Building trades
Longtime local union leader Bob Balgenorth is the new president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.
In a midterm election, Balgenorth got 75% of the votes on the council’s executive board, beating a candidate from Northern California. He has two years to serve in the four-year term of the old president, who retired because of ill health.
Balgenorth, 50, headed Orange County’s building trades council from 1982 to 1989. (It has since been merged into the Los Angeles council as the construction industry hit hard times.) From 1989 on, he ran an electricians’ union local in Orange County.
Balgenorth’s top priorities: finding more jobs for the 40% of the construction unions’ membership that is unemployed; and defeating Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.
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