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President of the United Steelworkers Union Leo Wilfred Gerard testifies on steel trade, energy and currency policies before the Congressional Steel Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, last year.JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images
As a young smelter worker at Inco Ltd. in Sudbury, Ont., Leo Gerard once aspired to be an economics professor. Instead – unable to shake the image of silicosis-stricken miners he encountered as a child at the company clinic – Mr. Gerard embarked on a life of labour activism that propelled him to the helm of the United Steelworkers of America.
In addition to negotiating collective agreements, Mr. Gerard had a transformative approach to unionism that led him into corporate boardrooms to help restructure struggling companies in order to save jobs. He worked with governments in Canada and the United States to strengthen health and safety laws and frequently visited the White House to advocate for fair trade practices during his 18-year tenure as international president of the USW. Having grown up breathing sulphur fumes, Mr. Gerard was also a staunch environmentalist, partnering with the Sierra Club to promote the green economy.
Mr. Gerard retired in 2019 owing to failing health and returned to his hometown roots in Sudbury, enjoying visits to the Local 6500 union hall and the company of old friends. He died on Sept. 21 at the age of 78, leaving a bereft family and a lasting legacy. In 2023, Mr. Gerard was named a companion of the Order of Canada in recognition of his accomplishments.
From 2019: Leo Gerard, retired president of United Steel Workers: ‘No one believed more in workers’
One of the old friends who travelled to Sudbury to see Mr. Gerard in the past year was American business investor Alan Kestenbaum, former chief executive officer of Stelco Inc. and currently a minority owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team. (Mr. Gerard was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.)
“I think his greatest legacy is going to be the restoration of the steel industry,” Mr. Kestenbaum said in an interview. Mr. Gerard was instrumental in enlisting Mr. Kestenbaum to lift Hamilton-based Stelco out of creditor protection in 2017 and revive the company.
Mr. Gerard had previously made Canadian labour history in 1992 by leading an employee buyout of Algoma Steel Corp. in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., to stave off shutdown when he was Canadian director of the union.
“Historically, in a steel mill, you would punch your card, check your brain, do what you were told to do and go home. I don’t think workers want that any more,” Mr. Gerard said at the time. Ironically, Steelworkers’ Canadian director Marty Warren is currently applying many of the lessons he learned from Mr. Gerard as Algoma goes through another restructuring to mitigate the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel.
Algoma Steel pivots early to electric future after securing $500-million in government loans
Leo Wilfred Joseph John Gerard, the eldest of five children, was born on March 10, 1947, in the village of Creighton Mine on the outskirts of Sudbury. His father, Wilf, a mine worker, and his mother, Rita, subsequently moved the family to the small town of Lively, where the Gerard kids attended school. Lessons were punctuated by the sound of factory whistles from the nearby mine and smelter, and the children knew from a young age that something bad had happened when a whistle went off outside of regular shift-change times. “The first thing you thought about was what shift was my father on today, what shift was my buddy’s father on? So that knot in my stomach was there all the time,” Mr. Gerard related in a USW video.
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Leo Gerard addresses forestry workers, families and supporters in 2007 on the picket lines in front of a sawmill in Port Alberni, B.C.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
As a boy, Leo would sit on the steps listening to union meetings his dad conducted in the basement of their family home.
“Someone would bring a case of beer and my mom would make egg salad or bologna sandwiches,” Mr. Gerard wrote at the time of his retirement. “Conditions in the mine were terrible and these workers were organizing to achieve change. I recall them talking about a work stoppage over [the lack] of safety glasses. … I learned two important lessons from those meetings. One was that the company would do nothing for the workers unless forced by collective action. The other was that labour unions were instruments of both economic and social justice.”
In his early 20s, Mr. Gerard married high-school sweetheart Susan Nixon and took night courses in economics at Laurentian University. Mr. Gerard had a day job at Inco, where he served as a shop steward with the United Steelworkers of America, which had merged with the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers after an acrimonious turf war. It was a little frosty in the Gerard household for a while; his father was a Mine, Mill man.
Mr. Gerard was a few credits short of his university degree when the Steelworkers recruited him in 1977 to serve as a staff representative based in Toronto. He advanced quickly, becoming director of USW District 6, which encompasses Ontario and Atlantic Canada, in 1986, Canadian director in 1991 and secretary-treasurer of the international union in 1993. Mr. Gerard was elected president of the United Steelworkers of America in 2001.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren is welcomed to the stage by Leo Gerard during the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference at the Washington Hilton in 2015.Chip Somodevilla
“Leo had an amazing ability to look into the future and always be two steps ahead of anyone else, whether it was the employer or the government,” says Carol Landry, the first woman to serve on the USW international executive board. He mobilized the membership and strengthened union education programs to prepare local leaders for emerging challenges, said Ms. Landry, who got her start in the union local at Highland Valley Copper in Logan Lake, B.C. She rose through the male-dominated leadership ranks through Mr. Gerard’s innovative Women of Steel initiative.
