Andrew Meredith Keeps Undermining Gov. Newsom’s Climate Priorities. Why Do Democrats Continue To Embrace Him?

No one gets riled up over the adoption of a state political party’s policy platform. That’s mostly because nobody even bothers to read them. And why would you? These documents are hundreds of pages long, dense, and scan somewhere between new-age wish-fulfillment and a loner’s sad manifesto.

But Andrew Meredith, who serves as President of the California Building and Construction Trades Council, managed to slog his way through a draft of what would ultimately become the 2022 platform of the California Democratic Party. What he read triggered an epic meltdown.

In the middle of a platform committee meeting, Meredith incited what the L.A. Times described charitably as “a testy exchange” with the committee chairwoman, whom Meredith characterized as “shameful.”

What kind of radical policies was the chairwoman trying to shove into the party platform? Did she fight to take away the right of woman in California to have an abortion? Oppose a ban on assault rifles? Raise prescription drug prices for seniors? Take the math books out of your kid’s school for mentioning the existence of racial disparities? 

No, none of those things. Meredith threw a temper tantrum over the climate provisions in the party’s platform, which include planks such as “transitioning away from … fossil fuels as soon as feasible” and “creating well-paying union jobs in the zero-carbon and alternative domestic energy production sectors.”

Despite Meredith’s outburst, the party’s leadership let him keep his coveted speaking slot the next day at the California Democrats’ annual convention. Meredith used that time not to apologize for his behavior toward the chairwoman, but rather to threaten his fellow Democrats. “Understand this,” Meredith said, scanning as more an old school mob boss than the leader of a progressive labor union, “we as an organization will not be silenced or marginalized in a party we helped build … we aren’t a charity and our support is never a given.”

Even hours later Meredith hadn’t cooled off. The Building Trades Twitter account–presumably operated by Meredith or an equally intemperate high school intern–continued the attack. At a time where Democrats are desperate to show unity and build momentum heading into the 2022 midterm elections, the tweets sowed division and pessimism instead: “Narrow approval of platform @CA_Dem convention shows deeply divided delegates … doesn’t bode well for Dems in midterm elections.” 

The pushback was immediate. David Atkins, a state party leader and an elected member of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted in response, “The divide was over charter schools, where a lot of us were uncomfortable with the new language. The climate portions of the platform had broad unflinching support and were not contested on the floor.” 

RL Miller, who, like Atkins, is a leader in the state party and an elected member of the DNC, added: “narrow approval of the platform was entirely due to two education issues -- vouchers and charter schools -- that came up [in] very last minute fashion sowing confusion. Energy & environment section [is] not controversial, [and] reflects [a] broad consensus among grassroots Cal Dems.”

Daraka Larimore-Hall, vice chair of the state party as well as a labor leader, also jumped in, echoing Miller and Atkins, and suggested that it was the Building Trades who were out of step: “dems are remarkably united, including on climate, though we wish you'd catch up, bros and sisters.”

Andrew Meredith’s eruption at the convention reflects a widening rift between the Building Trades and the state’s Democratic Party over California’s energy future. 

Last June, a group of 19 labor unions commissioned a 200-page report building the case that Newsom’s target of “reaching zero emissions by 2045” is a realistic prospect and outlining a “just transition program for workers and communities in California that are currently dependent on the state’s fossil fuel industries for their livelihoods.” Andrew Meredith’s group didn’t sign onto this report. 

Instead, the Building Trades commissioned their own report written by a lobbyist named Brad Williams, who—while not exactly an environmental engineer from Stanford–works at Capitol Matrix Consulting, a group that seems to bring all of the innovation you’d expect from a firm with a founder who served in the Reagan Administration. The “report” concluded both that “green jobs pay less” and “a phaseout of oil and gas production would likely hurt green job growth.” Huh? 

Meredith’s crusade against a “just transition” clashes with Newsom’s vision as reflected in his latest budget proposal, which included $50 million to support displaced oil and gas workers. It also places the Building Trades at odds with prominent labor unions, including chapters of AFSCME, United Steel Workers, and the California Federation of Teachers.

As Politico, CalMatters and other outlets have been reporting for years, opposition on climate legislation from the Building Trades is nothing new: “Unions torpedoed an ambitious proposal to phase out fossil fuels for generating electricity…”, “the Trades has killed some of the Democrats’ most ambitious bills to tackle climate change…”, “...a growing graveyard of sidelined legislation…”, “a barrage of threats have lawmakers both fuming and struggling to chart a way forward…, “Why big climate bills keep dying in the California Senate.” Indeed, the group has wielded their influence to sandbag much of the Democratic lawmakers’ priority climate legislation, including ambitious bills that would have blocked oil drilling near schools and neighborhoods, provided wage subsidies and training for oil industry workers transitioning to the green energy industry, and mandated that the state move to net-zero emissions by 2045 – all dead in the water following opposition from the Building Trades. 

While the Building Trades actively undermines Newson’s climate priorities, Meredith has thrown his organization’s support behind Chevron’s vision for California’s energy future, despite the fact that the company is currently suing the Newsom Administration for banning fracking. Chevron even touted Meredith’s support in a recent press release, quoting Meredith saying that the Building Trades “appreciate[s] Chevron’s continued commitment to California and our workers.” And Meredith appears to have returned the favor, recently calling for an “increase [in] the domestic production” of oil. 

The Building Trades also partnered with the Western States Petroleum Association, one of the best funded oil and gas trade groups in the country, to form Common Ground, an organization that lobbies on behalf of the world’s biggest oil and gas drilling operations. WSPA recently spent over $10 million in a single year (and over $5 million already in 2022) opposing legislation that would have, for example, restricted drilling for oil and gas in neighborhoods where families live in cities like Los Angeles (legislation that the Building Trades also opposed).

It’s not just that the Building Trades has lobbied against the Democrats’ climate priorities, or even that the group has commissioned reports of dubious credibility in order to peddle misinformation in those lobbying efforts, it’s also that the group has paid for and run cheap-shot attack ads against key Democrats in their election campaigns. As Politico described, the group had to retract an ad depicting state Sen. Scott Wiener “brandishing money in front of a Monopoly board after Jewish groups condemned the spot as anti-Semitic.” The Building Trades also put out a hit on Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon accusing him of sexual misconduct.

Yet, in the months since Meredith’s outburst at the Democratic convention, the chasm between the Building Trades and the rest of the party seems to be widening. Meredith has taken to straight-out threatening to take votes away from Democrats. In words so immodest they would make Tony Soprano blush, Meredith recently described the Building Trades as a “powerful, unparalleled force in California politics,” and said that “legislators” should govern by “simply following our lead” and “if they aren’t” on “the right side of history” then “we won’t forget it come November.” 

Meredith’s version of the “right side of history” does not include, for example, support for SB 1173, legislation, now dead, that would have prohibited California’s two public employee pensions, the largest two pension funds in the U.S.—the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System—from making new investments into large fossil fuel companies and would (eventually, as in by 2035) require the pensions to completely divest from these companies. The measure, which already exists in New York, is supported by prominent unions such as the California Federation of Teachers, the California Nurses Association, and chapters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, United Domestic Workers and AFSCME. 

The Building Trades oppose the bill, submitting an opposition statement contending that the bill would “de-stabilize the careers of the tens of thousands of our public employee members who feed their families through their careers in the energy sector.” 

If only Governor Newsom and the California Democrats would include planks in their party platform that prioritized “maintaining skilled production workers within their industry with comparable compensation and benefits over the course of the transition to clean energy.”