‘Why take those jobs away?’: The unionized workers decrying Trump’s war on wind
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- Trump administration issued an executive order to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted stop-work orders on projects under construction, and completed four lease buyout deals totaling more than $2.6 billion — including $765 million to Invenergy for projects in California, New York, and Maine, and nearly $900 million to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind for offshore leases in New York and California.
- Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW Local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was midway through a 28-day offshore shift on the Revolution Wind Project when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order last August, leaving him uncertain about his pay and worried about spending the holiday rotation at home.
- Revolution Wind began delivering power to New England in March, with more than 1,000 local union workers credited; the project is over 90 percent complete and expected to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses after two federal judges blocked the administration's stop-work attempts in September and January.
- Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said the administration is 'five for five' losing in court in Rhode Island on wind project stop-work orders and called the buyout strategy a 'foolish policy' that 'is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology.'
- Will Gonzalez of Laborers' Local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, who worked on the now-completed Vineyard Wind 1 project, called the administration's wind opposition a 'personal vendetta' tied to Trump's 2015 loss in a legal appeal to stop turbines near his Scotland golf course, and said he and coworkers are sitting on unused training and certifications.
- The Department of Interior spokesperson denied the cancellations and stop-work orders eliminated any jobs, claiming the administration is 'prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains' rather than 'projects tied to leases that were not producing jobs in the first place.'
Why it matters: The Trump administration has spent more than $2.6 billion buying out wind leases and halting projects that federal courts have repeatedly ruled were lawfully proceeding, leaving trained union workers idle while the Department of Interior insists 'no jobs were eliminated' — a flat contradiction the workers' own accounts put on the record.