He was one of the most influential labour advocates in modern history, says Ken Neumann, who followed in Mr. Gerard’s footsteps as Canadian director of the union. Now retired, Mr. Neumann credits Mr. Gerard with attracting more than 100,000 new members through mergers and organizing drives – diversifying the ranks to include forestry workers, telecommunications workers, university staff, and paper, chemical and energy workers.
Among the tributes on LinkedIn was a post from the Steel Manufacturers Association, which lauded Mr. Gerard as “a tireless advocate for the men and women of North American steel, especially when it comes to safety.”
Mr. Gerard was devastated when, in the midst of an organizing campaign at Westray Coal Inc. in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County, an explosion at the mine killed 26 young miners in May of 1992. He had been contacted by Westray workers who said they needed union representation because of unsafe working conditions.
In an emotional speech at a Canadian Labour Congress convention the following month, Mr. Gerard said: “If we find that people violated the health and safety laws, be they bosses or politicians, the sons of bitches ought to go to jail.” He made it his mission to fight for legislative changes to hold corporations criminally liable if they were found responsible for workplace deaths or injuries.
The subsequent Westray Law, an amendment to the Criminal Code holding employers accountable for workplace injuries and fatalities, took effect in March, 2004.
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Leo Gerard holds up a document as he speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2016.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press
Corporations should also be held to higher environmental standards, Mr. Gerard maintained, and these standards should be applied to imports as well, so North American manufacturers adopting cleaner production methods are not put at a competitive disadvantage.
With trade issues a continuing headache for North American manufacturers, Mr. Gerard lobbied successive U.S. administrations for stronger anti-dumping measures, with mixed success. Canada, he said repeatedly, was not the problem.
In 2010, Mr. Gerard was appointed to U.S. president Barack Obama’s presidential advisory committee on trade policy and negotiations. He also served on the advanced manufacturing steering committee established by Mr. Obama to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing sector.
Mr. Gerard later met with U.S. President Donald Trump, whose election campaign he had not supported, because it was an opportunity to advocate on behalf of workers on both sides of the border. (“Leo liked to say that if you weren’t at the table, you could be on the menu,” USW president David McCall says.)
A photo of Mr. Gerard at one of those meetings triggered political controversy when British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, campaigning for re-election in 2017, accused Mr. Gerard of betraying B.C. workers by supporting Mr. Trump’s U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood. Mr. Gerard retorted that her accusation was categorically false. His access to top officials in Mr. Trump’s administration, however, opened doors for new B.C. Premier John Horgan when he went to Washington to try to resolve the lumber dispute.
“Leo had been a key player in Washington, D.C., for a decade,” the late Mr. Horgan wrote in his autobiography. “We were able to sit down with the secretary of commerce and the U.S. trade representative for long meetings and have genuine discussions about the consequences of the softwood lumber tariffs. … There was no budging them. Still, I felt it had been worthwhile.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump hands Leo Gerard his pen after signing a directive in 2017 ordering an investigation into the impact of foreign steel on the American economy.Aaron Bernstein/Reuters
Mr. Kestenbaum and Mr. Gerard became unlikely friends when Mr. Gerard contacted Mr. Kestenbaum out of the blue upon learning that Mr. Kestenbaum had purchased a distressed plant in Alabama and reversed a pay cut the previous owner had inflicted on the workers.
The incredulous Mr. Gerard said he had never seen an employer raise wages in the middle of a contract without a negotiation. Mr. Gerard built alliances with labour organizations outside of North America because many of them were dealing with the same multinational corporations.
In February, 2025, Mr. Gerard was honoured with a new research chair established at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations & Human Resources. The United Steelworkers/Leo Gerard Chair will drive new research into labour relations and human rights. Mr. Kestenbaum and Mr. Neumann were part of the fundraising campaign.
“Leo was unique in that he was able to advance workers’ rights while, at the same time, be respected by management and by various waves of different political leadership,” said Rafael Gomez, a professor of employment relations and CIRHR director. His methods are worth studying, he added.
Mr. Gerard was too ill to attend the ceremony, but appreciated the honour, according to his brother Raymond Gerard, a software entrepreneur.
His final months had been plagued by heart problems and memory issues.
Leo Gerard leaves his wife of 56 years, Susan Gerard; daughters Kari-Ann Gerard Cusack and Meaghan Gerard Wennekes; and grandchildren Elyssa, Liam and Kinley. He adored them, Raymond said. While still president of the USW, Mr. Gerard would drive eight-plus hours from Pittsburgh to Sudbury on Friday for a weekend with family, departing at 5 a.m. on Monday. In addition to Raymond, Mr. Gerard leaves his sisters, Pierrette and Suzanne. His brother Marcel died four years ago. No service has been planned. Donations are being accepted by the Alzheimer Society of Canada.
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Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article referred to David McCall as UAW president. He is, in fact, president of the United Steelworkers (USW). This version has been corrected.
