The United Auto Workers Are Unionizing Rooftop Solar

As New York falls behind on its goals to build renewable energy, there has been one bright spot: small-scale solar.

New York is the national leader in community solar installation, and it’s ahead of its own schedule to build rooftop solar. But the workers driving that progress face low wages, unpredictable hours, and frequent layoffs. Until last month, the residential rooftop sector was entirely non-union.

On Saturday morning, a couple dozen people with signs and a giant inflatable rat stood on the busy corner of Bethpage that hosts EmPower, the leading Long Island rooftop solar installation firm that furloughed 40 percent of its workforce two weeks ago — just after employees voted to unionize with the United Auto Workers.

“This is a publicly subsidized business,” said Mike DiGuiseppe, the vice president of United Auto Workers Local 259 on Long Island, denouncing EmPower’s failed promise to provide a “just transition” and “jobs of the future.”

EmPower, like other New York rooftop solar firms, benefits from generous federal and state subsidies for installations — part of climate legislation for which the union had advocated. According to DiGiuseppe, “We’ve been going up to Albany and fighting for years for [EmPower] to have this opportunity.”

Community and rooftop solar in New York has far outpaced utility-scale renewable energy projects in meeting state climate targets.

New York has over 5,000 megawatts of distributed solar capacity across more than 200,000 projects. The state is on track to meet the state’s statutory goal of installing 6,000 megawatts by 2025 and 10,000 by the end of the decade — “ahead of schedule and under budget,” said Noah Ginsburg, the executive director of the industry group New York Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSEIA).

The industry has been invigorated by generous tax subsidies, loan programs, and cash incentives from the state and federal governments. For residential solar installation, homeowners can get a 25 percent tax credit from New York state and a 30 percent tax credit from the federal government under the Inflation Reduction Act — meaning that more than half of installation costs are publicly funded. Based on where they live, homeowners can also qualify for other incentives including property tax breaks. And the state’s net metering program allows buildings with rooftop solar to sell extra electricity they produce to the grid.

EmPower has installed rooftop solar on more than 5,000 New York homes, according to the firm, and has advocated for favorable state-level policies. Schieren, the CEO, is the chairman of NYSEIA, and EmPower lobbies for policies that favor solar deployment through the Long Island Lobby Coalition, an alliance of local environmental, labor, and business groups. (It is also the “official solar partner” of the New York City Football Club.)

EmPower installers, some of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs, told New York Focus they were motivated to unionize primarily by low pay and a confusing and punitive “bonus” structure. They also said jobs require them to work in all types of weather, from heat waves to rain storms, which can be dangerous when they are standing on the edge of rooftops and carrying heavy equipment up ladders. And they cited smaller frustrations, like being required to drive long distances for jobs in their own cars and having to wait weeks to have fuel costs reimbursed rather than getting company gas cards.

Installers are paid a base hourly wage that starts at $18. For each panel installed, an additional cash bonus is deposited into a pool split between the workers. The system leaves workers like Gregory Morocho, an installer, with a monthly bonus ranging from $300 to $2,500, he said.

In New York, larger solar installation projects are increasingly completed with union contractors, according to Ginsburg of the NYSEIA. That’s in part because of legislation passed in 2022 that requires larger renewable projects that receive public subsidies to pay prevailing wage.

“Once a project is required to pay a prevailing wage, it actually ends up being, in many cases, a lower cost to use a union contractor,” Ginsburg told New York Focus.

Prevailing wage requirements don’t make solar projects significantly more expensive, Heatmap noted, since installation labor accounts for only a small slice of costs. “A 50% increase in labor costs would increase total costs by only 3–5%,” one analysis found, and higher wages tend to be offset by increases in productivity.

For commercial rooftop and ground mount projects, developers often carry out project management themselves, then hire a subcontractor for the actual construction.

Residential installs tend to function differently. Prevailing wage law doesn’t apply, and the construction workers tend to be in-house, like at EmPower.