Ernesto Hidalgo is the Policy Director at the Los Angeles Worker Center Network. Ernesto’s breadth of experience traverses across a wide range of policy sectors centered around low-wage workers. He works in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders, including LAWCN members and low-wage workers, legislators, government officials, employers, nonprofits, community members, and media to design, advocate, and implement policies that are responsive to the needs of workers and their families.
A native of South and Central LA neighborhoods, Ernesto is shaped by the experiences of his immigrant family and the neighbors, coworkers, and friends he lived alongside in these Black, immigrant, refugee, and working-class communities. His formative experiences also include the systemic socioeconomic, political, and racial injustices highlighted by the 1992 LA Riots, as well as the public scapegoating and anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and anti-refugee policies personified in Propositions 187 and 209—experiences which inspire and inform Ernesto’s service today.
In recent years, Ernesto has served as a commissioner on LA city’s rent adjustment commission and as an appointee on Metro’s Local Service Council, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance, and LADWP’s 100% Renewable Energy Working Group. He is an active member of the LA100 Equity Strategies project designed to combat the climate crisis by transforming the nation’s largest municipally-owned utility company, building the required physical and human infrastructure, and creating an equitable, sustainable, and green new economy for all stakeholders. Ernesto is also an active participant in the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) Housing Policy Leadership Academy.
Ernesto is a graduate of California State University, Northridge, where his focus areas included Chicano/a studies, business, and economics. At CSUN, he was a student co-founder of the first Central American Studies program in the U.S. He also attended the School of Enterprise Management and Social Impact at American Jewish University.
