With the data-center buildout accelerating, the traditionally blue-collar construction unions that have long acted as a voice for American workers are also becoming partners—at least on the ground—with some of the world’s biggest technology companies and with lawmakers who want to speed up the artificial intelligence infrastructure race.
The Associated Press described a campaign in which unionized workers are employed on a “huge number” of massive data center projects while unions simultaneously push to recruit new apprentices to fill what they describe as explosive demand. In many communities, unions are also positioning themselves as a counterweight to what the AP characterized as fierce opposition and hostile legislation, including measures that target data centers directly or seek to tighten their requirements.
Union leaders frame their involvement as both economic and practical. Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council, said that when opponents portray data centers as harmful, unions argue for a different view of the trade-offs. “When people say, you know, ‘data centers are the root of all evil,’ we’re just saying, ‘look, they do create a hell of a lot of construction jobs, which we live and work in your communities,’” Bair said.
Bair said communities should identify what they need from projects and press companies to deliver it—citing improvements to plans or funding for local schools. “If you don’t ask, you’re never gonna get,” he said. Union representatives, the AP reported, say they respond more directly to complaints about energy and water shortages, rising electric and water bills, and noise and day-to-day quality-of-life concerns than tech executives or development firms often do.
As construction demand rises, the AP said unions are expanding training centers and reporting faster growth in ranks and apprentice classes than many union leaders have previously seen. The umbrella organization North America’s Building Trades Unions reported a record number of members and apprentices in 2025, and its president, Sean McGarvey, compared the current expansion to the build trades’ growth in the 1950s. McGarvey attributed today’s growth to data centers, power plants, and legislation under former President Joe Biden that subsidized the construction of semiconductor and electric vehicle battery factories, energy efficiency projects and grid transmission improvements.
The AP also tied the unions’ momentum to the knock-on effects of data centers’ energy demand, describing a broader power plant construction boom that draws in workers who build and maintain boilers, ductwork, pipelines and other parts of power infrastructure. Shawn Steffee, a union official with Boilermakers Local 154 in southwestern Pennsylvania, said the local union went from recruiting zero apprentices for four years to assembling a class of over 200—and said it needs more. In the Washington area, Don Slaiman, a spokesperson for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26, estimated that data centers make up at least 50% of the local union’s work.
Tech companies say they face their own workforce constraints and are trying to build pipelines through training partnerships. The AP reported that Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder and CEO, said in a March joint statement with McGarvey’s organization that “Across the country, highly skilled union construction workers are laying the foundation for the AI economy.” Google said the majority of labor used to build its data centers is unionized, and pointed to a $10 million grant to a union-backed electricians training program that it said would help expand the electrician workforce pipeline by 70%.
While unions increasingly work alongside wealthy technology companies, some union leaders reject the idea that labor has simply joined powerful interests. Mark McManus, general president of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters, acknowledged criticism that organized labor is “getting in bed” with the richest companies, but the AP reported that he dismissed the framing. “If we chose as a union to have a moratorium on building the data centers because we didn’t believe it was right for America, the data centers would still be getting built,” McManus said. “They’re not stopping because of organized labor.”
McManus said his union’s relationship with tech companies reflects the scale of work and membership. He said the union has members working on over 90% of the data center projects in the United States, based on an internal survey. He also said it has a market share in that industry that it does not have in many others, adding, “That’s a market share that we don’t have in a lot of other industries.” The Associated Press reported that it is difficult to quantify exactly how many data center projects involve union labor, and cited an Associated General Contractors of America survey that suggested data center construction labor composition likely mirrors commercial construction, roughly one-third union.
The AP described how unions’ role extends beyond job sites into statehouses and municipal meetings. It said national unions have negotiated labor agreements on major projects, including an Oracle and OpenAI Stargate campus in Michigan and the “Project Blue” data center campus in Arizona, with more projects in the pipeline. In Pennsylvania, it said Bair stood with Gov. Josh Shapiro and Amazon executives to announce that Amazon would spend $20 billion on two data center projects in eastern Pennsylvania, and Shapiro said, “This is really unique, what we’re building here in this commonwealth. People coming together with common purpose to get stuff done.”
In state legislatures, the AP reported that unions have worked against Maine’s since-vetoed proposal for a statewide data center moratorium and against or to influence standards proposed in other states, including requirements in Illinois that data centers supply their own energy and a Virginia sales tax exemption that helped make the state a major data center destination. Pennsylvania state Sen. Katie Muth told the AP it can be difficult to win support from fellow Democrats for legislation to regulate data centers when she is competing with union-backed laws that she views as weaker. “The unions don’t want to promote anything that would impede data center development,” Muth said.
The AP also described how union representatives can show up in packed council meetings, from St. Louis to Spring City, Pennsylvania, to argue for projects and for union labor. It included examples in which union members drew both praise and complaints about how they conducted themselves. In Joliet, Illinois, Alicia Morales complained to a City Council meeting that union members “bullied a lot of people.” In Hobart, Indiana, the AP reported that Chuck Curry, president of Ironworkers Local 395, told City Council members at a January meeting about an Amazon data center: “I just want to commend you guys, thanks for being the adults in the room,” adding that most of the people present did not know the tax structure.