George Becker Former President of United Steelworkers Union

Died Feb. 3, 2007

George Becker, the son of a steel worker who grew up to become President of the United Steelworkers International Union, died Saturday, February 3rd at his home in West Deer.

Mr. Becker, who had prostate cancer, was 78.

Mr. Becker, who served seven years as president of the United Steelworkers of America, used his office to advocate industrial safety, workers' rights on the job and fair global trade. He was elected president in 1993 and again in 1997.

"George did as much as any president in our history to strengthen our union," said USW President Leo W. Gerard, who succeeded Mr. Becker as president in 2001.

Mr. Gerard said Mr. Becker was above all else a champion of the rank and file who made sure their voice was heard in boardrooms and in Washington.

"The thing that George did better than anyone was being the voice of the anxious industrial worker on the loss of jobs and foreign trade," Mr. Gerard said.

At a time when the union's ranks were shrinking, Mr. Becker orchestrated mergers with the United Rubber Workers and the Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers Union, bringing 140,000 new members to the United Steelworkers.

He launched the union's pioneering rapid response program, which activates workers and their local unions to lobby Congress and state legislatures on issues crucial to them, and the Legislative Leadership Program in Washington, D.C., which provides member-activists with training in lobbying and political action.

Mr. Becker also worked to reshape his own union. He cut the number of districts from 18 to nine, a move aimed at increasing the union's efficiency and political strength.

At the time of his retirement in 2001, Mr. Becker said that one of his proudest accomplishments as a USW officer was mobilizing an international campaign to challenge the use of replacement workers by Ravenswood Aluminum in Jackson County, W.Va., then controlled by international financier Marc Rich.

That dispute ended with USW members triumphantly taking back 1,700 jobs that had been given to replacement workers.

Immediately following the merger with the Rubber Workers union, Mr. Becker led a similar 28-month worldwide campaign against Bridgestone/Firestone, which had fired 6,000 workers. That campaign also resulted in a new contract and the return to work of the thousands of union members.

Richard Simmons, the former chairman of Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp., met with Mr. Becker on several occasions on opposite sides of a negotiating table.

"He was a straight-up guy. You always knew where you stood with him," Mr. Simmons said. "He wasn't particularly subtle."

Mr. Simmons said the two men once met on a New Year's Eve at the Duquesne Club to try to resolve differences on a contract.

"We reached an agreement and averted a strike. I wasn't particularly close to him, but I respected him," Mr. Simmons said.

Mr. Becker strongly opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, called NAFTA, which he blamed for wiping out hundreds of thousands of family-supportive U.S. jobs.

As a boy, Mr. Becker grew up yards from his father's employer, Granite City Steel in Illinois.

"He told me that when you were on his front porch, you could feel the heat from the mill," Mr. Gerard said.

He started working in a mill in 1944, at the age of 15, in a labor gang at an open hearth.

He twice served the country in its armed forces, first as a Marine toward the end of World War II and again during the Korean War, when he was drafted into the Army.

In the mid-1970s, Mr. Becker was instrumental in proposing Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety standards for exposure to lead and for the use of arsenic. As a result of his efforts, workers exposed to lead must be removed from exposure without loss of pay and cannot be returned to work until blood lead levels are reduced.

Former USW President Lynn Williams was a mentor. When Mr. Williams retired, he proposed that Mr. Becker lead the team that succeeded him. Mr. Becker became the first person since USW founder Phillip Murray to be elected president of the union without an election challenge or without the death of a predecessor.

"He was really terrific at focusing on a particular issue and resolving it," said Mr. Williams, who will be traveling from Toronto to attend Mr. Becker's funeral. "He was an outstanding labor leader. There's no doubt about that."

Mr. Becker is survived by his wife, Jane; sons George of Mount Washington, Gregory of Illinois and Matthew of Indiana Township; a sister, Jacqueline Strauss of Illinois; 10 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.