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Building trades unions, engineering unions, and other representatives of organized labor spoke out today at the Tennessee Valley Authority board meeting, saying that the Trump administration’s changes to the utility could spell trouble for the region’s energy workforce.
Around 5700 union members work on a range of energy projects across the seven-state footprint of the Tennessee Valley Authority. From Western North Carolina to Tennessee, unionized workers work on TVA energy infrastructure, operate gas, coal, and nuclear plants, and check safety on waste ponds and landfills. While 24 full-time TVA employees work in Western North Carolina, union contractors are regularly called upon to maintain the region’s four major dams. Though all the states in which TVA operates are right-to-work states with resulting low union density, the TVA workforce is 57% unionized.
The Trump administration has fired three board members, leaving TVA without a quorum, and is threatening the others with replacement unless the current CEO is fired as well. The administration has shown interest in privatizing TVA, and initiated talks to do so during its first term - the latest in a long line of presidential administrations that have considered the same option. If TVA were to be privatized, union leaders fear its assets could be sold off to investor-owned utilities, whose primary obligations are to shareholders.
Chris O’Keefe is the president of the Tennessee Buildings and Trades Council and an ironworker who has worked for decades on projects across the southern Blue Ridge. He says union wages have made a huge difference for his family.
“When you have union wages, you have those agreements to pay pensions, you have retirements, you have apprenticeships, that's something that TVA's always utilized,” O’Keefe said. “We just want to make sure that they continue to utilize that in the future.”
TVA has a 90-year history of working closely with organized labor, and has six active collective bargaining agreements with nine unions that represent sheet metal workers, roofers, painters, engineers, electricians, and more.
TVA is also in the midst of conversations around its future energy mix, as the Trump administration boosts coal power, gas, and nuclear. Environmental groups have argued that the utility should refocus on solar and wind production to curtail the climate impacts of fossil fuel pollution and the potential dangers of nuclear energy. O’Keefe is in favor of either - he just wants an energy mix that involves good jobs.
“As far as it comes down to the building trades, we just want to build it right? Whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's nuclear, whether it's coal, whether it's natural gas. We just want to be in that,” O’Keefe said.
Utilities overall have been shown in the past to host some of the highest union density in the country. While many public power companies have union contracts, private utilities are less likely to be unionized, however.
Scott Fiedler, a TVA spokesperson, said TVA’s mission would still remain.
“In terms of privatization, it would be inappropriate to speculate,” Fiedler told BPR in an email. “There have been proposals about TVA over the past decade. However, none have been seriously pursued by the U.S. Congress. For over 90 years, our mission has remained the same - to serve the people of the Tennessee Valley by delivering low-cost, reliable power; partnering to bring new and retain current jobs in the region; and being responsible stewards of the environment.”
