Kansas City’s building trades unions have spent years watching billions of dollars worth of projects roll through Port KC and into the hands of out-of-state contractors paying poverty wages, undermining local wage and benefit standards. Now, after months of informational picketing, public pressure, and political maneuvering that grew impossible to ignore, workers across Kansas City are walking away with a generational win.
On March 23, Port KC’s Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt a prevailing wage policy covering most major developments financed through the agency — effective April 1.
Port KC had been using a sale-leaseback structure that let developers sidestep Missouri’s prevailing wage requirements — the same minimums that virtually every other public incentive program in the city already demanded. A developer could walk into Port KC, get taxpayer-backed financing, and turn around and pay their workers less than what the city, the county, and the state would otherwise require.
Developers loved it.
Workers (union or not) got hosed.
The Greater Kansas City Building Trades & Construction Council, a voluntary coalition of more than a dozen local unions representing tens of thousands of workers across the metro, had been working behind the scenes since at least last summer, making the policy case to Port KC’s board and staff.
Their argument wasn’t complicated.
Kansas City taxpayers were bankrolling developments that hired out-of-state firms, brought in workers from lower-wage markets, bypassed local apprenticeship pipelines, and sent the money somewhere else. The city was paying for its own wage depression and sabotaging its workforce development pipeline.
“What we are allowing Port KC to do is take Kansas City taxpayer dollars and incentivize other states’ workers and workforce instead of investing those tax dollars in Kansas City’s workforce development. Kansas City is not just a national leader in construction sciences, we are a world leader. Why in the hell would we spend our Kansas City taxpayer dollars to subsidize other states’ workforce development?” asked Mike Talboy, political director for the Building Trades.
For months, Port KC slow walked the policy changes.
A resolution from early fall of 2025 directed staff to draft new policies. By February, nothing had been adopted. Union leaders say they had been asked to hold off on a public information campaign outside of KC Current’s stadium last year while Port KC worked through it internally. That goodwill eventually ran out.
On February 11, workers hit the streets. Members of the Greater KC Building & Construction Trades began picketing outside Port KC’s offices and at active job sites across the city, including The Refinery at 18th and Main. The agency had made promises it hadn’t kept, and workers were done waiting.
Behind closed doors, unions and labor allies were hard at work, pressuring Mayor Quinton Lucas (who appoints all members of the Port KC board) and Port KC to make the changes demanded and promised.
Kansas City, MO Councilman Kevin O’Neill, who serves as a Port KC commissioner and has long been one of the pillars of organized labor in the region, carried workers’s concerns on his sleeve throughout the process and worked with union leaders to champion the policy the whole time.
His role in bridging the gap between the board and the trades didn’t go unnoticed. Ralph Oropeza, business manager of the Building Trades Council, and others thanked him.
The new policy applies to logistics, industrial, data center and office projects over $3 million, and to hotels, multifamily and mixed-use developments over $15 million.
Ralph Oropeza, business manager of the Building Trades Council called it a “huge moment for labor here in Kansas City” and that is not even close to an overstatement. This is a legacy defining achievement for Oropeza and the building trades union leaders who worked together to make this change happen.
Kansas City’s poverty rate runs four points above the national average.
Construction work, done right and paid right, is one of the clearest ladders out of poverty for many workers. The free apprenticeships offered by local unions, which come with job placement, are a huge opportunity regardless of a worker’s previous education attainment.
Workers earning construction union wages and benefits don’t usually rely on social programs — they pay into them. They spend locally. That’s the whole idea behind prevailing wage: keeping public money from becoming a subsidy for a race to the bottom and leveraging it towards better opportunity for residents.
Mayor Lucas has introduced a parallel ordinance at City Hall, pushing to extend and standardize prevailing wage standards across all projects receiving city tax incentives.
The Building Trades are now aiming for mandatory apprenticeship requirements for projects with public money, attempting to ensure that the work doesn’t just pay well today but also build a skilled local workforce for tomorrow.
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
