Feb. 5, 2007 — George Becker, the sixth International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), died Saturday at his home in Gibsonia, Pa., surrounded by his family, following a long battle with prostate cancer.

Becker, 78, was a second-generation steelworker. He was elected President in 1993 and again in 1997, serving a total of seven years as the union’s International President. He was a respected union organizer and strategist and an internationally-known spokesman for industrial safety, workers’ rights on the job and fair global trade.

“George did as much as any President in our history to strengthen our union,” said USW President Leo W. Gerard, who served as International Secretary-Treasurer under Becker and succeeded him as President in 2001. “He was a powerful voice for the interests of our members. He had a unique ability to give voice to the frustrations and concerns of workers, their right to be treated with dignity and decency — values he believed in deeply.”

Internally, Becker convinced the Union’s Executive Board to take an historic step in consolidating the USW’s administrative districts in the U.S. from 18 to nine, along with a corresponding reduction in the size of the Executive Board. The move increased the efficiency and political strength of the Union. He also persuaded hundreds of smaller local unions to join forces by amalgamating for the same reasons.

Becker also orchestrated mergers with the United Rubber Workers and the Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers Union, bringing 140,000 new members to the USW. 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.

Prior to his election as President, Becker served two terms as the union’s International Vice President for Administration starting in 1985. He chaired the union’s Aluminum Industry Conference and led its collective bargaining in that industry. In 1986, a year after he became Vice President, Becker was put in charge of mobilizing members for what became a lengthy lockout by USX Corp., the first labor dispute since 1959 against the company now known as U.S. Steel.

Becker also led the union’s organizing program as Vice President and organized several major corporate campaigns, the best known of which targeted Ravenswood Aluminum and Bridgestone/Firestone. He also played a leading role in promoting the 1995 election of John J. Sweeney as President of the AFL-CIO, who ran on a campaign to revitalize the labor movement.

Nowhere was Becker’s voice more powerful, though, than in the struggles against unfair trade, an issue that held his interest into retirement as an appointed member of the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission. Mr. Becker also served on the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission and during the Clinton Administration was a member of the President’s Export Council and the U.S. Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee.

In the continuing fight for the survival of the steel industry, Becker was instrumental in establishing Stand Up For Steel, an alliance of the union and steel producers that fights unfair trade practices, including the illegal dumping of foreign steel on U.S. markets.

As a boy, Becker grew up yards from his father’s employer, Granite City Steel in Illinois, where the heat was so intense it penetrated the doorway to the family home. In 1944, at 15, he took a job on an open hearth labor gang. His early work background also included stints of employment as a crane operator at General Steel Castings and as an assembler at the General Motors Fisher Body plant in St. Louis.

The family has asked that any donations in Mr. Becker’s name be directed to Habitat for Humanity.