By Tom Conway
USW International President
Nick Kessler lived paycheck to paycheck — eking life out of his bald tires, “praying to God nothing broke” at home — until he landed a union position at U.S. Steel in Granite City, Ill., three years ago.
While that job changed his life, Kessler didn’t stop there. He also took advantage of free training, provided under the United Steelworkers (USW) contract with the company, to advance to a highly skilled electrician’s role that provides even more security for his wife and young son.
President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan would make that kind…
By Tom Conway
USW International President
The United Steelworkers (USW) Local 959 safety committee leapt into action a few years ago after discovering that more and more workers at the Goodyear plant in Fayetteville, N.C., were exposed to knife injuries on the job.
Committee members solicited workers’ input on how to address the hazard and then collaborated with the company to provide cut-resistant gloves, introduce more safely designed knives and take other steps to bring the crisis under control.
“It was our №1 injury at the plant,” recalled Ronald Sessoms, Local 959 safety chairman. “Now, we’ve almost eliminated it.”
By Tom Conway
USW International President
The patient intended to commit suicide and knew the worker making his bed at Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, Minn., stood in the way.
So he crept up behind the caregiver, grabbed the cord to the call bell and began choking her with it.
Only chance saved her, recalled Tuan Vu, a longtime hospital worker who was on duty in another part of the facility that day, noting the woman’s colleagues rushed to the rescue after the struggle inadvertently activated the call bell.
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Chris Sova and his co-workers at Bay County Medical Care Facility endured years of staffing shortages before COVID-19 made a grim situation even worse.
Workers sacrificed vacations and other personal time to keep the Essexville, Mich., facility operating as patients and staff members fell ill to the coronavirus and management struggled to recruit reinforcements.
Just like a road can be patched only so many times before falling apart, America’s battered health care system and other long-neglected infrastructure can no longer continue functioning with Band-Aids and stopgap fixes.
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Brad Greve knew it was just a matter of time before the computer chip shortage disrupting the auto industry had a ripple effect on aluminum manufacturing in Iowa.
Greve and his colleagues at Arconic’s Davenport Works — members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 105 — supply the Ford F-150 pickup and other vehicles.
Automakers forced to cut production because of the semiconductor crunch scaled back the amount of aluminum they take from the facility, just as Greve expected, posing another potential setback to a plant already fighting to rebound from the COVID-19 recession.
America…
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Workers at Solvay’s Pasadena, Texas, plant voted overwhelmingly to join the United Steelworkers (USW) in 2017 and looked forward to sitting down with the company to quickly negotiate a fair contract.
Solvay decided to play games instead.
Company representatives canceled some bargaining sessions at the last minute, took two-hour lunches on days they did show up, dithered for weeks over the union’s proposals and pulled every stunt imaginable to drag out the talks and frustrate the workers into giving up.
“They were angry that we actually had the audacity — in their mind —…
By Tom Conway
USW International President
The closer Doug Kamerer got to retirement, the more he feared that he’d never be able to afford it.
Kamerer steadily built up a pension during 35 years as a die setter at Etched Metal Co. in Solon, Ohio, where he and his co-workers often accepted lower raises in return for contributions their company made to a multiemployer retirement fund.
But that fund began failing years ago, and if it crashed, Kamerer knew he and his wife, Toni, would end up spending their senior years just trying to scrape by.
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Sam Phillips and Trey Maestas fought tirelessly to save TIMET’s titanium sponge plant, both to protect the jobs of about 420 co-workers and safeguard America’s future.
The decades-old facility in Henderson, Nev., was the nation’s last remaining producer of the coral-like material essential for manufacturing warplanes, munitions, satellites, civilian jetliners, ships and even joints for artificial hips.
The plant’s closing last year — despite the best efforts of Phillips and Maestas of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 4856 — left the nation completely dependent on foreign imports of titanium sponge and further decimated manufacturing supply…
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Patricia McDonald layered on sweaters, socks and mittens and huddled under blankets for 15 hours as the temperature in her Duncanville, Texas, home plunged to 42 degrees last week.
Well after the water in her kitchen froze, McDonald decided she’d had enough and braved a hair-raising ride over snow-covered, ice-slicked roads to get to her daughter’s house several miles away.
The Dallas County probation officer was safe and warm there. However, McDonald couldn’t establish the computer connection she needed to check in with colleagues, and she worried about clients who had had fewer resources…
By Tom Conway
USW International President
Dave Dell Isola, the son and grandson of union members, grew up grateful for the family-sustaining wages and benefits that organized labor won for working people.
But he never fully grasped the might of solidarity until he and his wife, Barbara, and their two sons lost everything in an apartment fire. Dell Isola’s brothers and sisters in the United Steelworkers (USW) rushed to the couple’s side with financial assistance and other support to help them through the tragedy.
“They had me in tears,” recalled Dell Isola, now vice president of USW Local 12012, which…
