Why the Construction Industry Needed a Hispanic Voice at the Policy Table

The Associated General Contractors represents 27,000 construction firms with substantial annual lobbying capacity (Source: AGC 2024 Annual Report). NAHB, the National Electrical Contractors Association, the plumbers and pipefitters unions, the ironworkers: every major construction constituency has dedicated representation in Washington. Hispanic workers and businesses, who together generate $1.024 trillion in wages and revenue (Source: HCC 2026 Report), had none of that representation until HCC was founded in 2022. The absence was not neutral. It had consequences.

I want to describe my first visit to Capitol Hill as HCC's CEO, because it was different from what I expected.

Walking In with Data Changes Everything

I had been to Washington before in other capacities. I knew what legislative meetings felt like. But walking into congressional offices with a briefing book that contained precise economic data on the Hispanic construction workforce, data that no one else in the room had seen before, changed the dynamic in a way I had not fully anticipated.

Congressional staffers are smart, overworked, and skeptical. They hear advocacy pitches all day from organizations with agendas. What makes them pay attention is specificity. When I could tell a staffer that Hispanic construction workers generate $245 billion in wages annually and that those wages feed into every congressional district in the country, I had their attention in a way that a general argument about the importance of immigrant workers does not produce.

The data did something else too. It reframed what Hispanic workers represent in the construction economy. Not a vulnerable population asking for help. A trillion-dollar economic constituency asking for policy that reflects its scale.

In 2024, HCC submitted formal comments to the Department of Labor on proposed apprenticeship regulations. I personally testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on construction workforce development. I brought three things with me: the workforce share data, the fatality disparity data, and the names of three workers I had met on job sites in the previous six months. The names matter. Policy operates on abstractions. Testimony is more effective when it connects the abstraction to a specific person with a specific situation. Two of the regulatory changes we advocated for were included in the final rule.

What an AGC Conference Looks Like Without Hispanic Representation

I have attended AGC annual conferences, and I want to be fair: AGC represents general contractors who are often employers of Hispanic workers and who care about workforce availability. But the faces in the room, the board members, the committee chairs, the people setting policy priorities, have not historically reflected the demographics of the workforce those firms employ. I have walked into rooms at major industry conferences where the leadership looked nothing like the job sites those firms run.

This is not a criticism of individuals. It is a structural observation. Organizations represent the interests of their members and leadership. When Hispanic contractors and workers are not in the leadership of the dominant industry associations, their interests are not primary. They are, at best, secondary considerations in decisions about advocacy priorities.

What Happens When Hispanic Workers Are Absent from OSHA Rulemaking

I want to give a specific example of what the representation gap costs in practice. OSHA periodically updates rules on heat illness prevention, fall protection, and hazard communication. These rules have enormous real-world consequences for construction workers.

When HCC was not yet at the table during early heat illness rulemaking discussions, the draft rule language had no specific provisions for Spanish-language training requirements. The assumption baked into the draft was that workers would understand written safety procedures and warning systems in English. In a workforce that is over 35% Hispanic, with a significant Spanish-dominant share, this assumption built a compliance gap directly into the rule. Hispanic construction workers face disproportionate heat illness risk: they account for 43% of all heat-related construction fatalities despite representing 35% of the workforce (Source: OSHA, 2024).

HCC's engagement in later comment periods pushed for specific Spanish-language requirements in the final heat illness rules. That is a concrete policy outcome that flows directly from having a Hispanic voice in the process. Without it, the rule would have been less effective for the workers most exposed to heat illness risk on outdoor construction sites.

What HCC's Lobbying Days Look Like

When HCC brings member firms to Washington for our lobbying days, we meet with congressional offices, committee staff, and agency personnel at DOL, SBA, and OSHA. The meetings are scheduled through standard congressional relations channels. We prepare briefing one-pagers with specific asks tied to specific legislation or regulatory dockets.

The questions we get from staffers have evolved since our first Capitol Hill visits. Early on, staffers would express surprise at the scale of the data: "I did not know the numbers were that large." Now, with multiple cycles of advocacy under our belt, many offices already know the HCC numbers and the conversation moves faster to policy specifics.

The offices most receptive to HCC data have tended to be members from high-construction-activity districts with significant Hispanic populations, both Republican and Democrat. The data is not partisan. A trillion-dollar economic contribution is a fact that lands regardless of which party is in power.

The Infrastructure Law and Whether HCC Was at the Table

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was being debated and ultimately passed, HCC was a young organization. We were not yet at the table in the way we are now. But we were watching, and we documented what the workforce implications were for Hispanic workers.

The infrastructure law created significant construction demand. It also created apprenticeship and workforce requirements tied to federal funding. Those requirements, written without specific Hispanic workforce input, did not include the bilingual apprenticeship provisions and Spanish-language training mandates that would have made the workforce development investment more effective for the workers most likely to fill the jobs being created.

That gap is what HCC is now working to address in the regulatory implementation phase. Laws create frameworks. Regulations and guidance fill in the details. That is where HCC advocacy is currently focused.

What the Next Five Years of HCC Advocacy Will Target

The five-year advocacy agenda I am building has five priorities. Apprenticeship reform that makes registered programs accessible to Spanish-dominant workers. Procurement policy reform that gives Hispanic-owned firms real access to public contracts, including federal DBE program modernization. OSHA enforcement that holds employers accountable for safety training in languages workers actually understand. SBA program funding adequate to serve the 95,000+ Hispanic-owned construction firms that exist (Source: Census Bureau Survey of Business Owners, 2023). And immigration policy that creates legal pathways specifically calibrated to construction industry workforce needs, rather than general immigration frameworks that do not account for industry-specific labor dynamics.

Moral arguments matter. But data-backed advocacy moves policy. HCC exists to bring both to the table that Hispanic construction workers and businesses deserve to sit at.