At a Long Island solar company, union-busting allegations raise concerns about the quality of clean energy jobs

Workers at a solar installation company based on Long Island, New York, say they’ve faced poor pay, dangerous conditions, unstable work, and union busting, raising concerns about the quality of jobs in the clean energy economy.

Solar installers with EmPower in Bethpage voted 29-16 to unionize with United Auto Workers Local 259 on December 21. About a week after that election, EmPower furloughed 21 workers—a move that the company says was due to a seasonal downturn, while workers and their union say is a form of union busting. (According to the National Labor Relations Board case, 49 workers were eligible to vote in the union election, which covers technicians, installers, and foreman; the company has about 100 full-time workers across three locations).

EmPower installers reached out to the UAW because they were inspired by the union’s “stand up” strikes across the country against the Big Three automakers. (Along with autoworkers, UAW also represents workers in health care, casinos, higher education, and more.) Workers say they were prompted by poor working conditions, including a wage structure with unclear, unreliable bonuses; safety concerns for a job that entails working on roofs with electrical equipment and 40-pound panels in hot or windy weather; and a relentless, fast-paced schedule that had them feeling overworked and undervalued.

Daniel Lozano, a 24-year-old solar installer who was involved in the union organizing and was furloughed in late December, says that he asked for, and was repeatedly promised, a review that he never received. Lozano began working with EmPower in April 2023, and has been doing electrical work since high school. At EmPower, he made $18.65 an hour, with bonuses at the end of each month that can range from $800 to $1,000 (though he says at the slowest work period, his lowest bonus was $300). Minimum wage on Long Island is $16, though electricians often make more.

Lozano says the company “justifies” its low wages because those bonuses average the hourly wage to a higher figure; in an email, EmPower CEO David Schieren says “when you correctly account for his total compensation,” Lozano makes $26.96 an hour, which includes the bonus plan. But workers say the bonuses are unreliable and can be penalized. “They can take money from those bonuses, like if we ever mess up or if we break something by mistake,” Lozano says. “We have to pay for those mistakes from the bonus structure.”

In an op-ed in the Long Island Press, Lozano and Michael DiGiuseppe, vice-president of UAW Local 259, detailed more concerns, including that EmPower hired the Cincinnati-based lobbying firm National Labor Relations Advocates. On its website, NLRA touts a 96% success rate “in keeping our clients union-free,” and says it can help companies “avoid any threat of a union coming into your business.”

Shieren says it hired NLRA to help EmPower “navigate” the union situation. “As a small, local company we did not anticipate this happening and did not have experience internally to help navigate the process,” he adds. Going forward, EmPower says it recognizes the union’s right to bargain and “fully intend[s] to honor our obligations under the law to bargain in good faith.” The company says it is currently securing representatives and expects to confirm meeting dates with the union soon.

In announcing the furloughs in December, EmPower pointed to the completion of its “‘end of year rush’ install obligations” and slower sales in 2023. “The decision to furlough is not something we did lightly or easily, and it is our intention to bring back employees as soon as work becomes available,” Shieren says, adding that it had “nothing to do with the UAW or results of the union vote” but instead was due to demand for solar going down amid “macroeconomic factors” like inflation and high interest rates. (EmPower does currently have multiple job openings, including for a solar installer and electrician.)

Lozano had no set end date on his furlough, though he says other workers were told they were furloughed until 2026. The furlough does include health care coverage.

Will clean energy jobs be union jobs?

Separate from the union, the issue of furloughs raises questions about the stability of clean energy jobs, which are often touted as key to our future economy. Lozano says that promise is part of why he was attracted to the solar industry.

“The more you peel back the layers, you say to yourself, [workers] are being left behind,” says DiGiuseppe. “We see this with battery-operated vehicles . . . and now we see it with solar . . . the new economy is not taking along with it the workers going into the future.”

Solar jobs have been growing; a 2022 National Solar Jobs Census found that as of December 2022, the industry gained more than 8,800 jobs sicne 2021, or a growth of 3.5%. Residential solar jobs grew even faster, by 11%. But in residential rooftop solar, like where EmPower focuses, unionization is rare. Union representation is more common on large-scale, commercial solar projects, like solar farms, where labor agreements require certain wages or the use of union apprentices in order to get state and federal subsidies.

Overall, 10.5% of workers in the solar industry are represented by a union or covered by a project labor agreement that provides union scale pay, according to that 2022 census. That is an increase from 2020, in which a U.S. Energy and Employment Report said that just 4% of solar industry workers (and 6% of wind workers) were unionized. In the fossil fuel industry, though, union rates can be more than double that.

To DiGiuseppe, the labor fight at EmPower is a harbinger of the future of the clean energy economy. He spoke to Fast Company ahead of a UAW rally held at EmPower’s headquarters in Bethpage. “We want these guys to understand they’re not alone,” he says of the workers. “We want management to understand that everybody’s watching . . . We’re not just talking about a labor action anymore, we’re talking about the green new jobs of the future and the just transition we’re constantly hearing about.”

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