image: URS
Green Wombat spent several months looking into allegations that California labor unions are using environmental laws to pressure solar developers to hire union workers to build large-scale solar power plants. The story was published last Friday in The New York Times:
SACRAMENTO — When a company called Ausra filed plans for a big solar power plant in California, it was deluged with demands from a union group that it study the effect on creatures like the short-nosed kangaroo rat and the ferruginous hawk.
By contrast, when a competitor, BrightSource Energy, filed plans for an even bigger solar plant that would affect the imperiled desert tortoise, the same union group, California Unions for Reliable Energy, raised no complaint. Instead, it urged regulators to approve the project as quickly as possible.
One big difference between the projects? Ausra had rejected demands that it use only union workers to build its solar farm, while BrightSource pledged to hire labor-friendly contractors.
As California moves to license dozens of huge solar power plants to meet the state’s renewable energy goals, some developers contend they are being pressured to sign agreements pledging to use union labor. If they refuse, they say, they can count on the union group to demand costly environmental studies and deliver hostile testimony at public hearings.
If they commit at the outset to use union labor, they say, the environmental objections never materialize.
You can read the rest of the story here.
Green Wombat 
If the truth were known the unions could give a damn about clubbing baby seals as long as it were union members doing it but the same could be said about companies planning on building these projects. Right now it is all about the money. There is soon to be lots of it floating around everyone wants his piece of the pie. I am not anti union and have worked both union and non-union jobs. Unions have apprenticeship programs and can really do some quality work. My problem with most of them is they are just another business that can add tremendous cost to a project. Also trying getting hired into one of the construction unions without knowing someone or being related to someone.
The unions are taking a page out of the “environmental” handbook here. They have found that for very little expense they can basically hold up a project indefinitely. The problem is that the unions are basically committing blackmail. I really don’t know what the answer is here but I feel we need to have some way to hold individuals and organizations financially responsible for frivolous actions.
It is funny that Brightsource is planning on using union labor because of their experience on their last union project. Segs VIII was non union and Segs IX was union. Pretty much everyone I have talked to has said the union pretty much made a mockery of that job. Men standing around, taking forever to do the work and when the project went bankrupt outright vandalism. I was not there but I know plenty who were. Now that being said I recently worked on another non-solar project that was done by union labor and they could not have been more professional.
I used to work for FPL (now Nexera) and as I understood it, Nexera is not so concerned about union labor to build the plant but wants it to be run by non union employees. They already have seven plants at two sites nearby that are non union. Lets face it if the employees want to go union later they always have that opportunity. The Nexera plants recently had a union vote that failed and it looks like they might soon have another one.