TL;DR
Scotland’s trade union movement has entered the data centre argument, and it is not making the environmental case. Roz Foyer, who leads the STUC, wants an industrial strategy governing hyperscale development, warning that without one Scotland ends up “fighting for the crumbs from the table” while the value leaves. More than two dozen sites are earmarked across the country and 20 sit in the planning system already.
A different objection from a different direction
Foyer’s starting position concedes the technology: AI is “here to stay whether we like it or not”, and used well could improve public services and medicine. Her argument is about ownership rather than existence. “Technology is not inherently progressive,” she writes. “It depends entirely on who owns it, who controls it and how the wealth it creates is distributed.”
The questions she puts to developers are deliberately plain — where are the good jobs, the durable growth, the productivity gains that reach people rather than margins. And she is sceptical of the employment case specifically: construction can generate real work, but only with enforceable commitments: collective bargaining, apprenticeships, local hiring and a Scottish supply chain. Communities, she argues, should not be “sold fantasies about permanent employment” when a running site may need relatively few staff.
The renewables comparison is the sharp part
Her strongest point is historical. Scotland had exceptional renewable resources and, absent a coherent industrial strategy, watched multinationals extract the value while the manufacturing, supply chains and secure jobs went elsewhere. Foyer’s contention is that the same script is being followed with AI infrastructure, and that the country has already seen how it ends.
On energy she wants an honest assessment of what the grid can carry, what must be built and who pays, adding that homes, hospitals and schools should not absorb the cost of poor planning.
Looking forward
What makes this notable is the axis. The Greens called this week for a moratorium on environmental grounds, which Labour rejected as a threat to jobs — a defence that assumes the jobs materialise. The STUC is challenging that assumption from inside the labour movement while explicitly declining to oppose data centres, asking instead for conditions attached to consent. Foyer frames it as whether Scotland has the political courage to shape the technology rather than receive it. With John Swinney’s government under pressure from campaigners seeking an outright pause, a conditions-based route offers a middle path that neither camp has yet had to reject.