Leo W. Gerard
International President, United Steelworkers of America
Leo W. Gerard
Leo W. Gerard, the son of a union miner, was born in Sudbury, Ontario, and grew up in Lively, a company town next to Creighton Mine in Creighton, a town now completely dismantled from the Sudbury area landscape by INCO. He started working at INCO's Smelter at age 18. He soon became a Steward and rose quickly to Chief Steward of USWA LU 6500, representing the 7,000-member reduction section of the INCO's operations.
Leo's love for the union and his strong sense of social justice were developed at a very early age. Leo's father, Wilfred Gerard, was a hard rock miner at INCO's Creighton Mine and a key organizer with the International Mine Mill & Smelter Workers Union, which merged with the Steelworkers in 1967. At the age of 13, Leo followed his father to Elliot Lake during an organizing drive and other union events. At the family home he would listen from the top of the stairs to union meetings held by his father in the basement. His father, who believed that unions were more than collective bargaining instruments, instilled in Leo basic social democratic values and union principles; tools with which to work for social and economic justice.
Prior to his election as President, Gerard served two terms as International Secretary-Treasurer, having been elected to that position in November 1993 and again in November 1997. Before assuming his international office, he served as National Director for Canada, a post to which the International Executive Board appointed him in August 1991, after the retirement of E. Gerard Docquier. He previously served six years as Director of District 6 in Ontario, having been elected in 1985 and reelected in 1989.
As Director of the Ontario district, Gerard was instrumental in achieving many landmark labor agreements and legislative changes. These included the first indexed pensions for all past, current and future retirees, as well as significant advances in safety and health legislation; the successful workers buyout at Algoma Steel, saving thousands of jobs; and, he secured outstanding victories in occupational health and safety, women's rights, human rights and in organizing the unorganized.
While active in LU 6500, Gerard completed courses in economics and politics at Laurentian University, which awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree in 1994. Leo attended the Canadian Labour Congress Labour College and was appointed a Staff Representative in 1977, initially posted to work in Toronto. In the early 1980s, he was transferred to Elliot Lake, in the midst of a large expansion. His leadership and vision while in Toronto and Elliot Lake marked him as a person destined to serve a much greater number of workers.
As International Secretary-Treasurer, Gerard implemented a wide range of cost-saving and revenue-generating measures that have substantially strengthened the union's financial position. He reorganized the Secretary-Treasurer's office and, through the newly created Information Systems Department, spearheaded the union's adoption of new computer and communications systems.
While serving as chairman of the Steelworkers Health and Welfare Fund before vacating that position to devote his energies to heading the organizing effort, Gerard led the restructuring and revitalization of that important service to USWA members and local unions.
While Secretary-Treasurer, Gerard also headed the Steelworkers organizing program, which has been more successful during the last three years than it had been in over a decade. Gerard aims at winning union representation for an ever-expanding number of American and Canadian workers. He has brought resources and fierce determination to the Steelworkers struggles and organizing drives across North America.
Gerard is the driving force behind the Heartland Labor Capital Funds; a network that is creating conceptual, financial and educational tools for capital strategies that will inject the welfare of workers into investment priorities. Working Capital, a book based on research drawn from the second national Heartland Labor Capital Conference, has been published by Cornell University Press. The book, which includes a foreword by Gerard, documents both the problems in current financial investments and offers an agenda to advance labor's capital strategy.
Leo married his high school sweetheart, Susan, and they have two children, Kari-Ann and Meaghan and now have one granddaughter, Elyssa.
National Commission on Energy Policy, National Commission on Energy Policy - Commissioners
