For an example of how the labor movement can play a key role in the push for green energy, look to Maine, where unions’ leadership of a red-green coalition has been essential in the state’s push for offshore wind.
A lobster boat plies the waters off Vinalhaven Island, Maine, where three wind turbines have caused controversy. (Gregory Rec / Getty Images)
From a bird’s-eye view, it looked like a gathering of seafarers circling a totem pole off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. The totem pole in question is an 850 feet tall Vineyard wind turbine, albeit one with a broken wing, which snapped and fell off into the ocean in July.
The congregation chose this damaged wind turbine as the protest site, apparently praying for the downfall of the offshore wind (OSW) industry. In attendance were the captains and crew of lobster, tuna, squid, and scallop fishermen and fisherwomen, along with a fleet of twenty-five fishing boats, from Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. These protests have been most intense in the state of Maine, where the lobster industry is central to the state’s economy and culture.
Such protests notwithstanding, over the past three years, Maine has made rapid strides in developing a robust OSW policy framework. In July 2023, the state passed an omnibus OSW procurement and ports bill (LD 1895), which authorizes procurement of up to three gigawatts of offshore wind energy. This, along with a similar procurement guarantee from Massachusetts, prompted the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to kick-start the process for one of the largest OSW lease sales, containing eight leases for a total of over one million acres in the Gulf of Maine.
If fully developed, these areas will provide approximately thirteen gigawatts of clean OSW energy, which could power more than 4.5 million homes. Equally important, LD 1895 also ensures good quality jobs, paves the way for a state-of-the-art OSW port facility, and protects critical lobstering areas to reduce impact on commercial fishing.
This major policy success seemed unimaginable two years ago when Maine’s powerful lobster industry organized a large rally in the state capital to oppose OSW. That opposition continues today, but it has not prevented the state from enacting responsible OSW policies. While the state’s political leaders and policymakers deserve some credit for this success, Maine’s labor unions played a crucial role in bringing together social, environmental, and climate constituencies to develop a negotiated policy framework. This model of climate and energy policymaking deserves broader attention, not least because a variety of union-climate-environmental coalitions are developing in several states.
How Significantly Did Maine’s Labor Unions Influence Its OSW Policy?
Before diving into the coalition strategies that led to these legislative successes, it is worth examining how Maine unions shaped its OSW policy development — an important question because Maine governor Janet Mills has prioritized climate policy legislation throughout her first term and continues to do so in her second. Yet Mills has a particular vision of who should lead climate action. Soon after taking oath, Mills announced: “It is time for Maine to send a positive signal to renewable energy investors and innovators: We welcome you.”
The extent of Mills’s commitment to a corporate-led climate action was on full public display as she vetoed an earlier version of the OSW bill because it included project labor agreements, which she argued would raise project costs. OSW developers and the business community at large supported Governor Mills’s veto and dismissed the union-supported bill as “social policy and union labor bill [rather] than a serious attempt to develop a cost-effective renewable energy source.”
Confronted with a governor united with OSW developers, the Maine labor unions launched a multipronged counteroffensive. Speaking to the national media, an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) leader in Maine stated, “The governor’s climate motto is ‘Maine won’t wait,’ but with this veto, Governor Mills is saying quite clearly that Maine will wait for thousands of good jobs, clean energy and the build out of a new industry.” The unions lobbied within Democratic Party networks, at both the state and federal level, and the Democratic Governors Association (DGA). They reached out to John Podesta, a senior Biden advisor for clean energy, who is believed to have called Governor Mills to express support for the demands from Maine labor unions.
Notwithstanding their aggressive campaign to counter the governor’s veto, Maine’s “red-green” coalition also entered intense negotiations with the governor’s energy and climate team and worked closely with several state senators, including the Senate president, to continue developing a pro-labor OSW bill. This dual-track strategy of combining a political campaign with legislative negotiations bore fruit, as Governor Mills signed an omnibus OSW bill, LD 1895, into law the day before President Joe Biden’s Maine visit in July 2023. It mandates a Community and Workforce Enhancement Agreement (CWEA) and a list of labor standards and apprenticeship requirements for OSW development. It also requires that all workers be paid at the collectively bargained rates. The Maine AFL-CIO referred to LD 1895 as a “historic ports and offshore wind jobs and climate legislation.”
Governor Mills did not want to but was forced to sign a union-, environmental-, and, as we shall see, lobster-friendly OSW law that Mills’s friends in the corporate world would have liked to shoot down.
How Did the Maine Coalition Pull It Off?
A dozen public and private sector labor union federations, including Maine AFL-CIO, Maine State Building and Construction Trades Council, Maine Service Employees Association- Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1989, and International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 17 joined hands in March 2021 to launch the Maine Labor Climate Council (MLCC).
