Laborers' International Union of North America(LIUNA) and the Laborers-EmployersCooperation and Education Trust (LECET) met with representatives fromleading windfarm constructor White Construction Incorporated (Clinton,Indiana) to explore the possibility of working together. The unionrepresentatives showed White Construction data on more than 200 windfarmprojects in the United States and Canada scheduled to bid out constructionservices within the next year. These projects have a total investmentvalue of more than $52 billion. White Construction was very impressed withthe magnitude of information available to the laborers through IndustrialInfo, resulting in a signed agreement to use union labor on all windfarmprojects. In addition to White Construction, three other contractorsspecializing in windfarm construction have used the agreement includingM.A. Mortenson Company (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Michels Corporation(Brownsville, Wisconsin) and Jay Cashman Incorporated (Quincy,Massachusetts).According to Terry Bumpers, Director of Field Operations for LECET, theunion hopes to capitalize on its windfarm expertise and staffingcapabilities into involvement on T. Boone Pickens' ambitious $7 billion,4,000-megawatt (MW) windfarm project sited in five sparsely populatedcounties in the Texas Panhandle. This project is located in a part of thecountry where labor will be hard to come by. As part of Mr. Pickens' planto produce 20% of the United States' electricity requirement from wind,Mesa Power LP (Dallas, Texas) is planning to construct about 4,000 windtowers in Carson, Gray, Hemphill, Roberts and Wheeler counties, as well aselectricity transmission lines and a water pipeline.
Mesa Power has ordered 667 wind turbines (about 1,000 MW) from GeneralElectric (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) for the first phase of theproject. "T. Boone Pickens' proposal is reachable only if the governmentpasses the Wind Tax Credit," Mr. Bumpers said. "The tax credit is reallywhat's driving new windfarm construction in the U.S."
Labor is in great demand in the U.S., especially along the Texas GulfCoast, where major projects like Motiva's $7 billion crude expansionproject in Port Arthur, Texas, will require 3,000 construction workers. Mr.Bumpers said: "On big jobs like this, we're prepared to help projectdevelopers defray some of the costs in regards to recruiting, screening andtraining construction workers that could include bringing in a full-timerecruiter, screening/drug testing, setting up mobile training units andoffering OSHA 10-hour training classes."
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information servicespecializing in industrial process, energy and financial related marketswith products and services ranging from industry news, analytics,forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.For more information send inquiries to powergroup@industrialinfo.com orvisit us online at www.industrialinfo.com.
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