Harrisburg, Pennsylvania– Building labor unions — which have long served as the voice of the American worker — are now intertwined with the world’s richest companies as they create the American AI economy.
Unionized workers are being employed on a large number of massive data center projects and are rushing to hire new trainees to meet the massive demand.
They have also become allies of tech giants and tech-friendly government officials, reflecting the talking point that the United States is locked in a crucial national security race with China for AI supremacy.
Unions are an obvious force in helping to combat the ferocity Opposition in societies And hostile legislation in Congress and legislatures, which often aligns with traditionally pro-business Republican constituencies and forces Democrats to choose between themselves and progressives who want to take a harder line.
Unions have responded aggressively to complaints about data centers in ways that executives at technology giants and development companies rarely do, without fear of confronting concerns about power and water shortages, high electricity and water bills, or noise and quality of life objections.
“When people say, you know, data centers are the root of all evil, we’re just saying, ‘Look, they create a lot of construction jobs that we live and work in your communities,’” said Rob Baer, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council.
Instead of just “outright rejection,” Beyer said, communities should figure out what they need and ask tech companies for it — such as improvements to project plans or millions of dollars for local schools. “If you don’t ask, you’ll never get it,” he said.
As construction of data centers accelerates, guilds are expanding training centers and are seeing their ranks grow faster than many guild leaders have ever seen.
Unions in a number of states have reported significant increases in work hours, apprentice classes have doubled in size, and training centers have undergone expansions in anticipation of more work to come.
Data centers consume at least 40% of the work hours of Columbus-Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council members, according to estimates from one of its top officials, Dorsey Hager. That percentage is at least 50 percent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26 in Washington, D.C., spokesman Don Solomon said.
The umbrella construction trade union of North America said it had a record number of members and apprentices in 2025.
The organization’s president, Sean McGarvey, compared it to the expansion of the construction trade in the 1950s. He attributes today’s growth to data centers, power plants and legislation under former President Joe Biden that supported construction of semiconductor factories, electric vehicle batteries, energy efficiency projects and improved grid transmission.
The insatiable power needs of data centers are sparking a boom in power plant construction and providing a boost of new life to unions whose members also build and maintain boilers, ductwork, pipelines and other energy infrastructure.
Boilermakers Local 154, whose members watched power plants close in southwestern Pennsylvania, has gone from not hiring any interns for four years to assembling a chapter of more than 200 people now — and they need more, said union official Shawn Steffey.
For their part, the tech giants say they need to train hundreds of thousands of additional workers in skilled trades. They spend tens of millions of dollars on training programs, including partnerships with unions they hire to build their multi-billion-dollar projects.
“Across the country, highly skilled unionized construction workers are laying the foundation for the AI economy,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said in a joint March statement with McGarvey’s organization.
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 electrician training program that it said would help expand its electrical workforce pipeline by 70%.
Mark McManus, general president of the United Union of Plumbers and Pipefitters, whose members work in pipelines, data centers and power plants, acknowledged criticism that organized labor aligns itself with the world’s richest and most powerful companies.
But he rejected this as unrealistic.
“If we as a union choose to stop building data centers because we don’t think it’s right for America, then data centers will continue to be built,” McManus said. “They don’t stop because of organized labor.”
His union has a strong relationship with technology companies, has achieved membership highs ever, and, based on an internal survey, members work on more than 90% of data center projects in the United States.
“It’s a market share that we don’t have in a lot of other industries,” McManus said. “So it’s very near and dear to us.”
It’s difficult to determine exactly how many data center projects involve union labor. An Associated General Contractors of America survey late last year indicated that the composition of employment in data center construction likely mirrors that of commercial construction, which represents about a third of the union, an AGC spokesman said.
National unions have negotiated labor agreements on major projects, including Oracle and OpenAI Stargate Campus in Michigan and the “Project Blue” data center campus in Arizona, and more are in the works.
When Gov. Josh Shapiro stood with Amazon executives to announce that the tech giant would spend $20 billion on two data center projects in eastern Pennsylvania, Baier stood with them.
“This is really unique, what we’re building here in this commonwealth,” Shapiro said. “People coming together with a common goal to get things done.”
In statehouses, unions worked against Maine’s proposal, which has since been rejected Statewide data center endowment; Proposed standards in Illinois, including requiring data centers to supply their own power; And the end of Virginia sales tax exemption Which helped make it the largest destination for data centers in the world.
Pennsylvania State Sen. Katie Muth said it has been difficult to gather support from fellow Democrats for her legislation to regulate data centers when it competes with union-backed legislation that she considers weaker.
“Unions don’t want to promote anything that would hinder the development of data centers,” Muth said.
Union representatives have made their presence felt at packed council meetings in municipal buildings from St. Louis to Spring City, Pennsylvania.
Sometimes it’s not in a good way.
Speaking before a city council in Joliet, Illinois, Alicia Morales complained that union members — who sat in the front row holding “Vote Yes for Union Jobs” signs — were disrespectful and “bullied a lot of people” who entered the meeting.
Sometimes, union representatives are the only people in a packed town hall to speak in favor of the project.
“I just want to commend you guys, thank you for being the adults in the room,” Chuck Carey, president of Ironworkers Local 395, told city council members in Hobart, Indiana, at a meeting at an Amazon data center in January. “Knowing the tax structure, knowing the business, which most people here don’t know.”
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