{"id":238113,"date":"2026-05-02T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T04:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/02\/building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers-wral-com\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T01:45:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T05:45:18","slug":"building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/02\/building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers-wral-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Building trades unions emerge as a key ally of tech giants in push for AI data centers :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/ap\/64b10-building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers\/\">Building trades unions emerge as a key ally of tech giants in push for AI data centers :: WRAL.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/ap\/64b10-building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers\/\">https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/ap\/64b10-building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-02 00:11:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.wral.com\">www.wral.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) \u2014 Building trades unions \u2014 long fashioned as the voice of the American worker \u2014 are now intertwined with the richest companies in the world as they create America&#8217;s artificial intelligence economy.<\/p>\n<p>Unionized workers are employed on a huge number of massive data center projects and scrambling to recruit new apprentices to feed the explosive demand. <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve also become an ally of tech giants and tech-friendly government officials, echoing the talking point that the United States is in a critical national security race with China for AI superiority.<\/p>\n<p>Unions are a visible force in helping counter fierce opposition in communities and hostile legislation in Congress and legislatures, often aligning with traditional Republican pro-business constituencies and forcing Democrats to choose between them and progressives who want to take a harder line.<\/p>\n<p>Unions have aggressively answered complaints about data centers in ways that executives at tech giants and the development firms rarely do, unafraid to bluntly confront concerns about energy and water shortages, rising electric and water bills, or noise and quality-of-life objections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen people say, you know, \u2018data centers are the root of all evil,\u2019 we\u2019re just saying, \u2018look, they do create a hell of a lot of construction jobs, which we live and work in your communities,&#8217;\u201d said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of \u201cbeing just a blunt \u2018no,&#8217;\u201d Bair said, communities should figure out what they need and ask the tech companies for it \u2014 such as improvements to the project&#8217;s plans or millions&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/ap\/64b10-building-trades-unions-emerge-as-a-key-ally-of-tech-giants-in-push-for-ai-data-centers\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Building trades unions emerge as a key ally of tech giants in push for AI&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.wral.com\/91f19c37-7529-5926-bf2d-86ed45b6ade8?w=1200&h=630","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-238113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238115,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238113\/revisions\/238115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}