As recent research from UC Berkeley demonstrates, incorporating labor agreements does not significantly inflate the cost of affordable housing projects and delivers crucial benefits for workers and communities.

“All these new jobs that are going to be created [in] actually implementing the work needed to respond to climate change and shift our economy away from fossil fuels are jobs that we want to be good jobs, union jobs, and well-paid jobs with good career pathways,” Hammerling said. “It’s giving the building trades the opportunity to be at the center of building the clean energy economy.”