Under the able leadership of Francis Eanes, the MLCC has developed a broad-based strategy that serves the interests of the member unions but also works collaboratively via a broad coalition of environmental and climate groups, including the Maine Conservation Voters, Natural Resource Council of Maine (NRCM), and Maine Climate Action Now. Over the last few years, the core group behind this coalition evolved into a trusted circle of friends and colleagues who spent long hours hashing out legislative language intended to advance diverse social, environmental, and climate goals agreeable to each of these constituencies.
Unlike some “letterhead coalitions” that are cobbled together to advocate for specific pieces of legislation, Maine’s red-green coalition is grounded in the political and policy work of leaders from each of these groups. The coalition relies on the complementary spheres of influence of Maine’s labor unions and environmental groups. No Maine politician can afford to alienate both constituencies at the same time.
Maine’s fifteen years long OSW policy debates have been hobbled by entrenched opposition from Maine’s lobstermen. It would also be impossible to convince politicians to pass an OSW law that was oblivious to the interests of Maine’s lobstermen. Governor Mills and her team reached out to Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), but they did not break through the impasse. The MLA continues to oppose OSW by arguing about potential impacts “on the marine environment, commercial fishermen and our fishing heritage.” MLA’s opposition has grown stronger in the past few years under the influence of New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), which is orchestrating conservative anti-OSW campaigns across the East Coast.
To break this logjam, the MLCC worked with the country’s only lobstering union, Lobster 207. Though a small fraction of Maine lobster fishers are unionized, the lobstering union has a crucial role in advocating for improved working conditions within the lobstering industry. The interests of commercial processors and retailers do not always align with the interests of lobster fishers, who cannot secure collective bargaining agreements because they are recognized as independent contractors. The increasing financialization of the New England fisheries has worsened these inequalities, which puts the lobstering union at the center of the debates about the future of Maine’s lobster fisheries. Organized under the Maine chapter of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), Lobster 207 has strengthened the economic power of its members and connected them to Maine’s labor movement.
Considering the political salience of Maine’s lobster community, none of Maine’s top political leaders could support legislation that did not have the backing of at least a section of the lobster fishing community. The coming together of lobstering union, labor unions, environmentalists, and climate activists made it easier for Maine’s top political leaders to support the OSW bill.
To allay the concerns of the lobstering union that OSW would take over the coastal areas and harm Maine’s lucrative lobstering industry and thousands of families whose livelihood depends on it, MLCC and its partners insisted that the OSW bill incentivize OSW development outside the prime lobstering areas. The Maine AFL-CIO made its support for the bill conditional on the language to exclude OSW development in lobstering zones.
Environmental groups, such as Maine Audubon, also referenced the mutually supportive inclusion of “high standards for labor, equity, and the environment . . . as well as plans to avoid and minimize impacts to wildlife, fisheries, and the marine environment.” Maine Lobstering Union’s political director Ginny Olsen attested to the value of these negotiations by celebrating “the solidarity shown by our partners in the Building Trades, Maine Labor Climate Council, the Maine AFL-CIO and all of our friends in organized labor.”
Maine and Labor-Environmental Coalitions
The Maine story has lessons for the broader movement for building stronger coalitions between labor, environmental, and climate groups. Unlike most instances of these coalitions that are led by environmental and climate groups, the Maine coalition evolved into a partnership among equals. Each of the major constituencies contribute important aspects of social and political power necessary to check the power of pro-corporate climate leaders.
The MLCC and labor leaders did not bargain solely in the interest of labor but worked to develop collective political power to pursue a shared legislative agenda. The Maine case shows that instead of diluting or slowing down climate and energy transition legislation, broad-based labor-environmental-climate coalitions can be crucial for countering entrenched opposition of various stripes.
The trust that the coalition partners developed over the years is helping to engage local communities in building a port facility, which is facing some entrenched opposition from some environmental groups. After supporting OSW throughout the legislative process, the Maine Sierra Club, along with some local conservation groups, is opposing the decision to site the port terminal at Sears Island. They argue that such development risks “destroying acres of eelgrass meadows, crucial fish habitat, fisheries nursery, coastal wetlands, and shellfish beds.”
Maine’s red-green coalition also used its collective power to advocate for improving the state’s engagement with Maine tribes and support efforts toward strengthening tribal sovereignty. The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act enacted by the US Congress and the state of Maine in 1980, has enabled Maine to deny the Wabanaki Nations the same rights, powers, privileges, and immunities as other federally recognized tribes in the United States. The Maine coalition has stood by the Wabanaki alliance to restore sovereignty of the Maine tribes, an agenda that has advanced in encouraging directions in the past year.
The Maine case is an illustration of the arguments in favor of a “bargaining for the common good” approach that looks beyond workplace bargaining toward strategies for building collective power. It also suggests that climate activists could benefit from building meaningful coalitions with labor unions that are capable of wielding political power to realize the goals of just energy transition and energy democracy.