Arizona’s Workers Are Ready to Build Our Future
Aaron Butler
President
Arizona State Building & Construction Trades Council
After a challenging 18 months, AZBTC-affiliated unions are seeing the return of steady work for their members, and are projecting continued growth and opportunities for the next decade. International corporations are looking to Arizona to build their distribution warehouses, data centers, manufacturing plants, and mining facilities. AZBTC’s leadership, along with the leaders from the affiliates, are focused on expanding the pool of highly skilled workers to ensure that unions can meet these companies’ immediate and long-term need for workers to build, maintain and operate their facilities. AZBTC training centers are actively recruiting for their gold-standard apprenticeship programs, and strengthening their membership to attract the best skilled workers in the Southwest U.S.
With all of this construction on the horizon, AZBTC is focused on making sure that stakeholders keep workers and their families top of mind. Business and government leaders have been meeting with AZBTC leaders, touring training facilities, and building partnerships that ensure that construction projects are staffed with highly qualified workers. These partners recognize that union workers have the training and experience to keep large construction projects on budget and on time, without compromising quality and safety. In return, AZBTC recognizes that in building these partnerships they have opportunities to improve pay, benefits, and working conditions for all workers, union and nonunion. These partnerships also stabilize the work force, promote local hiring practices, support training programs, and keep tax dollars in our state.
AZBTC’s leadership will continue to make work force development a priority so we can answer the call for highly skilled workers for any and all projects.
