Robert Bair would probably be the first to admit that his participation in a Pennsylvania House Blue-Green Caucus news conference this month may have once seemed unlikely.

The president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council — an organization representing 130,000 members — Bair has, over the years, found himself at odds with environmental leaders on key legislative issues. But now, at the Pennsylvania capitol building, he found himself standing side by side with representatives of the Sierra Club and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania.

“People say, ‘Rob, do you have a lot in common with the environmental community?’ Two and a half years ago, I probably said, ‘Eh, maybe not,’” Bair said at the conference. “But then the representative immediately to my left and I decided that to actually get something started, we needed to sit down together and talk about our issues.”