New Jersey is in the middle of a hard, important conversation about data centers, and it deserves to be a serious one. Families have watched their electric bills climb (roughly 20 percent last year alone) and they want to know who is going to pay for the power these facilities demand. Town halls from Vineland to West Deptford have been packed. Governor Sherrill declared a state of emergency over utility costs on her first day in office and presented plans to hold developers accountable. Those are real concerns raised by real people, and anyone who waves them away isn’t being honest.
I’m not here to wave them away. I’m here because the men and women of Sheet Metal Workers Local 25 live in these communities. We pay the same electric bills as you do. When the conversation turns to what gets built across Northern New Jersey and who builds it, the brotherhood and sisterhood of this local has every reason to be in the room.
Here’s what we know in the trades: the question isn’t whether New Jersey should have data centers. Already, more than 80 are operating or under construction here. The question is whether we build them responsibly, and whether the good jobs they create stay in this state or go to someone else’s.
And these are good jobs. A single data center can put around 1,700 skilled tradespeople to work during construction. They pay well, they come with health care and a pension, and they can’t be shipped overseas or given to a transient workforce that takes their paycheck out of state every Friday. The work is here because the building is here. For a young person weighing college debt against a career, an apprenticeship that leads to one of these projects is a path to a real middle-class life, built right here at home.
These are also jobs that demand skill. Our members are journeypersons trained through years of apprenticeship. We are certified, accountable, and rooted in the community. That’s no small thing when you’re talking about facilities that increasingly matter to national security.
The systems inside these buildings support our defense networks, our hospitals, our power grid, and our protection against cyber threats. You do not want that infrastructure built by an unskilled crew passing through. You want a vetted, highly trained, local workforce that answers to its own neighbors.
That’s exactly who Local 25 sends, and that’s a case I laid out 13 months ago in a Q&A with BINJE.
None of this means industry gets a blank check. Local 25 has always believed in being good stewards of the communities we serve, and responsible development means real guardrails. Asking the largest data centers to cover the lion’s share of their own electricity and infrastructure costs — rather than passing them to your grandmother’s bill — is a fair place to start. Make the companies pay their fair share. Protect ratepayers. We’re for that.
What we’re against is letting legitimate concerns harden into a reflex that simply pushes this investment across the river to Pennsylvania — taking the jobs, the tax revenue, and the momentum with it. That helps no one here.
We can do both. We can shield families from unfair costs and capture the careers, the tax base, and the local investment this build-out will create.
New Jersey has always built things. Let’s build this the right way, with the right people, and keep the benefits here at home.
Joe Demark is President and Business Manager of Sheet Metal Workers Local 25, which trains and represents the sheet metal trade’s brotherhood and sisterhood throughout Northern New Jersey.
