NABTU's Dr. Tom Kriger on Apprenticeship, AI and The Wizard of Oz

Dr. Tom Kriger, Director of Education and Research for North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast as part of the Labor 132 series presented by the Blue Cross Blue Shield National Labor Office to discuss the history and current state of registered apprenticeship, the building trades' central role in AI data center construction and his Labor Day recommendation: watch The Wizard of Oz and understand what it was actually about.

Kriger traced registered apprenticeship from its guild-system origins through the Fitzgerald Act of 1937, described NABTU's current 300,000-apprentice roster and 88,000 new apprentices in 2025. He explained why the building trades' model of training workers in the full range of an occupation, rather than for a single task, is the gold standard. He also addressed the AI data center controversy and said the technology industry has failed badly to explain why these facilities are necessary. Kriger then argued that the alternative to building these facilities in the United States is ceding that data infrastructure to other countries.

He closed with a detailed reading of The Wizard of Oz as a 19th-century populist parable about farmers, industrial workers and the political forces manipulating the system behind the scenes, one he said is more relevant today than most people realize.

• Registered apprenticeship in the United States was formalized by the Fitzgerald Act of 1937, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after congressional hearings revealed that employers in the Depression-era recovery were calling workers apprentices to pay them less while providing no actual training. The act required apprenticeships to be registered with either a state apprenticeship agency or the federal Department of Labor, established the progressive wage structure that automatically raises apprentice pay as they advance and set the standards, including instructor qualifications and full occupational training, that distinguish Registered Apprenticeship Programs from employer-only on-the-job training.
• NABTU currently has 300,000 member apprentices across all building trades unions, representing approximately half of all registered apprentices in the United States. Last year, their affiliated unions took in 88,000 new apprentices. The key distinction between union and non-union apprenticeship is that union programs train workers in the full range of an occupation, while non-union programs train workers for the next job required by the employer. NABTU has been a sponsor of the American School Counselors Association's national conference for nine years, specifically to reach the gatekeepers who advise young people about career options, because school counselors who are unaware of registered apprenticeship cannot direct students toward it.
• Kriger described The Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, a populist newspaper publisher from Chittenango, New York, as a political parable about the 1890s industrial economy. Dorothy represents a farmer whose life is upended by high interest rates symbolized by the tornado. The Scarecrow represents the supposedly uneducated farmer. The Tin Woodsman represents the industrial or tradesman who lost his humanity while working faster as wages fell. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard. The Emerald City is Washington. Behind the smoke and mirrors at the end, a small number of powerful people are pulling the strings, a dynamic he said describes the present moment as accurately as it described the 1890s.

A Working-Class Kid Who Farmed His Way to a PhD

Dr. Tom Kriger describes himself as a recipient of the American dream. He grew up outside Buffalo, New York. His father came home from World War II after fighting with George Patton's 10th Armored Division, including the Battle of the Bulge. Kriger attended Oswego State and put himself through school by working on a family farm in Oswego for 14 years, a path he acknowledged would have seemed absurd to him in high school. He went on to earn a PhD in political science from the City University of New York, where he was almost certainly the only graduate student who went back to drive a tractor the day after his grades came in.

He taught as a college professor, served as assistant to the president and director of legislation and research for the American Federation of Teachers. Kriger then became Chief Academic Officer at the National Labor College, the fully accredited AFL-affiliated college on the Beltway that closed when its small student body could not sustain its large campus. He described the graduation ceremonies there as among the greatest things he ever witnessed: workers in their 40s and 50s earning bachelor's degrees while their children and grandchildren cried at the foot of the stage. He has been with NABTU for approximately 14 years.

The Fitzgerald Act and Why Registered Apprenticeship Exists

Apprenticeship as a concept predates the United States. The guild system in Europe passed craft knowledge from generation to generation through formal apprenticeship, which Kriger called intergenerational knowledge transfer. Paul Revere was an apprentice. The building trades carried that tradition to America, and the union model has always operated on the premise that the current generation of skilled workers pays for the training of the next generation at no cost to the apprentice.

What changed in the 1930s was the need for government oversight. As the Depression eased and employers began bringing workers back, some called them apprentices, a designation that allowed lower wages under the apprenticeship exchange while providing no actual training. A congressional investigation led by U.S. Rep. Fitzgerald of Massachusetts produced hearings and ultimately the Fitzgerald Act of 1937, which is also known as the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the legislation into law, which established registered apprenticeship as a formal system.

To be registered, apprenticeship programs must be approved by either the federal Office of Apprenticeship or a state apprenticeship agency. They must submit construction standards identifying who will teach, their qualifications and the wages. They must implement a progressive wage structure under which apprentice pay automatically increases as the worker advances toward the full journeyman hourly rate. The act created what Kriger described as a Good Housekeeping seal for legitimate apprenticeship programs.

The distinction between union and non-union registered apprenticeship is significant. Non-union programs train workers for the next job the employer needs done. Union programs train workers in the full range of an occupation. An operating engineer learns how to operate multiple pieces of heavy-duty equipment. This breadth makes union-trained apprentices more employable and more qualified over the course of a lifetime in the trade. Kriger noted that an attempt to register a forklift driver apprenticeship program was proposed, opposed by NABTU and ultimately rejected by the U.S. Department of Labor on the grounds that training someone to operate a single piece of equipment does not constitute occupational training.

300,000 Apprentices and the Gatekeepers Who Can Send Them There

NABTU currently has 300,000 apprentices across all affiliated building trades unions, approximately half of all registered apprentices in the United States, even with apprenticeship having expanded significantly into other industries. In 2025, NABTU-affiliated unions took in 88,000 new apprentices. The demand for skilled union construction workers is strong, and the opportunities are real.

