Building trades unions are among the biggest backers for the proposed Pride of the Prairie solar complex but not all of them – at least not in the project’s present form.

The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council, which includes Carpenters Local 174 in Joliet, was among those objecting to the 6,100-acre project during a public hearing this week.

The carpenters union is not against Earthrise Energy building the solar complex, however. They want to be part of the job.

“This project here is basically limited to three trades,” Anthony Jankowski, director of business development with Mid-America Carpenters, said Monday at the public hearing. “Why aren’t you including the Will County Carpenters?”

Jankowski said the Carpenters union will object again Thursday when a Will County Board committee considers the Pride of the Prairie complex and a separate 2,400-acre Plum Valley Solar project planned by Earthrise Energy.

The Will County Board Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-2 on Tuesday to recommend rejection of a special use permit needed to build the Pride of the Prairie project.

The full County Board will have the final say.

The projects would create hundreds of construction jobs.

Earthrise has a labor agreement for both projects with three unions: Laborers, Operating Engineers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Jankowski said the carpenters’ union typically does mechanical work on solar projects and should be part of the Earthrise contracts in Will County.

He contends that limiting the contract to three unions will lead to bringing in workers from outside the area to get the solar complex built because of the number of construction projects in the works in Will County.

“It bottlenecks the workforce,” Jankowski said later in an interview. “We want to keep the jobs local. We think no one should be objecting to that.”

The Pride of the Prairie project is estimated to generate 600 construction jobs.

Opponents of the project at the public hearing at times dismissed the construction jobs as temporary.

Union representatives emphasized that their full-time work depends on such construction projects.

“Please know that the men and women in the building trades work on certain jobs and then move on to other jobs,” Paul Gerhmann, communications director for the Chicago Area Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, told the commission on Tuesday. “It’s what we do. It’s the nature of the trades.”