LA/OC Trades' Ernesto Medrano on Prop. 45 and Apprenticeships

Ernesto Medrano, executive secretary of the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast on the day before the Nov. 3 mid-term election.

Medrano, a labor veteran of about 40 years, explained why the council is urging a no vote on Proposition 45, a California ballot measure he described as an effort to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Medrano also discussed how the trades won project labor agreements in conservative Orange County and what the council is doing to bring more young people into building trades apprenticeship programs.

• Medrano said Proposition 45 would make it difficult for the council to have local conversations with school boards, municipalities and water districts about local hire, workforce development and apprenticeship opportunities. He named the business community and the statewide Chamber of Commerce as the measure's backers and said he thinks it will go down.
• In about eight years as the building trades’ Orange County representative, Medrano said project labor agreements grew from about two to about 23, he estimated, and municipal agreements went from none to about six. He described the approach as nonpartisan education for elected officials, including tours of a training center.
• Medrano thinks the council's readiness program has placed at least 2,500 students into apprenticeship programs. Under the local hire provisions, veterans can get direct entry through Helmets to Hard Hats, he said, adding that Gen Z is starting to see the trades as a real alternative to college debt.

A Summer Job Moving Crates

Ernesto Medrano has spent about 40 years in the labor movement. He started as a rank-and-file worker while he was in college, taking a summer job as a casual trade-show Teamster because he needed money to continue his education. He worked at convention centers with friends he grew up with on the east side of Los Angeles. The job involved moving crates from the dock into the exhibit room. Decorators then set up the booths, and after a show was broken down, his crew moved the crates back out. The work paid for part of his college and was his first experience as a union member.

Organizing With the Farm Workers, Immigrants and Machinists

Medrano said his start as an organizer came in the mid-1980s, after he graduated from college. He was recruited by the United Farm Workers, which was founded a few decades earlier by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Philip Vera Cruz. He said the union had been following him because he was very active as a student. He started in Coachella working with grape workers and fruit tree workers. Three months later, he was in Chicago helping lead boycotts at supermarkets. The target was Jewel Food Stores, over a lettuce brand called Bruce Church, better known as Red Coach lettuce. He spent about a year in Chicago doing community organizing to build support for the boycott, he said.

After a few years, Medrano left the farm workers union and went back to Los Angeles. About that time, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) passed, and the Los Angeles labor movement decided to help workers adjust their status. He was hired as project staff by the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee and the Central Labor Council. The effort established five legalization sites. He estimated that they counseled about 10,000 people and helped about 5,000 get on a pathway to citizenship.

That work led him to union organizing among immigrant workers. One of the unions he worked closely with, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), ended up hiring him. He spent about six years with the Machinists, organizing airline workers, aerospace workers and workers from the woodworking industry when they merged into the Machinists in the 1990s. He also worked with federal-sector workers across the country. Medrano said the job took him out of his comfort zone but added to his experience.

Back to the Teamsters and Into the Building Trades

Medrano would return to the AFL-CIO when John Sweeney took over. He spent a few more years in Southern California, doing extensive mobilization and capacity-building with central labor councils. After that, he went back to the Teamsters, working in Orange County with Local 952 for about 14 to 15 years. The local represented ready-mix drivers, so it was part of the building trades, which is when Medrano said he started attending building trades council meetings and participating more.

He enjoyed how the building trades knew how to work the politics in a nonpartisan way, he said. They were about supporting responsible development and putting members to work. When the representative there retired, Medrano applied and spent about eight years as a representative in Orange County.

Leading the Council

Chris Hannan, who served on the council before Medrano, was abruptly promoted to the state level as president of the California State Building and Construction Trades Council. A few weeks later, delegates convened for a special meeting, a vote was called, and Medrano was appointed to complete Hannan’s term. A few months later, he was elected to a full term, and is now in his third year of that first full term.

Medrano said he is the first person of color and the first Chicano, or Mexican American, to serve as executive secretary of the council. He called it another historic mark for the council because the faces of its leadership reflect those of the community and its membership.

Why the Council Opposes Proposition 45

Medrano said the council is urging everyone in California to vote no on Proposition 45. The measure, he said, takes the building trades council out of the equation in terms of participation, which he called undemocratic. He described the issue as a ballot measure aimed at streamlining the California Environmental Quality Act. He said it is trying to bypass local control and local opportunities to have input.

In the communities where the trades work, Medrano said, the council wants a say in what gets built. The council cares about the environment, he said, as well as the community and the work environment. One of the community benefits of the council’s negotiated agreements is local hiring, along with opportunities to discuss workforce development, including apprenticeship readiness and apprenticeship opportunities. If Proposition 45 passes, he said it makes it difficult to have those local conversations with local elected bodies, including school boards, municipalities or water districts. The council would no longer be able to engage in that process, to critique a project or provide input.

Medrano said the business community is clearly behind the measure, including the statewide Chamber of Commerce. He stressed that the building trades want to build things in California, but expediting projects without participation from local residents and workers is not the way to do it. The projects need the right standards, and Californians need an opportunity to work on them under union contracts, he said.

