Offshore wind saved a struggling New Bedford union. Now its future is uncertain

Cape Verdeans have unloaded New Bedford’s cargo for over a century, since the days when casks of spermaceti oil arrived on whaleships fresh from the Arctic and Indian oceans.

So when a barge carrying wind turbine blades longer than a football field arrived in 2023, the city’s predominantly Cape Verdean longshoremen’s union felt it had a right to unload the cargo.

The historically Black union had recently fallen on hard times. In 2016, after a long period without much work, the longshoremen tore down their weathered union hall to cut expenses, seeing few opportunities to turn the union’s finances around.

Then the turbines arrived. Tower sections taller than any building in New Bedford were being assembled by other union workers on the waterfront and shipped out with the blades for installation at Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

To get leverage with the project’s international developer, New Bedford’s longshoremen picketed outside the pier, causing a weeklong work stoppage. Eventually, the union secured a contract that put about two dozen longshoremen to work tying up ships and moving turbine parts on and off the pier.

“We hadn't been working probably in three years before Vineyard Wind came,” said Kevin Rose, the longtime president of Local 1413 of the International Longshoremen’s Association.

Rose said the next three years of construction proved to be “life-changing” for Local 1413’s members. The project’s hourly wage of $50 was nearly double what New Bedford longshoremen previously earned working part-time unloading occasional shipments of tangerines and juice concentrate.

Ten of the longshoremen worked full-time building Vineyard Wind, Rose said. Some earned more than $85,000 per year, he said, a significant salary in a city where the average annual income is just over $30,000, according to the latest Census estimates.

At the time, members of Local 1413 thought they’d found a lifeline. Another developer signed a lease at New Bedford’s pier to build a wind farm shortly after Vineyard Wind. Dozens of proposed offshore wind farms were moving towards federal approval, promising many years, if not decades, of work. Rose began floating a proposal to rebuild the union hall.

Then Donald Trump won re-election.

On his first day back in the Oval Office, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum that halted federal permitting for all future offshore wind development. His administration later ordered work stoppages on the five offshore wind farms already under construction, including Vineyard Wind. The developers suffered costly delays until the court overturned Trump’s order and construction resumed.

If the Trump administration succeeds in ending offshore wind development in the United States, it will eliminate thousands of jobs on America’s waterfronts from Massachusetts to Virginia. Much of that work takes place in cities like New Bedford and New London, Conn., where state governments invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build port infrastructure and train workers for the offshore wind industry.

The federal government’s abrupt shift in offshore wind policy has pushed companies to cancel plans for new factories in the U.S., redirect offshore wind development towards other countries, and even sell back their leases of federal waters. States that invested heavily in offshore wind are falling behind on climate goals and could see their purpose-built offshore wind piers sit empty for years.

And the people who hoped for steady work in the offshore wind industry are now adjusting to a future without it.

“Most of us have to get other jobs for now or collect unemployment,” said Rose.

In response to questions about the administration’s impact on American offshore wind workers, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior repeated the administration’s criticisms of offshore wind as an expensive, unreliable energy source.

“The reality is that the Biden administration lured companies into these projects with the promise of millions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to make these offshore wind projects viable,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Massachusetts invested $140 million to build its offshore wind pier in New Bedford, where Vineyard Wind completed its project this March. Now, flocks of seagulls and gaggles of Canada geese shuffle about the vacant site.

Just a few months ago, Onix Vazquez, a 34-year-old longshoreman, was working full-time there. He grew up a few blocks away and said he struggled to find lucrative work until Vineyard Wind began hiring from his union.

“If I wasn't a longshoreman, I'd probably be dealing drugs somewhere in the city,” Vazquez said.

After working full-time on Vineyard Wind for three years, Vazquez made the down payment on a house, he said, as did four other union members. But his hopes of working back-to-back offshore wind jobs have been thwarted, injecting stress and uncertainty into his plans to pay off the mortgage and raise his family there.

SouthCoast Wind, the developer expected to follow Vineyard Wind onto the pier, has delayed its project with no indication of a potential start date. On an earnings call last year, an executive from SouthCoast Wind’s parent company said, “Offshore in the U.S. is pretty much in hibernation mode.”

Vazquez said he now works a seasonal job in the cranberry industry at much lower pay.

“They don't see that it affects us, the ones that work the projects,” said Vazquez.

Plans to rebuild the demolished union hall have been shelved again, too. The site where New Bedford’s longshoremen once christened their children is now a cracked concrete foundation sprouting weeds next to an old Cape Verdean social club.

Blocks away, at the once busy offshore wind pier, officials are seeking to lease the dock space to an old wooden schooner that once transported Cape Verdean families to America in search of jobs.