A New York-based solar panel business has been accused of being a “poster child” of union busting after furloughing 40% of its workforce for more than a year, days after a victorious union election.
Installers and technicians at EmPower Solar, in Bethpage – concerned about poor working conditions and issues they faced on the job – reached out to the United Auto Workers after the gains it won during the “stand up” strikes at the big three automakers.
Just before Christmas, on 22 December, workers at Empower voted to join UAW Local 259. The union fight overcame opposition from the company and consultants at National Labor Relations Advocates. NRLA specializes in union avoidance, claiming a 96% success rate.
Barely a week after the vote, on 30 December, EmPower furloughed 21 workers until 2025. UAW Local 259 claimed this amounted to a “union busting” tactic, designed to target workers for unionizing.
EmPower said the decision had “nothing to do with the UAW or results of the union vote”, insisting it was “solely due to a slowdown in business”.
The union is due to hold a rally outside the company’s headquarters on Saturday to protest against its actions.
Daniel Lozano, who started working as a solar installer at EmPower in April 2023, is one of the furloughed employees. He enjoys the job, but does not believe that he and other workers are compensated enough for the work they do, which includes inherent dangers in working on different types of roofs, especially through hot summer heat.
“If you’re afraid of heights, it’s not the job for you,” said Lozano, who was being paid $18.65 an hour, plus bonuses dependent on the number of solar panel installations he completed monthly. “We want more for what we put in.”
The union-organizing drive stemmed from Lozano and other workers wanting their concerns and voices to actually be heard by management, he added, and to not have to work under constant pressure to finish jobs and worry about high turnover rates.
“We want to be treated with respect,” he said. “We are the jobs of the future. If we’re going to be working a lot of jobs with climate change and everyone needing solar, we need a livable wage and we need to know we’re not going to get fired because they have high or low selling periods.”
While on vacation during the December holiday break after the union election win, Lozano was notified he was to be furloughed. “It’s disgusting,” he said. “Why do they need to make this such a big deal and be so arrogant? They’re going to furlough us without giving the UAW and us a notice, doing all of these shady things.
“We can make this easy, sit down at the bargaining table and get this done. EmPower can and has the power to stop all of this right now, to accept the union, to sit down with us – and we can have a fair contract.”
Just before the union election, EmPower filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the union, alleging coercion. The union also filed unfair labor charges with the board against EmPower over the layoffs, and allegations of coercion and intimidation.
In the wake of its decision to furlough workers, EmPower had several job postings on its website, including for solar installers.
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In a statement, the company said: “The decision to furlough had nothing to do with the UAW or results of the union vote. Demand for solar has gone down due to multiple macroeconomic factors, such as high interest rates.
“Similar to many construction and all types of businesses, we have had to reduce workforce many times due to economic conditions. Inflation and rapidly rising interest rates have had a negative impact on demand for EmPower’s products and services.”
“It’s crazy,” Michael DiGiuseppe, vice-president of UAW Local 259, said of the move. “How is that not union busting, a week after the election? We keep hearing about this just transition. I have two millionaires at a solar panel company that won’t even talk to the union they just voted in, instead choosing to lay off 21 guys.”
He added: “We should all be working together right now to make EmPower the best solar company in the world and a partnership between them and labor, setting an example for the new economy going forward.”
UAW Local 259 is “not going to stop”, DiGiuseppe said. “We’re not going to be bullied. They could have been the standard bearers of what’s good and what we want to do going forward. Instead, they’re the poster child of union busting. They decided this.”
The conflict comes as labor unions and environmental groups push for a just transition to green energy. Only 4% of US solar workers are union members.
“We were told the green economy had to be a race to the bottom, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, said during a US Senate hearing last November. “But UAW members rejected that false choice, that it can only be either green auto jobs or good auto jobs. The UAW just proved that it can and must be both.”
