By Tom Conway USW International President The World War II veteran had no family by his side as he lay dying a few months ago, so Ella Wilverding and her union co-workers stepped into the role. They took turns sitting vigil with the man, talking to him, holding his hand…

By Tom Conway USW International President She only wanted a few hours at her dying mother’s bedside. But the woman’s bosses at Twin Rivers Paper in Madawaska, Maine, lacked all decency and forced her to the mill on overtime even though it was her day off. About an hour and…

By Tom Conway USW International President James Golden knew the crowbar wasn’t the right tool for the job, but it’s what the bosses provided when he needed to perform work on a piece of equipment at the Kumho tire plant in Macon, Ga. The crowbar slipped from Golden’s hand and…

By Tom Conway USW International President The grief hits Scott Campbell like a ton of bricks every time he walks into the union hall and sees the memorial to the fallen workers. Seven members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union reported for their shifts at the former Tesoro refinery in…

By Tom Conway USW International President Sgt. Jackie E. Garland, twice wounded during combat in Vietnam, returned home only to face even more battles that battered his spirit as well as his body. The ex-Marine and his wife, Helen, struggled for decades to support their six children while fighting for…

By Tom Conway USW International President John Campbell and other union activists led the fight two years ago for historic infrastructure legislation needed to modernize the nation, support millions of good-paying jobs and supercharge the economy. They wrote tens of thousands of postcards, made countless phone calls and pounded the…

By Tom Conway USW International President The heat index recently soared to 111 degrees in Houston, Texas, but the real-feel temperature climbed even higher than that inside the heavy personal protective equipment (PPE) that John Hayes and his colleagues at Ecoservices wear on the job. Sweat poured from the workers…

By Tom Conway USW International President It wasn’t enough for owners of lucrative Southern California car washes to cheat their workers out of wages and overtime. They made workers pay for the towels they used to clean cars, denied them rest breaks, forced them to toil in filthy water that…

By Tom Conway USW International President Dave Smith launched a union drive many years ago that generated enthusiastic support among his co-workers, but the effort died after management hired union-busting consultants and went on the attack. Bosses at the Minnesota electric cooperative forced his colleagues into “captive audience” meetings, where…