North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and Ørsted, the world’s leading developer of offshore wind farms, have agreed to a first-of-its-kind PLA known as the National Offshore Wind Agreement (NOWA).
“This is what it looks like to put the words ‘high-road labor standards’ into action,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “The partnership between Ørsted and NABTU is monumental, for the thousands of workers who will have great jobs, and for the example it sets for the U.S. offshore wind industry.”
The IBEW is one of 14 international unions affiliated with the NABTU in partnership with the AFL-CIO.
The training, employment, and diversity provisions in the NOWA will increase the unionized construction workforce’s capabilities to build complex offshore wind energy infrastructure and a commercial-scale domestic energy industry. Ørsted already has been awarded 2.9GW of power contracts up and down the East Coast from Rhode Island to Maryland. These are the middle-class, good-paying union jobs promised by the just transition to renewable energy.
