About Us

Who We Are:

We're steelworkers. We slurry and smelt aluminum. We mine for iron ore and create cement. We make glass and metals of many kinds. We produce paper and paper products. And we craft energy-saving wind turbines that help save our Earth.

We're nurses and nurses' aides. We make Harley Davidson motorcycles and Carrier air conditioners. We're rubber workers who make your tires; metal workers who make the materials that go into buildings, homes, automobiles, planes and roads.

We serve you at banks and teach at universities. You'll find us in oil refineries and grocery stores. At utility companies and in chemical plants. We work in the public sector and in forestry. We drive taxi cabs and work in airports. We're security guards and electricians. We're miners and pharmaceutical workers.

We're 1.2 million active and retired members strong. You'll find us fighting for a better life for all workers in union halls, at the work place, in the courts and in legislatures. We’re North America’s largest private sector manufacturing union. We're global, we're local and we're online. www.usw.org www.usw.ca

Our Partners:

The Blue Green Alliance: The United Steelworkers (USW), and the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest grassroots environmental organization with 750,000 members, announced in June 2006 the formation of a strategic alliance to pursue a joint public policy agenda under the banner of Good Jobs, A Clean Environment, and A Safer World.

The USW and the Sierra Club have worked jointly on issues of mutual concern for many years, including the Clean Air Act, trade reform, and corporate responsibility. The Blue Green Alliance unites the American people in the pursuit of a fair and just global economy, one that fosters healthy communities where workers thrive and the environment is protected.

The Blue Green Alliance will build on these existing programs and focus initially on three key issues:

¨ Global Warming and Clean Energy;
¨ Fair Trade; and
¨ Reducing Toxics, including chemical security and "green chemistry."

The Center for Environmental Health (CEH)is working to eliminate the threat that chemicals pose to children, families, and communities. CEH is a non-profit organization that has been forcing global industries to clean up their act for over ten years by:

Strengthening Laws
Supporting Communities
Greening Industries
Eliminating Toxics

This sweeping problem is the field where industries, laws, governments, communities, and consumers all overlap. The Center for Environmental Health concentrates on each of these connections to confront the problem from all angles at once through various programs.

Public Interest Litigation Program uses California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (Proposition 65) to eliminate toxics from industrial emissions and consumer products.

Community Health Program supports the communities that suffer the worst effects of chemical pollution.

Public Policy Program teams up with other effective organizations, public health experts, community groups, academics, and public officials to help the government develop and enforce sensible measures to protect people from dangerous chemicals.

Green Electronics and Sustainable Food Programs work with ethical businesses to clean up two enormous industries whose production, distribution, consumption, and disposal have an enormous but little-known impact on our most precious resource: our health.

The Public Health Institute (PHI) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on education and strategy development to build alliances for social and economic justice. Founded in 1986 in the wake of the Bhopal tragedy in India, PHI helps labor, environmentalists, and public health groups understand each other's issues, foster positive dialogue, and search for common ground.