San Diego Building Trades Leader Carol Kim on PLAs and Women in the Trades

San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council Business Manager Carol Kim joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast during Women in Construction Week to explain how a long campaign to repeal a project labor agreement (PLA) ban reshaped construction opportunities in the region.

Kim, a former teacher and nonprofit researcher who became the council’s first political director, said organized labor remains the most consistent institution fighting poverty by structurally empowering workers. She detailed how the council helped elect a pro-union city council, took a ballot measure to voters and won 58 percent support to overturn San Diego’s PLA ban. That victory led to a citywide PLA covering the city’s capital improvements program, creating a more reliable pipeline of union work and expanding the ability to recruit apprentices.

Kim also assessed progress on women in construction, crediting cultural change, apprenticeship-readiness programs, mentorship and childcare support as key tools for recruiting and retaining women in the trades.

• The San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council pushed for a citywide PLA pipeline: Repealing San Diego’s PLA ban unlocked a capital program approaching $1B a year and steadier dispatch for union labor.
• San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council ties organizing to public policy wins: Kim describes years of electoral work, a ballot campaign and sustained member mobilization to raise job standards.
• NABTU and California programs are moving women into apprenticeship: Women’s participation has climbed from roughly 2.5 percent to as high as 5 percent to 10 percent with childcare support, mentorship and readiness cohorts.

A Women in Construction Week Conversation With Carol Kim

Women in Construction Week is often framed as a recruitment challenge. On America’s Work Force Union Podcast, San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council Business Manager Carol Kim made the case that it is also a policy and power question: who sets job standards, who controls the pipeline of work and who gets a real shot at apprenticeship.

Kim leads a council founded in 1900 that represents 22 affiliated construction and trades unions and more than 30,000 workers across San Diego County. Her path to the building trades did not start on a jobsite. It started in classrooms, in nonprofit research and in a political campaign that ended in defeat, but redirected her career toward organized labor.

The throughline in Kim’s story is not ambition for office. It is an insistence on solving the problem underneath most other problems: poverty and the erosion of job quality.

From Teaching to Labor Leadership

Kim began her career as a classroom teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which she described as both meaningful and demanding. The experience shaped her view of what it means to be “on” for hours at a time, accountable for outcomes and responsible for people who rely on you.

After relocating to upstate New York, she worked in HIV prevention during an economic downturn that limited teaching opportunities. That role, she said, became an unexpected training ground for union organizing. Working with marginalized communities required meeting people where they were, building trust and helping individuals see their own agency.

Back in California, Kim moved into education research and program evaluation, including work on career technical education pathways that feed into apprenticeships. But her pivot into the labor movement came through a city council run, driven by frustration with income inequality and the way workers were routinely treated as afterthoughts.

She became the labor-endorsed candidate, fought hard and lost. Instead of disappearing, she kept showing up. That persistence stood out in a political environment where campaigns often end relationships as quickly as they begin.

Kim concluded that the institution most consistently fighting poverty is organized labor, because it shifts the power structure in an economy that prioritizes capital. The building trades council recruited her as their first political director. After more than five years in that role, members selected her to succeed the retiring business manager.

Job Quality, Housing and Infrastructure Are Not Separate Fights

Kim rejected the idea that labor work is narrow or limited to a single jurisdiction. She argued that the building trades are involved in a broader movement. This included initiatives that touch housing, transit and infrastructure because those issues determine whether working families can live with stability.

She also described why she has repeatedly declined invitations to run for office again. In her view, much of the public policy work she cares about can be advanced more effectively through labor’s coalition-building, advocacy and standards-setting.

That framing matters for readers outside construction. The building trades are often discussed as a workforce supply story. Kim presented it as a governance story: standards follow power and power is built through organizing, elections and enforceable agreements.

The San Diego PLA Ban and the Long Road to Repeal

The core news in Kim’s interview was a case study in how policy barriers can suppress union opportunity and how a sustained labor strategy can reverse them.

San Diego County, she said, was used as a testing ground for anti-union policies, including bans on project labor agreements. PLA bans were in place across the county and in the region’s largest cities.

