The craft shortage on data center jobs is usually a scheduling failure, not a headcount failure. A local finds out about a 2,000-worker mechanical peak nine months out instead of three years out, and by then the apprenticeship intake decision that would have covered it was made twice already.
That’s the problem the memorandum signed August 10 is aimed at. North America’s Building Trades Unions, BlackRock and the AI Infrastructure Partnership agreed that “AIP’s anticipated project pipeline will provide visibility to improve planning for future workforce needs,” and that the parties will explore expanded apprenticeship use, training and recruitment.
Read the Qualifiers
The MOU is explicitly nonbinding, and BlackRock and AIP will apply it “in a manner that is consistent with their fiduciary duty to clients.” No dollar figure attaches to it. No AIP portfolio companies or specific projects are named. It is an agreement to share information, not an agreement to build anything a particular way.
What it does contain is language open-shop contractors should read closely. The document acknowledges that contractors under a Responsible Contractor Program contribute to “greater execution certainty, better workplace safety, and improved operational reliability,” and that “having a project labor agreement may be appropriate for certain projects.” That’s carefully hedged, and it’s still a directional statement from a capital allocator about how it expects large jobs to be staffed.
The Scale on Both Sides
AIP is targeting $30 billion of equity capital with potential to reach $100 billion including debt financing. NABTU covers 14 national and international unions and more than 3.2 million craft professionals across the U.S. and Canada, and reports that its unions and signatory contractors put over $3 billion a year of private money into more than 1,900 apprenticeship training and education facilities.
NABTU president Sean McGarvey put the argument this way: “There is no shortage of men and women ready to build America’s future; what is needed is the workforce planning, industry partnerships, and sustained investment required to connect people with world-class training and family-sustaining careers.” Will Brilliant, AIP’s CEO and global head of digital infrastructure at Global Infrastructure Partners, called strategic access to that workforce “a competitive advantage.”
Whether It Works Depends on What Gets Shared
Pipeline visibility is only useful at a level of detail nobody has committed to yet. A JATC sizing an intake class needs craft, count, location and window. An investor disclosing that it expects to build data centers in the Southeast over five years tells the trades nothing they didn’t already know. Contrast that with a project like the Met’s Tang Wing, which published a 4,000-union-job estimate and an MWBE target before breaking ground.
This is the third labor arrangement tied to AI infrastructure in about a week, following Meta’s agreement with the building trades. The pattern is consistent: the capital is moving faster than the craft supply, and the people writing the checks have started to notice that a project without electricians is not a project. Whether an MOU with a fiduciary-duty carve-out changes anyone’s apprenticeship intake is a question the 2027 class sizes will answer.