Affordability a big problem in California, and Medrano said the council wants a chance to engage so that appropriate wages are paid, benefit levels are provided and the residents from the surrounding community have an opportunity to work on these projects through local hire, workforce development and apprenticeship readiness. Many young people are not going to go to college and should have the opportunity to work with their hands and enter a trade, he said.

He also raised commute times. In his industry, Medrano said, a construction worker will drive 70 miles to a job site on any given day. The council would like to give workers more opportunities to drive less, work closer to home and have a better quality of life. Streamlining the project approval process takes away the opportunity for those conversations.

Medrano said he thinks the measure will be defeated. People in California have an affinity for the environment and strong support for working families, and he said the council has spent several months educating Californians.

Winning Project Labor Agreements in Orange County

Medrano also discussed winning project labor agreements in Orange County, which was a lot of hard work, but not very complicated. He compared it to organizing a facility or workplace, one worker at a time. In this case, the people being educated are policymakers, elected officials and other community leaders, he said.

Many people who know the trades and are friends of the labor movement do not really understand how the building trades operate, he said, in part because they are different from other unions. The trades train the next generation of members through apprenticeship programs, and workers do not go to a single job site, he explained. Building Trades agreements have no seniority, he continued. It’s a career, but a nomadic one, that should not be described as a temporary job. The building trades council engages at all levels, on a nonpartisan basis, and educates elected officials, he said. It gives them tours of training centers, explains the trades to them and lets them interact with apprentices. The goal is for them to understand that the trades have no hidden agenda. The trades want to put their members to work for fair wages and fair benefits so they can build their own community, schools, cities and projects, he said.

Medrano said everyone told him that project labor agreements could not be won in Orange County because it is too conservative and has historically been anti-union. Over his eight years as a representative there, he said, the number of project labor agreements went from about two to about 23. One by one, the council began securing agreements with school districts and municipalities. It had no municipal agreements but currently has about six project labor or community workforce agreements with area municipalities. Some of the cities that facilitated the agreements were led by Republican majorities, he said, naming Anaheim, where the council got its first agreement, and Garden Grove. Once the council sat down and educated them, he said, they started to see what the trades do, believe it and own it.

The last two projects he completed were the Disneyland Forward expansion and OC Vibe, where the Anaheim Ducks play. Medrano said OC Vibe is a massive project that will take several years to complete, and is being done with union labor.

He credited the progress to getting past the fear of the unknown and the myths spread over the years by both sides. Medrano said employers and conservative communities have long demonized workers and their unions, but labor has also done some demonizing. He said it helps to sit down, clear the air and put all the cards on the table. The trades, he said, are trying to build a middle class through collective bargaining and industrial democracy, and to give local people the opportunity to enter the trades as a career and a pathway to the middle class.

Veterans are part of that message, according to Medrano. In the local hire provisions, he said, veterans go first regardless of where they live. Through the Helmets to Hardhats program, a veteran getting out from any branch can connect online before they sign up. Once they are home, they go to that trade, and Medrano said the trade will most likely give them direct entry, meaning they go into the next apprentice class without waiting. He said people who hear this start to realize that the trades are the real thing. This was another factor that helped the building trades council successfully negotiate its agreements with municipalities and school districts.

Apprenticeships and a New Generation

Medrano also discussed how the council is enhancing its apprenticeship readiness program to expose young people to the trades and prepare them to enter apprenticeships. The program promotes diversity, and the council works hard to retain apprentices. The council goes into areas that have traditionally not been represented in the trades, he said, and works with women and groups such as Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles (WINTER). He said a cohort there is graduating, and the council has about a 25 percent placement rate into its affiliated union apprenticeships, which he called a high success rate.

Since the program has been under the council's umbrella, it has placed at least 2,500 students into apprenticeships. Medrano said 58 percent have been Latino, 25 percent have been women and about 34 percent have been African American. He said the council is reaching out to the community and showing people that this is a choice they can make with their lives. Not everyone is going to go to college, he said, and he called an apprenticeship another four-year degree. People earn and learn at the same time, he said, and can build a good career with great benefits, a defined pension plan, and good wages. They also have the opportunity to be challenged and to keep learning as the industry evolves and transforms.

With help from North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and council affiliates, the trades created a curriculum taught at community colleges and high schools, as well as by community partners and groups. Those partners include groups working with people seeking a second chance as they try to get back into society. Medrano said the council is having these conversations at the school level, and the younger generations are starting to see the opportunities available in the trades.

Medrano said young people are finding out they can enter an apprenticeship program without paying tuition or fees. Apprentices learn in the classroom but also learn on the job under a journey-level person, he said. If they fulfill the requirements, meet the standards and work the required number of hours, he said, they start getting pay bumps. On average, they start at about 50% of the top wage rate, and when they reach journey level and graduate, they earn the top wage rate.

He said young people are also looking at the threat of AI. A lot of the work that college graduates may aspire to may no longer be available because AI will likely handle much of it, Medrano said. In the trades, he said it is harder for AI to take over the work. He thinks many Gen Zers are looking at that. He said they want to become an employer or a contractor, but they know they have to go through the trade and pay their dues. At some point, he said, they have an opportunity to open their own business, become a signatory contractor and prosper that way.

More information on the LA/OC Building & Construction Trades Council is available at laocbuildingtrades.org.

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