Solidarity Sunday: When Wall Street Needs Union Labor
Brothers and Sisters,
Something interesting is happening in the race to build America's artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The people with more money than they know what to do with have discovered something.
They need us.
Meta announced this week that it is partnering with North America's Building Trades Unions to help supply the skilled workforce needed for its massive data center construction plans.
And Meta isn't alone.
OpenAI has already established a relationship with NABTU for its Stargate infrastructure projects. Now BlackRock and its partners are making similar commitments.
When Silicon Valley and Wall Street all arrive at the same conclusion, we ought to pay attention.
You can raise billions of dollars. You can buy the most advanced computer chips on earth. You can hire the smartest engineers in Silicon Valley.
But eventually somebody still has to bend the conduit.
Somebody has to pull the wire, weld the pipe, install the HVAC, operate the equipment and build the substations.
Artificial intelligence may live in the cloud.
But the cloud, as it turns out, needs craftsmen.
For local unions across the Southeast, that could mean years of work, thousands of new apprentices, stronger signatory contractors and one of the best organizing opportunities we have seen in a generation.
But you know me well enough to know there is another side to this story.
Private equity has entered the chat.
Longtime readers know my opinion of the Wall Street model that buys businesses, loads them with debt, extracts every dollar possible and too often leaves workers holding the bag.
So no, I haven't suddenly fallen in love with BlackRock.
But suspicion shouldn't mean surrender.
If billions of dollars are going to pour into our communities to build AI infrastructure, I would much rather have organized labor sitting at the table before the first shovel hits the ground than standing outside the gate afterward.
And that is where our locals come in.
A national agreement doesn't organize a jobsite.
A press release doesn't create an apprentice.
And a handshake in Washington doesn't guarantee union work in Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Alabama or anywhere else.
That happens locally.
We should welcome the investment while demanding our share of what it creates.
Union wages. Union benefits. Registered apprenticeships. Local workers. Safe jobsites. Responsible contractors.
We don't have to trust Wall Street to do business with Wall Street.
We just have to remember what they apparently have remembered.
They may have the money.
Silicon Valley may have the technology.
But neither one can build a damn thing without us.
In Solidarity,
Rutland Walker
CEO, Union Up