Previous sales, like the recent auction in the New York Bight, have included terms requiring leaseholders to “make every reasonable effort to enter a project labor agreement.” A project labor agreement is a deal between a developer and local unions, prior to any hiring, that establishes wages, benefits, and other provisions, like health and safety protections, for all workers involved in a project. The BOEM is expected to issue a notice for the first offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf sometime in the next month, and the announcement will include the lease terms. “It is unique, and so we believe the policy response must be unique as well.” “The lack of living wage requirements in the state, the lack of safety requirements, the lack of workers’ comp requirements, all point to an industry that has prioritized their bottom line,” Delp said. But contrary to the White House’s promise of “good-paying, union jobs,” there’s no guarantee they will come with decent wages, benefits, or safety standards - especially in Texas. There will be jobs manufacturing wind turbines, shipping them out to sea, and installing them building transmission lines and electrical substations and operating and maintaining the equipment. There’s no doubt the offshore wind industry will bring a flood of jobs to communities along the Gulf. “We saw the opportunity,” said Bo Delp, the executive director of the Texas Climate Jobs Project, a nonprofit that advocates for the unionization of clean energy jobs. But in Texas, workers are worried that the new industry will continue the low-wage, unsafe, exploitative conditions that pervade the construction and offshore oil industries there.įor the past year, a coalition of Texas labor unions, along with their allies in Congress and in the environmental movement, have been lobbying the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, to make sure that doesn’t happen. Opening up the Gulf to wind development is part of President Joe Biden’s goal to employ “tens of thousands of workers” to establish 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The Biden administration is gearing up to turn the Gulf of Mexico, long a hub for offshore oil and gas drilling, into a new city of skyscraping offshore wind turbines.

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