The challenge is getting the information to the people who can direct young workers toward those opportunities. NABTU has been a sponsor of the American School Counselors Association's national conference for nine years, specifically because school counselors are the gatekeepers. When NABTU first began attending the conference, counselors consistently said they did not know a pathway existed where students could be making $80,000 a year three to five years out of high school, with no student debt, full benefits and years of work experience already accumulated. The counselors' first reaction: that doesn't exist. NABTU's response: Yes, it does. Come talk to the Iron Workers. Come talk to the Laborers. Come talk to the Insulators.

Now those counselors come back and ask how to get building trades representatives into their schools. That, Kriger said, is the real win.

The Micron Chip Fab and How Central New York Planned for It

Kriger pointed to the Micron semiconductor manufacturing facility being developed in Clay, New York, just north of Syracuse, as a model for how large industrial projects should be approached. The facility represents up to a $100 billion investment over five phases and a decade of construction, which U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) compared to the Erie Canal in terms of regional economic impact.

What made the Central New York approach different was the planning. NABTU President Sean McGarvey consistently pushed back against the narrative of labor shortages, arguing that they are the product of poor planning. Companies do not source steel or concrete three months before construction starts. The same principle applies to labor. You cannot wait until six months before a major project breaks ground to figure out where the workers will come from.

In Syracuse, they did not wait. The AFT, local educators, building trades unions and community institutions sat down together years in advance. NABTU established pre-apprenticeship programs, including Syracuse Build, then Oswego Build, Utica Build and Ithaca Build, specifically to recruit workers from underserved communities: inner-city residents, people of color, women, justice-involved individuals and Native Americans. These programs became the pipeline into the Registered Apprenticeship Programs that will supply skilled workers for the project. Kriger said the number of people in Central New York who will reach the middle class as a result of that project is significant, and that the planning that made it possible is a lesson worth taking to other communities.

AI, Data Centers and the Middle Ground Nobody Is Taking

Kriger addressed the data center controversy directly. AI data center construction is currently one of the primary drivers of building trades work, possibly half of all construction jobs in areas like Central Ohio and Pennsylvania. It is good work, it is union work and NABTU is not walking away from it.

However, the tech industry badly mismanaged the public conversation. Companies entered communities with non-disclosure agreements, kept negotiations secret and failed to explain to residents why data centers are necessary and what would happen if they were not built in the United States. The answer matters: if the United States does not build the data infrastructure, other countries will. The political and economic consequences of ceding control of that data to foreign governments are serious.

Kriger said there is a middle ground that the debate has largely missed, and that middle ground is responsible development. He urged the tech companies to build union, with Project Labor Agreements that include community benefit provisions protecting water and electricity rates. Tech companies are paying for the infrastructure their facilities require rather than passing costs to ratepayers. He also urged transparent negotiations with local and state governments rather than deals made in private.

He singled out Microsoft as having taken steps in that direction earlier in the year, committing to cover increased power costs rather than pass them on to consumers. He also pointed to the current administration's cancellation of offshore wind development on the East Coast, at a cost of more than $2 billion in taxpayer money, as a contributing factor to the grid capacity constraints that drive up electricity rates when large new facilities come online. The data center is a convenient target, Kriger said, but the grid is the underlying problem. The solution is more generation capacity, including renewables, not moratoriums on building.

He had a pointed observation for progressives opposing AI data centers: many of them are making that argument on cell phones, Kindles and laptops, all of which require data centers to function. There is a middle ground between stopping all development and ignoring community concerns. The building trades are standing in it.

The Wizard of Oz: A Labor Day Assignment

Kriger closed with a Labor Day recommendation that caught Flash completely off guard: watch The Wizard of Oz. Not for the flying monkeys, but for the politics.

L. Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, New York and became a newspaper publisher in Kansas. When he wrote The Wizard of Oz, he wrote it as a populist parable about the 1890s industrial economy, the same period when Labor Day was created, the Homestead Strike occurred and workers were fighting for their lives against robber-baron industrialists.

Dorothy represents a Kansas farmer whose life is torn apart by high interest rates symbolized by the tornado. The Scarecrow represents the American farmer, caricatured as uneducated and simple. The Tin Woodsman represents the industrial tradesman who lost his humanity by working faster as wages fell, literally cutting off parts of his own body, which is why he is made of tin. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard. The Emerald City is Washington, DC, where farmers and workers go seeking paper money not tied to gold and capable of being inflated to relieve debt. And at the end, when Dorothy and her companions finally get behind the curtain in the Emerald City, they find not a great wizard but a small number of people pulling strings and creating the illusion of power through smoke and mirrors.

The parallel to the present moment, Kriger said, is exact. Behind the democratic facade of American capitalism, a small number of extremely wealthy and powerful people are manipulating the political system for their own advantage. The Wizard of Oz was written to help people see that. Most Americans have seen it dozens of times without understanding what it was actually saying.

That, Kriger said, is the most important Labor Day question he can leave anyone with: "Everybody has seen The Wizard of Oz. Why don't we understand the politics of it?"

More information on North America's Building Trades Unions is available at nabtu.org.

Go Behind the Scenes of the Labor Movement

Every victory at the bargaining table starts with workers standing together. From the shop floor to the statehouse, hear how activists are fighting for better wages, safer conditions and a stronger future. Subscribe to the America's Work Force Union Podcast to get the latest interviews with the leaders and organizers building worker power across America.