The Nevada Teamsters have found a small flaw in the promise that artificial intelligence will create jobs: some of their members are being hired to build the machinery that threatens other members’ jobs. Everybody gets invited to the future. The seating chart needs work.

Reuters reports that data-center construction east of Reno is supplying years of work for electricians, pipefitters and other tradespeople. Down in Las Vegas, union members are confronting automated guest services, driverless vehicles and disappearing call-center work. For a union network representing 30,000 workers, “Are you for or against AI?” is roughly as useful as asking a hospital whether it supports electricity.

The political question is who gets protected, who pays and who gets a say before the ribbon is cut. Nevada’s Teamsters interviewed more than 180 candidates from both parties. According to political director Ross Kinson, candidates opposing strong worker protections were unlikely to get their endorsement. So were candidates seeking an outright ban on new data centers.

This is irritating news for politicians who were hoping to arrive with one adjective and leave with a labor endorsement. “Innovative” will not cover the whole meeting.

The union backed Democratic attorney general Aaron Ford for governor. Ford has proposed stopping new data-center tax abatements, protecting residents from higher energy costs and regulating AI to protect jobs. That is not a proposal to outlaw construction. It is a proposal to stop treating every large building with servers in it as a charity that needs assistance from the taxpaying public.

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Republican governor Joe Lombardo has championed the industry as an economic opportunity, though he also imposed new restrictions on some tax incentives in September. The distinction matters. This is a contest over the terms of development, not a useful occasion to pretend one candidate has discovered computers and the other intends to unplug Nevada.

The people doing the work have a more specific argument than the slogans. Reuters spoke with a 20-year-old who moved into better-paid data-center work after struggling to get enough hours as a line cook. It also spoke with a longtime Las Vegas valet worried younger hospitality workers will not get the stable working lives his generation had. Neither needs a billionaire to explain that progress involves sacrifice. They would like to see the names on the sacrifice schedule.

There are protections to negotiate, and they are not imaginary. MGM pointed Reuters to its 2023 culinary-union contract, which promised advance notice of AI-related job losses, healthcare and severance for affected workers. Those provisions do not make displacement harmless. They show that the terms can be negotiated instead of accepted as weather.

Nor is labor’s position reducible to the party label. Reuters reports that a major Kansas transit and railroad union endorsed Republican Ty Masterson after Democratic rival Cindy Holscher called for a data-center moratorium. A construction job is not a theoretical benefit when the person receiving it has rent due.

The worthwhile political argument is not whether the future should happen. It is whether workers get to negotiate their place in it. A governor who wants credit for the groundbreaking should be prepared to discuss what happens after the cameras leave, including to the people whose jobs are not inside the photograph.