\n<\/p>\n
D<\/span>onald Trump has blamed everything \u2013 from \u201cnational security\u201d issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer \u2013 in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs.<\/p>\n Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.<\/p>\n Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was in the midst of a four-week shift onboard a vessel off the Atlantic coast working on the Revolution Wind Project in August last year when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order on the project.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one really knew what was going on. We didn\u2019t know what it meant for us. We just knew that everything was up in the air,\u201d said Kilday. \u201cYou plan your whole life around being gone for 28 days, and to come out here and have it thrown up in the air, worrying what does this mean for me, for my pay for the next four weeks, what\u2019s going to happen? There\u2019s a lot of uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n Construction on the project is done on shifts of 28 days on and 28 days off, with workers residing on a vessel on the ocean and taking helicopters to work on the turbines.<\/p>\n A federal court granted an injunction to block the stop-work order in September last year. In December, the Trump administration issued another 90-day stop-work order, citing national security, before a second judge issued an injunction in January.<\/p>\n When the second stop-work order was issued, Kilday was celebrating Christmas with his family and preparing for another four-week shift.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was really difficult,\u201d he said. \u201cI just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about. Six months out of the year we\u2019re away from home, and for what little time we do have at home, not to be able to just focus all of that time and energy on our families, it\u2019s tough. It\u2019s not a great feeling to be worried about your job when you\u2019re supposed to be home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re proud of the work that we do out here, and we want to be able to continue to do it. We think it\u2019s important work,\u201d added Kilday. \u201cWhen I\u2019m at home, and I drive down my street, I look up at those power lines. I helped create the power that\u2019s running through those power lines, and I\u2019m proud of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Revolution Wind announced in March that it began delivering power to New England, citing the work of more than 1,000 local union workers, and is expected to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses. The project\u2019s construction is over 90% complete.<\/p>\n In June, the Trump administration abandoned an effort to try to halt all wind projects and leases across the US, giving up a challenge in court to a judge tossing Trump\u2019s executive order to freeze all permitting and leasing for wind projects.<\/p>\n Instead, the Trump administration has opted to buy out wind project leases.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Department of Interior has completed four deals so far to cancel wind project leases, paying energy corporations a sum of more than $2.6bn, including paying $765m to Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York and Maine and nearly $900m to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases,\u201d Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. \u201cThese projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they\u2019re providing good-paying union jobs for thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n Crowley said that workers would have had long-term job stability from working on these projects. He noted the Trump administration had lost in court in its attempts to issue stop-work orders on five wind projects in the Rhode Island area.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re five for five taking on the Trump administration,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat the Trump administration is doing is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n Will Gonzalez, a construction laborer with the Laborers\u2019 local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, worked on the Vinyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, a project the Trump administration attempted to halt in January. The project is now completed and fully operational.<\/p>\n He criticized the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to halt wind turbine projects, claiming the opposition from Trump stems from his experiences trying to stop a wind turbine project near his golf course in Scotland, losing an appeal in December 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a personal vendetta,\u201d said Gonzalez. \u201cGood union jobs \u2013 we shouldn\u2019t be trying to take those off the table. That just doesn\u2019t make any kind of sense. Families obviously need good jobs \u2026 why take those jobs away?\u201d<\/p>\n Gonzalez said he and his co-workers were leaving training and certifications unused because of the halting of wind power projects.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of us that worked on that Vinyard Wind 1, obviously, we would have loved to segue right into another project,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re fully trained, ready to go, willing and able, so it directly affected us. But you move on. You [have] got to move on. You can\u2019t sit and dwell on that, because that\u2019s not going to pay the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House directed comment to the Department of Interior.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the department denied the cancellation and stop-work orders of projects had had any impact on jobs, even on projects under construction when halted. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking for clarification and did not comment on Trump\u2019s prior animus toward wind turbine projects involving his golf courses.<\/p>\n \u201cNo jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than waiting years for the projects to materialize, the Trump administration is prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains that can create jobs now and deliver economic benefits faster.<\/p>\n \u201cThis approach puts more people to work more quickly, using proven, affordable, and reliable energy rather than relying on projects tied to leases that were not producing jobs in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump has blamed everything \u2013 from \u201cnational security\u201d issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer \u2013 in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs. Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[24937,2622,1664,71,12290,261,962,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-50941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-decrying","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-power","11":"tag-trumps","12":"tag-unionized","13":"tag-war","14":"tag-wind","15":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}