How Trump Screws Over Workers

We know that Trump is no real friend of the working class, despite the rhetoric that too many fall for. But there’s the real details here that drive you crazy. So for example, he unilaterally cancelled the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island, a nearly completed project that has employed thousands of union workers to build wind capacity to fund hundreds of thousands of homes. It’s close enough to completion that the injunctions that allowed it to restart might see it through–the whole thing is supposed to be online by the summer. But even this delay really screws over the trade unionist who has to end one job and then move to the next as quickly as possible so they can get paid. Here’s a good story about what this delay did to some of these workers:

The completion of the global certification through the Community College of Rhode Island was supposed to lead directly to a union job with the Revolution Wind project.  But instead of shipping out to sea to climb towering turbines in  Rhode Island Sound, Lima is stuck on land, watching his job, and his plan, slip away.

“I had goals, buying a house, all this other stuff that came to a halt,” Lima, 34, of Pawtucket, said in a recent interview. “Now I have all this time, so I really have been thinking too much. I [am] in my head a lot.” 

The federal administration abruptly ordered work to stop on the 700-megawatt project in August under the guise of national security concerns. In response to a lawsuit filed by the project developers, a federal judge in D.C. issued a preliminary injunction in late September, letting work resume on the project that was already 80% complete. A separate lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut remains under review in federal court in Rhode Island.

Local ports in Providence and New London, Connecticut, hum with activity as specialty vessels carrying workers and skyscraper-sized equipment travel out to sea. The project still appears poised to meet its mid-2026 operational deadline of supplying 700 megawatts of nameplate capacity — enough to power 350,000 homes — to Rhode Island and Connecticut.

But the monthlong pause left two dozen union painters and tradespeople, including Lima, out of the work and paychecks they were relying on for the next several months.

Meaghan Wims, a spokesperson for Orsted, the Danish co-developer of the project, confirmed in an email that painting work was rescheduled to next year to focus on more “time-sensitive tasks” while weather remained favorable and vessels available.

….

“We were gearing up to have people working all over, on the monopiles, the substations, overlapping crews here and in New York,” Kelley said in a recent interview. “That all fell in like a house of cards. Now, we have guys out of work, members who are angry because they desperately wanted to work on this project.”

He continued, “What do I tell them now?”

Other work that was available to local trade workers is now reaching its seasonal conclusion.

“You have to have atmospheric conditions to paint steel,” Kelley said.

Even before the cold set in, many of the major road and infrastructure projects that hire painters’ union members had been paused or canceled because of rescinded federal funding.

Despite President Donald Trump’s anti-wind directives, which had already halted reviews on other projects still awaiting federal permits, officials and industry experts initially considered Revolution Wind safe from political volatility. Project developers secured the final federal approval in November 2023. 

For local union laborers, the project’s multiyear construction offered a steady source of income without having to scramble to find a new project every month or two.

“Construction workers are the [original] gig workers,” said Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. “They are constantly trying to line up work so that as soon as they end one job, they can start the next.”

None of this of course will prevent way too many people from swallowing his Working American Friend bullshit.