Fighting climate change will result in millions of middle-class employment with fair pay for People holding union membership cards, according to President Joseph Biden.
However, a Reuters analysis of corporate and state announcements shows that in the six months since the passage of Biden’s signature climate change law, the majority of the $50 billion of announced investments in domestic manufacturing to support the clean energy transition have been in states with laws that make it more difficult for workers to organise.
The Biden Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers tax incentives for companies who manufacture clean energy components in the country and increases benefits for companies that employ domestically produced goods in the development of renewable energy projects.
The circumstance poses a test for Biden’s administration, which is promoting its vision of a decarbonized America by promising that the clean energy jobs will be just as good as the ones that will eventually be lost at coal mines and oil refineries, which are popular with workers due to their high unionisation rates, competitive pay, and benefits packages.
Only six months have elapsed since the IRA became law, and investments made during that period only account for a small portion of the benefits that would ultimately result from Biden’s economic programme, according to a White House official. The source stated that many of the newly generated positions will be union ones.
Source: Reuters
