IBEW Local 125 discusses Climate Jobs Oregon and Clean Energy Work

Travis Eri, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 125, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the newly launched Climate Jobs Oregon initiative and the broader effort to ensure that the build-out of wind, solar, battery storage and transmission infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest creates union jobs.

Representing 4,500 members across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, Eri described an IBEW Local that has grown by nearly 1,000 members since 2022, but is now navigating a slowdown in some work sectors, including the cancellation of offshore wind leases and a stall in electric vehicle infrastructure funding.

He also addressed data center growth, wildfire-hardening work, and the persistent permitting delays he said are the single biggest obstacle to building critical electrical infrastructure at the pace the country needs.

• Climate Jobs Oregon — a newly launched nonprofit co-founded by IBEW Local 125 and the Oregon building trades unions, developed with research support from Cornell University — just hired its first director. It is focused on ensuring that clean energy construction projects across the state, from wind and solar to battery and pump storage, are built with union labor and that trades have a seat at the table during planning.
• Offshore wind lease cancellations have directly affected Local 125 members and partner locals across the West Coast. Previously permitted areas along Oregon's coast and into California are now on hold, representing a significant loss of projected work when the Local has roughly 82 apprentices on its out-of-work list after 15 years of near-full employment.
• A 500kV transmission line on the east side of Oregon — a project Eri first began working on as business manager in 2006 — took 20 years to permit. He told lawmakers that the country cannot sustain that pace if it expects to meet the electrical infrastructure demands being driven by data center growth, electrification and clean energy expansion.

An Interesting Path for Eri and IBEW Local 125 Growth

Travis Eri did not take the direct path to union leadership. His father, a utility lineman, told him to go to college. He earned an aviation degree, but decided long-distance flights were not for him and quit. He then started as a groundman on a line crew and worked his way through the apprenticeship program. By 2005, he was business manager of IBEW Local 125, a position he has held for 21 years, overseeing a four-state jurisdiction covering Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

The Local has 4,500 members, up from around 3,600 after the pandemic. The growth was the result of a surge in construction work, including data centers, transmission lines, wildfire hardening and utility upgrades. But Eri admitted that the picture is not entirely rosy. Around 82 apprentices are currently on the out-of-work list, up from roughly 60 the previous winter. After 10 to 15 years of near-full employment, consecutive slow winter seasons have been a reality check.

What Keeps Members Busy Now

The work that is moving includes a major 300-mile, 500kV transmission line on the east side of Oregon, currently in its early stages with foundations and steel erection underway. Data center construction is also underway on the eastern side of the state, bringing substation and transmission work alongside core building work. Wildfire hardening — driven by Oregon's severe fire seasons and litigation against investor-owned utilities over ignition liability — has kept crews busy on tree wire installation and line clearance. The line clearance side of the Local, which handles brush clearing and traffic control to reduce wildfire risk, has been particularly active during the summer months.

Some sectors have stalled. Electric vehicle infrastructure work, which had been a meaningful source of jobs as utilities upgraded distribution to serve charging stations, has slowed significantly. Utility contract crews have been scaled back as companies shift work to internal staff. Eri said he cannot point to a single cause but acknowledged that policy uncertainty at the federal level has contributed to a less active job environment than the Local had grown accustomed to.

Offshore Wind Cancellations Hit the West Coast

The cancellation of federal offshore wind leases also impacted work in Local 125's jurisdiction. Oregon's southern coast and portions of California had been permitted and approved for offshore wind development, with several Locals in the agreement positioned to put members to work on those projects.

The cancellation eliminated that projected pipeline of work and affected partner Locals down the California coast as well, Eri said. IBEW International President Kenneth Cooper, an Ohio native, has been vocal about the impact of these cancellations on the broader IBEW membership, which is approaching 900,000 nationally and has a stated goal of reaching 1 million.

Climate Jobs Oregon: A Union Seat at the Clean Energy Table

The most significant development Eri discussed is the launch of Climate Jobs Oregon, a nonprofit co-founded by Local 125 and other Oregon building trades unions with research support from Cornell University. The organization, which just hired its first executive director, is designed to give building trades unions a voice in how clean energy infrastructure gets planned, sited and staffed in the state.

As wind, solar, battery storage, pump storage and grid upgrade projects are developed, Climate Jobs Oregon works to ensure those projects are built union and that the trades are at the table before decisions about contractors and staffing are made. Eri, who sits on the organization's board, said the goal extends beyond electrical work to commercial and industrial building upgrades that also generate clean energy jobs.

His broader energy philosophy mirrors what labor leaders across the trades have been saying for years: this has to be an all-of-the-above approach. Replacing existing power generation sources with new clean energy capacity is not enough; the country needs to add capacity, not simply shift in the Pacific Northwest, where hydroelectric power is a major resource. This means maintaining and upgrading existing facilities while building new ones, not choosing between them, he said.

Permitting Is the Bottleneck Nobody Has Solved

The conversation kept returning to one obstacle: permitting. The 500kV transmission line currently being built on the east side of Oregon is a project Eri started working on in 2006. It took 20 years to permit. That the timeline is not an anomaly, he said, it is a systemic problem that applies at the national level and is increasingly incompatible with the pace at which data center growth, electrification and clean energy development are demanding new infrastructure.

Eri has repeatedly had a similar conversation with Oregon legislators. The response is sympathetic, but the problem persists, he said. Data center developers asking why the grid cannot serve their facilities, utilities struggling to add capacity, communities questioning whether rates will rise to pay for infrastructure buildout, all of it flows from the same source. The permitting process is not built for the speed the current energy moment requires, and until that changes, the work will move more slowly than the need demands.

More information on IBEW Local 125 is available at ibew125.com.

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