Aug. 20, 2010:NWLP
8/17/10
10:49 AM
Page 7
Chinese wind energy firms
to make components in U.S.
PITTSBURGH (PAI) — United
Steelworkers has convinced two big
Chinese wind energy companies to es-
tablish supply chains in the United
States to make wind energy compo-
nents for the firms’ planned wind farms
here, union officials said.
Steelworkers President Leo Gerard
said the pact means creation of at least
500 to 1,000 high-paying factory jobs
making the estimated 8,000 compo-
nents in each 250-ton tower generating
electricity on a wind farm.
“Our objective is to get to 100 per-
cent domestic sourcing” of the wind
farm components,” Gerard said. “Right
now, it’s at 50 to 60 percent.”
The memorandum of understanding
between the union and A Power and
Shenyang Power says that the firms
will build wind farms here, with U.S.-
made components, “wherever feasi-
ble.”
Components include wind farm
towers, blades and cement footings.
The Steelworkers Union represents
workers in all those industries. As part
of the memorandum, the Chinese
“made clear they would not oppose”
any Steelworker organizing drive
among the workers in the wind farm
supply chain plants, Gerard said. “This
is an understanding we have with sev-
eral other employers,” he noted.
The sites for the wind farms and for
the supply chain factories have yet to
be selected, but the union said one will
be in Nevada. Others will be close to
sources of materials, such as the steel
for the wind farm turbines.
No overall cost estimates were
given for the planned wind farms or
their supply chain factories, but Gerard
said the two Chinese companies have
already committed to spend $90 mil-
lion to buy land for the wind farms.
“You want to use this model for
U.S.-Chinese economic development,”
Gerard said.
A Chinese-sponsored wind farm in
the Texas high plains, since scrapped,
would have cost $463 million. Unions,
led by IBEW, derailed that project
when they revealed the farm would be
using stimulus dollars for the construc-
tion but that its components would be
made in China and employing 2,000
people there. The components would
have shipped to Texas for assembly
only, creating 300 jobs.
Local 21
Motion
July 2010
Union certifications and decertifications in Oregon and Southwest
Washington, as reported by the National Labor Relations Board and
the Oregon Employment Relations Board
Recognition elections
Name of employer
Date
Name of union
Boeing (simulator technicians)
7/19
IAM-WW Dist. Lodge 1
Results:
Union Union
Yes No
Location
Klamath Falls
4
0
Recognition by card check
Name of employer
Date Name of union
Location
Number of employees
Bend
17
Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office
7/15 Deschutes County District Attorneys Association
Requests for recognition election
Name of employer
Name of union
Hickory Springs Manufacturing Company
Machinists District Lodge 24
Akzo Nobel Coatings
Teamsters Local 324
Location
Number of employees
Portland
31
Salem
36
Samaritan Dialysis Services
Service Employees International Union Local 49
Corvallis
27
Fred Meyer Jewelers
United Food & Commercial Workers Local 555
Hillsboro
5
AUGUST 20, 2010
... Pelosi touts Portland retrofit program
(From Page 1)
Ana Gonzalez, hired by Neil Kelly in
late-July, was front-and-center at the
Pelosi press event as an example of
someone who found work thanks to the
program, which got a $1.1 million ini-
tial grant from stimulus funds. Gonza-
lez, 41, worked six years in quality as-
surance at Adidas, then got a job at a
domestic violence non-profit. After re-
ferring women clients to Oregon
Tradeswomen Inc., Gonzalez decided a
job in the building trades would be a
good career move for her too. She went
through the group’s seven-week pre-ap-
prenticeship program for women, and
found work at Neil Kelly. Now she’s a
member of Carpenters Local 247, earn-
ing $15.85 an hour in the union’s new
weatherization technician classification.
She will also have full-family health
coverage once she logs 250 hours on the
job, thanks to a $6.44-an-hour employer
contribution to the union health and wel-
fare trust.
Neil Kelly’s new Home Performance
division has seven employees: three new
hires including Gonzalez, and four who
transferred from the company’s other di-
visions. That’s in a home remodeling
company that shrunk from 165 to 130 in
the recession. Neil Kelly’s home per-
formance division works exclusively
with Clean Energy Works, and is doing
about 60 of the 500 homes in the pro-
gram’s first stage. It’s the company’s
only growth spot right now, company
president Tom Kelly told Pelosi.
Program-wide, Clean Energy Works
Portland reports just 16 new jobs created
a year into the program — 11 in the pri-
vate sector and five for the program it-
self.
Yet, Mayor Adams told Pelosi Clean
Energy Works will be responsible for
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
1,300 jobs in the next three years as it itors had given him to ask: “What do
rolls out statewide, thanks to a second you say to critics who argue that this is
just a payoff to the unions before the
stimulus grant of $20 million.
Clean Energy Works Portland direc- election?”
“How can people be opposed to
tor Andria Jacob explained the 1,300
jobs figure to the Labor Press. It uses a this?” Pelosi replied. “It doesn’t make
U.S. Department of Energy economic sense. They say it’s going to add to the
model which estimates a job is created deficit. Where were they during the
for every $92,000 spent; and it assumes Bush Administration when the biggest
the program will meet a requirement growth in debt was created?”
If local green job results appear mod-
that it find a five-to-one funding match
est, it’s worth noting that
for the stimulus funds.
in a $3.5 trillion federal
Pelosi’s staff also “It’s not about
wanted to make a government spending. budget, the $1.1 million
and $20 million grants to
point that the stimu-
lus-funded project It’s about government Clean Energy Works are
would employ not just investing to stimulate pretty modest sums. And
those are one-time stimu-
the workers doing the the private sector to
lus act grants. Asked by
retrofit, but the work-
the Labor Press about fu-
ers manufacturing the take the lead.”
ture federal funding for
equipment and sup-
plies they installed. But Clean Energy the program, Pelosi and Blumenauer
Works is too small to meet the threshold said only that Congress is instead dis-
triggering the Recovery Act’s “Buy cussing home energy tax credits and re-
America” provision. Adams obliged, an- bates, the cost of which would be offset
nouncing an “emerging” supplier strat- by ending some oil companies’ tax
egy that he said would make sure the breaks.
“It’s not about government spend-
program favors American-made goods.
Contractors taking part in Clean En- ing,” Pelosi said. “It’s about government
ergy Works Portland hadn’t heard any- investing to stimulate the private sector
thing from the City about a preference to take the lead.”
For Tom Kelly, seeing this work
for U.S.-made supplies. At the Fichts’,
the insulation and furnace were made in come and go with government policy
America, but the tankless water heater would be an unfortunate bit of déja`vu.
“Back in the ’70s, in the Jimmy
is Japanese.
Jacob, the program director, said Carter era, our company had a division
Adams’ comment referred to a staff-per- with 30 employees putting in insulation,
son at Portland Development Commis- putting in solar hot water heaters, doing
sion who is developing a domestic and storm windows in people’s houses,”
Kelly told Pelosi. “In those days we
local content proposal.
While there was no national media at called it weatherization. Now we use
the Pelosi press event, it did get local words like ‘energy retrofit.’ ” But the
coverage. In the Fichts’ living room, a programs went away, Kelly said, and the
freelance TV cameraman hit Pelosi with industry dried up, when Ronald Reagan
one of the three questions Fox News ed- swept into the White House.
PAGE 7