NABTU U.S. Legislative Conference Draws Thousands to Advance Workforce and Infrastructure Priorities
Washington, D.C. — April 23, 2026 — North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) concluded its 2026 U.S. Legislative Conference this week at the Washington Hilton, convening thousands of union leaders, industry executives, and bipartisan elected officials for two days of high-level engagement on the future of America’s construction workforce, energy development, and infrastructure investment.
During the conference, NABTU made three major announcements advancing the future of the construction workforce and America’s energy infrastructure: the first project labor agreement under its national Memorandum of Understanding with OpenAI for Michigan’s Stargate project, a new nationwide building trades upskilling partnership with Microsoft, and a landmark nuclear energy agreement with Orano tied to Project IKE in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
NABTU President Sean McGarvey opened the conference with a clear call for accountability, standards, and certainty in an uncertain economic moment.
“In a time when too many forget the meaning of their own signature, the Building Trades are here to remind America of something timeless: a deal is a deal,” said McGarvey. “Our members deliver the certainty, skill, and reliability this country depends on to build its future. We always have and we always will.”
The conference featured a bipartisan lineup of national, state, and local policymakers alongside labor and industry stakeholders, underscoring the central role of the union construction workforce in powering economic growth and delivering critical infrastructure across the country. Full remarks and video from featured speakers are available below.
Tuesday Plenary Speakers:
Sean McGarvey, President, NABTU
Liz Shuler, President, AFL-CIO
U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck E. Schumer (NY)
Chang Suh, CEO and CIO, AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust
Wednesday Plenary Speakers:
U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01)
U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (RI-02)
Graham Platner, Candidate for U.S. Senate (ME)
Maria Korsnick, President and CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute
State Delegate Melissa Wells (MD)
Former State Sen. Click Bishop (AK)
Jason Shedlock, Candidate for State House (ME)
Mayor William Sherer (Canton, OH)
Mayor Dan Bukiewicz (Oak Creek, WI)
Throughout the week, NABTU leaders and affiliates engaged directly with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, advocating for policies that protect workers, strengthen labor standards, and expand access to Registered Apprenticeship and other proven workforce pathways.
Programming included plenary sessions, policy breakouts, a day of community service, and coordinated advocacy meetings focused on ensuring that historic investments in energy and infrastructure translate into safe, family-sustaining careers for America’s building trades workforce.
Across all sessions, a consistent message emerged: meeting rising demand for construction, energy development, and infrastructure will require early and sustained commitments to workforce development, high labor standards, strong collaboration between labor, industry, and government, and the certainty that a deal is a deal — backed by a highly skilled, union-trained workforce capable of delivering projects on time and at scale.
NABTU’s U.S. Legislative Conference remains one of the nation’s leading forums for aligning stakeholders to build a stronger, more resilient economy powered by building trades members, the most highly trained workforce in the world.
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Media Contact: Betsy Barrett | (202) 997-3266 | bbarrett@nabtu.org
About NABTU: North America’s Building Trades Unions is an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry, collectively representing over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada. Each year, our unions and signatory contractor partners invest almost $2 billion in private-sector money to fund and operate over 1,900 apprenticeship training and education facilities across North America that produce the safest, most highly trained, and most productive skilled craft workers found anywhere in the world. NABTU is dedicated to creating economic security and employment opportunities for its construction workers by safeguarding wage and benefits standards, promoting responsible private capital investments, investing in renowned apprenticeship and training, and creating more construction career pathways to the middle class for women, communities of color, Indigenous people, veterans, and the justice-involved. For more information, please visit nabtu.org.
