Ernesto Medrano is Executive Secretary of the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. The Council is an umbrella organization of 48 local unions and district councils, representing more than 160,000 skilled men and women in 14 Trades.
As head of the Council, Medrano takes the lead in organizing Project Labor Agreements and Community Workforce Agreements. These PLAs bring collective bargaining standards to construction projects, and target local and disadvantaged residents as well as veterans for recruitment into Building Trades unions through their respective apprenticeships.
The Council currently has about 165 agreements, covering Lucas Museum, Disneyland, OCVIBE, City of LA, LA Community College District, Metropolitan Water District, NBCUniversal, Magnolia Tank Farm in Huntington Beach, LA World Airports, Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, LA Metro Transit, LA Unified School District, Television City 2050, ARCHES Hydrogen Alliance, Fourth & Central and many more.
Medrano leads the Council’s campaigns for ballot measures such as Measure A in LA County, Measure US for LAUSD and Measure AC for Long Beach City College among others. These measures create thousands of jobs for union members and benefit local residents.
Medrano was elected in 2023 as Executive Secretary and re-elected in 2024. Medrano served as the Council’s Representative for Orange County from 2015 to 2023 and led the campaign to transform the once-conservative OC into a center of union activism. He organized local members, elected officials and activists to win Community Workforce Agreements in the county’s three biggest cities—Anaheim, Irvine and Santa Ana.
Medrano is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Labor Council for Latin American Achievement. He frequently speaks on union and workforce-development issues in California.
The son of a union leader and a garment worker, Medrano was born in East Los Angeles. He graduated from LAUSD’s Roosevelt High School and UC Riverside with a joint major in Spanish/Chicano Studies. He also spent five years as a youth in his father’s native Mexico, and served in the 1980s in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Medrano initiated his work in the labor movement in 1984 with the United Farm Workers of America, then became a field organizer for the AFL-CIO. He also served on the staff of the IAMAW. In 2001, Medrano joined Teamsters Local 952 in Orange and served as political coordinator.