Kim and the building trades council set a goal to repeal the largest ban first: the City of San Diego. The city is among the largest in the United States, with a population that rivals several states. A PLA ban at that scale is not symbolic. It shapes the rules for a massive volume of public construction work.

Kim described a multi-year strategy to “flip” the city council, seat by seat, until the council became fully pro-union. With that foundation, the council moved a ballot measure to amend the PLA ban and took the case directly to voters.

The opposition was well-funded, including a major non-union contractor association that invested heavily against the measure. Labor raised and spent more, built a statewide coalition of endorsers and ran a field campaign powered by member-to-member contact. Union members knocked on doors every weekend for months, translating a technical policy debate into a simple question of job quality and accountability.

The measure passed with 58 percent of the vote.

Why a Citywide PLA Changes the Construction Pipeline

The ballot victory did not end with the repeal. It enabled the city council and mayor to move forward with a citywide PLA covering the city’s capital improvements program.

Kim emphasized that construction is the original gig economy. Workers move from project to project and often from contractor to contractor. Completing a job means immediately searching for the next one. In that environment, a steady pipeline of PLA-covered work is not a perk. It is economic stability.

A citywide PLA, she argued, creates a dispatch pathway that helps keep members working and expands the capacity to bring in apprentices. That matters because an apprenticeship is not just training. It is a workforce development system that requires predictable job opportunities to place and graduate participants.

As the city’s capital program grows toward a billion dollars annually, the implications are significant: more union hours, more apprenticeship slots and more leverage to enforce safety and wage standards.

Organizing Non-Union Workers Through Opportunity

Kim described organizing in construction as inseparable from demonstrating what union work delivers: training, benefits and enforceable standards.

In a market where work can cool quickly, the ability to keep projects moving through a pipeline becomes part of the organizing message. When workers see stability and a career path, the union proposition becomes tangible.

Kim also noted that educating decision-makers remains constant work. PLA debates often trigger reflexive misconceptions about unions. Her background in teaching, she suggested, helps translate the policy into real-world outcomes for communities.

Women in the Trades: Gains, Barriers and What Works

Kim’s assessment of women’s participation in construction was candid. Progress is real but not yet sufficient.

She estimated women now represent between 5 percent and 10 percent of the local workforce, depending on the source, up from about 2.5 percent five or six years ago. That is a doubling or more, but it also underscores how far the industry still has to go.

Kim identified the barriers as both cultural and structural. Social norms discourage girls from considering construction a viable career early in life. She described how even toy marketing reinforces assumptions about who belongs on a jobsite.

She also argued that women bring strengths that benefit crews and projects: attention to detail, task prioritization, teamwork and problem-solving. The key variable is whether job site culture allows women to work without harassment or constant scrutiny.

Childcare Support as a Workforce Strategy

One of the most practical solutions Kim highlighted is California’s ERICA program, Equal Representation in Construction Apprenticeships. The program provides childcare support for apprentices, which is especially important for women who are often primary caregivers.

Construction schedules are not aligned with typical childcare hours. Early starts and long commutes can make an apprenticeship impossible without support. ERICA helps close that gap.

Kim expressed concern that state budget pressures could threaten the program’s future. In labor relations terms, the warning is clear: workforce participation is shaped by policy choices and funding decisions, not just recruitment messaging.

Mentorship and Readiness Cohorts Are Moving the Needle

In San Diego, Kim said the council has used focus groups with women apprentices and journeyworkers to identify what helps women enter and stay in the trades.

Mentorship emerged as a major factor, along with targeted apprenticeship readiness programs that recruit women. Kim cited a recent cohort of about 25 graduates, with nearly half women, a milestone that signals what is possible when recruitment and support are intentional.

For the building trades, the stakes are not only equity. It is also about capacity. As infrastructure, housing, and energy projects expand and contract with funding cycles, the industry needs a larger, more diverse workforce ready to train, dispatch, and advance.

Women in the trades is not a slogan in Kim’s telling. It is a job quality strategy, a family economic security strategy and a labor power strategy.

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