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 150,000 skilled men and women in 14 Trades.

Medrano was elected Executive Secretary in January 2024. As head of the Council, he takes the lead in organizing Project Labor Agreements. These PLAs bring collective bargaining standards to construction projects, and target local and disadvantaged residents for recruitment into Building Trades unions. The Council currently has 165 such agreements, covering projects such as the Intuit Dome, ocVIBE, Magnolia Tank Farm in Huntington Beach, Lucas Museum, City of LA, LA Community College District, Metropolitan Water District, LA World Airports, Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, LA County, LA Metro, Television City 2050, ARCHES Hydrogen Alliance, NBCUniversal and Angels Landing.

Medrano served as the Council’s Representative for Orange County from 2015 to 2023, leading the successful campaign to transform the once-conservative OC into a center of union activism for working people. He organized union members, elected officials and activists to win Community Workforce Agreements in the county’s three biggest cities—Anaheim, Irvine and Santa Ana.

The son of a union leader and a garment worker, Medrano was born in East Los Angeles. He graduated from LAUSD’s historic 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. In 2001, Medrano began his long association with the Building Trades by joining Teamsters Local 952, based in the city of Orange. The local is an affiliate of the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. At Local 952, Medrano coordinated large-scale organizing campaigns and was appointed as the local’s political coordinator.