St. Louis Character: St. Louis labor official becomes first Hispanic to lead Central Labor Council
- ambale
- Apr 1
- 2 min read
By Business Journal
Story Highlights
Jose Gomez leads Laborers Local 110, the largest construction local in a 10-state region.
Gomez serves as president of the Laborers International Latino Caucus, the first Midwest leader.
Construction investment remains cautious due to political and economic instability, Gomez says.
Jose Gomez is a man of many unions. For the last two years, he’s served as the business manager, or top official, at St. Louis-based Laborers Local 110, which has added hundreds of union members during that time. With nearly 4,000 members, Local 110 is the largest construction local in a 10-state region.
Gomez also now serves as vice president of the Central Labor Council of a separate union, the Greater St. Louis Labor Council AFL-CIO, essentially serving as acting president after that union’s president and vice president resigned last year. He’s the first Hispanic person to hold that position. Nationally, he was elected last year to a two-year term as the president of the Laborers International Latino Caucus, the largest caucus in the union. He serves in at least five roles on other boards, including the union pension fund and on the foundation of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
A native of California, Gomez started working in the restaurant industry as a busboy and worked up to wait tables and bartend, before eventually venturing to St. Louis to work at a concrete company in South County, where he first became involved with the union.
Now he’s “just a South City guy,” who mainly watches the news and spends time with his kids when he’s not on the job running some of the most important union groups both locally and nationally.
How are you different than typical union leaders? Other union leaders wear suits and shiny shoes. People have asked me why I haven’t changed since I came out of the field. I wear polos, my work boots, and jeans, and I run the biggest local in the region. You have to keep being who you were before you got here. I didn’t have mommy or daddy who handed me this organization. I somehow, according to my executive board, earned it. It is rare that someone like me, who has nobody entrenched in the union, gets this handed over to them.
