They are the workers sweating through increasingly hot summers and must be part of climate solutions, he said.
“We are here and ready to help solve those problems,” Wardrip said.
Union workers want the companies they work for to succeed, said Dennis Hawkins, chief steward for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001. Thriving companies create thriving careers, he said.
“I think the most important work that all union members have is to remind our employers that they have human beings working for them,” he said.
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