Joe Biden has persuaded some leaders of fossil fuel-heavy building trade unions in Pennsylvania that his climate policies won’t harm them, a key development in a swing state expected to be decided by small margins.
“When Biden clarified his position on fracking, it was a pretty easy choice to endorse him for president,” said Jim Kunz, business manager of the International Union of Operating Engineers for Local 66, covering Pittsburgh. “After a personal conversation with the man, I feel confident our work will continue in the fossil fuel industry. He understands how important that is to western Pennsylvania.”
Biden has visited western Pennsylvania in recent weeks and made frequent statements assuring he won’t ban fracking and distanced himself from the liberal Green New Deal.
Kunz said he spoke with Biden last week when the Democratic nominee stopped at an Operating Engineers training facility in New Alexandria during a train tour in Pennsylvania.
His local union represents nearly 8,000 workers operating cranes, backhoes, and bulldozers building pipelines and power plants, among other things.
Before the visit, Biden announced the endorsement of the international arm of the Operating Engineers.
Biden’s outreach came after union officials, in interviews with the Washington Examiner this summer, warned that Biden risked following the path of Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s hostile rhetoric towards the fossil fuel industry helped her to lose the support of Democrats in blue-collar union counties around Pittsburgh.
Kunz, a Democrat, said in July that the perception among his members who work in the oil and gas industry is “Donald Trump is a supporter of this industry and Joe Biden is not.”
Kunz said he would not back Trump, who he accused of not fulfilling promises to bring back coal and steel jobs. But he was not ready to endorse Biden, unsure of his position on fracking.
While Biden has promised to end new fracking leases on federal lands, where little natural gas is actually produced, he has vowed repeatedly that he won’t ban the practice outright. But Biden has struggled to overcome statements in debates when he indicated he would ban fracking everywhere, forcing his campaign to clarify he meant only on public lands.
“Biden has assured us he is not for a fracking ban,” Kunz said in an interview this month. “His only concern is drilling and fracking on federal lands, especially national parks, and I don’t know if I disagree with him on that. There needs to be certain places in this country protected for future generations.”
Kunz, like other union leaders interviewed, was happy to see Biden distance himself from the Green New Deal in the first presidential debate.
“That is where Trump is not telling the truth,” Kunz said. “Joe Biden’s plan is anything but the new Green Deal.”
Recent polling of natural gas-producing counties of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio shows Biden has not been entirely successful clarifying his position.
A poll by ALG Research of 500 likely voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania showed voters in those counties don’t know where Biden stands on energy, with 22% saying he is pro-natural gas, 42% saying he is anti-natural gas, and 36% not sure. Unsurprisingly, a larger percentage, 65%, are sure Trump is pro-natural gas.
During the debate, Biden tried to walk a fine line, touting his aggressive $2 trillion plan to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury and carbon-free power by 2035, but never mentioned any interest in limiting natural gas or fracking.
Jeff Nobers, executive director of the Builders Guild of Western Pennsylvania, said he grasped the distinction Biden is making. Coal, oil, and gas use would undoubtedly decline under Biden’s plan if he were to mandate more use of renewable and other forms of clean energy.
But, Nobers said, fossil fuels could have a future if paired with carbon capture technology that can prevent emissions from reaching the atmosphere.
“Our disagreement was this thought you could eliminate fossil fuels in the rapid and near future and manage to keep employment where it was,” said Nobers, whose group represents a coalition of unions representing 60,000 workers and contractors in construction trades. “By and large, Biden has assuaged those fears. Going to carbon neutral does not mean eliminating fossil fuels. It means addressing an issue of fossil fuels.”
Nobers lives in Washington County, which has the most fracking wells in the state, and where a lot of Pennsylvania’s fracking boom started a decade ago, replacing the fading coal and steel industries.
Biden has bet he can peel off Democratic union members like Nobers who voted for Trump in 2016 even though the president’s economic agenda is broadly unfriendly to organized labor.
Throughout the campaign, Biden has played up his local roots, visiting his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and positioning union workers as beneficiaries of his climate change agenda, which he says would spur millions of new jobs building wind turbines, energy-efficient homes and buildings, railroad lines, and electric vehicles.
Nobers said he’s skeptical fossil fuel workers can easily transition to clean energy jobs because oil and gas jobs are often times higher paying than jobs in renewable energy, and more likely to be unionized. But he’s convinced Biden will have a plan to help oil and gas workers, and thus, he said he is likely to vote for him.
“I wouldn’t say people are 100% sold, but there is better feeling that he is setting a path that helps resolve some of those issues,” Nobers said.
Jim Cassidy, business manager of the Insulators Local No. 2 union just outside Pittsburgh, was already committed to voting for Biden when he last spoke to the Washington Examiner, albeit with some hesitation.
“He scares me. Is he embracing the new Green Deal or whatever they are calling it? He needs to get some stuff straight,” Cassidy, a Democrat, said at the time.
Now, Cassidy said he is “100%” for Biden, after the Democratic nominee proved his independence from liberals by asserting “loud and clear” that he is not for the sprawling Green New Deal.
“I thought he was being led by the left wing of the party. Now I don’t believe that. I believe he is going to do what he says, and we will continue to work in this industry and thrive in this industry,” said Cassidy, whose members install insulation material on piping and boilers in natural gas plants.
