Workers around the world achieve stronger labor rights, better contracts and safer working conditions by joining together to hold employers accountable.
The USW’s International Affairs Department facilitates this bridge-building. We help our members in the United States and Canada form alliances with counterparts in other countries and leverage the transformative power of global worker solidarity.
Among many other examples, the USW’s longtime collaboration with Los Mineros in Mexico has improved the living standards of long-exploited Mexican workers and safeguarded the jobs of USW members.
This partnership proved crucial several years ago in forging a fairer trilateral trade agreement, known in America as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and in Canada as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Now, we work with Los Mineros and other democratic unions in Mexico to enforce the trade pact, promote strong unions and lift up workers on both sides of the border. U.S. and Canadian employers have less incentive to shift jobs to Mexico when workers there receive fair treatment and just wages.
While the International Department works closely with other longtime allies, we also are establishing relationships with workers in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere to fight labor abuses, force multinational companies to pay just wages, build stronger communities and push governments to protect workers’ rights.
Make no mistake, workers in these other countries have our backs as well.
In August 2023, for example, UNI Global Union arranged for 38 delegates from 16 countries to walk the picket line with striking nurses of USW Local 4-200 at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. At the time, the Switzerland-based union was holding its congress in Philadelphia.
Authoritarian governments pose ever growing danger to workers’ rights and democratic values around the world. The USW’s international alliances and campaigns empower workers to combat these threats.
Here is a summary of the International Department’s work since the last convention.
we also are establishing relationships with workers in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere to fight labor abuses.
ArcelorMittal
In April 2024, about 100 USW members joined counterparts from Los Mineros, representatives of other unions and community supporters in a march through Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, home to a major steel complex owned by ArcelorMittal.
The march highlighted the annual Los Mineros tribute to two members killed during a 2006 strike at the plant, then operated by another company.
The leader of Los Mineros, Sen. Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, presided over the memorial activities. They included a workshop on the history of our two unions and a moving speech by the daughter of Hector Ấlvarez Gómez, who was 4 when police and soldiers opened fire on the striking workers, fatally wounding her father. She’s now a member of his local union.
Workers at the plant still battle for fair treatment.
In June 2024, Los Mineros launched a 55-day strike that ended with workers winning an 8 percent wage increase, a $3,000 bonus and full back pay.
A few months later, USW members participated in a global day of action organized by IndustriALL Global Union to expose health and safety violations at ArcelorMittal sites worldwide. At least 314 workers died on the job at company facilities since 2012, though unions believe the actual number to be higher.
Canadian Tire
Besides supporting organizations such as the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, the USW exerts political and public pressure on Canadian-owned companies that shamelessly exploit garment makers, most of them women, in this impoverished nation.
In November 2022, the USW and the Canadian Labour Congress filed a complaint with the Canada Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise against Canadian Tire Corp. and its subsidiary, Mark’s, for failing to pay Bangladeshi workers a living wage.
Unfortunately, the ombudsman refused to address our concerns. However, we continue to defend workers’ rights in Bangladesh, where employers regularly attack trade unionists and other activists.
Chemical Sector
USW representatives traveled to Argentina in April 2024 to attend the United Petrochemical Workers and Employees Union Congress and forge stronger relationships with chemical workers in Latin America.
Then-International Secretary-Treasurer John Shinn delivered a report on the chemical sector in North America, while Kent Holsing, Local 12075 president and DowDuPont North American Labor Council (DNALC) chair, addressed the power of worker solidarity.
Activists from Argentina discussed President Javier Gerardo Milei’s decree on labor law, which has the potential to devastate working families, unions and the country’s economy.
The gathering closed with Secretary-General Mauricio Brizuela urging delegates to redouble their efforts for union members and their families.
This battle never ends. In October 2024, Holsing and the DowDuPont North American Labor Council sent a message of solidarity to members of the petrochemical congress affected by Dow’s decision to close its plant in Argentina and eliminate 120 jobs.
Firestone
USW-supported contract workers on the Firestone rubber plantation in Harbel voted overwhelmingly last year to join the Firestone Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL). The plantation produces rubber for Bridgestone tire plants, including those represented by the USW.
The union vote marked an important step in a 15-year fight against corporate subcontracting practices that not only hindered the battle against child labor but undermined education and health care advancements won with USW assistance in 2008.
A delegation from the Steelworkers Humanity Fund later traveled to Liberia to visit Camp for Peace, a USW-supported philanthropy. The group also met with representatives of both FAWUL and the United Workers Union of Liberia, which represents workers at ArcelorMittal.
Newmont Mining
In January 2024, then-District 6 Director Myles Sullivan led a USW delegation to Lima, Peru, to establish a global network for workers at U.S.-based Newmont Mining.
Participants at the inaugural session included union members from Los Mineros as well as ASIJEMIN in Argentina and SITRACOMY in Peru. Representatives of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) joined the second meeting, in Mexico City in May 2024.
The network immediately began strategizing on issues such as contracting out, health and safety, profit sharing and support for female workers.
Newmont unions coordinated responses to the targeted mass layoff of workers and harassment of leaders at the Yanacocha mine in Peru and assailed fatalities at the Cerro Negro mine in Argentina. They also planned outreach to unions representing miners in the Dominican Republic and Ghana.
Rio Tinto
USW members and other activists stepped forward in 2023 to demand the release of unlawfully imprisoned leaders of the SVS and SEKRIMA unions representing workers at Rio Tinto’s ilmenite mines in Madagascar. These mines supply ore to USW-represented operations in Quebec.
About 70 people, including several SVS representatives working with the Steelworkers Humanity Fund, were arrested amid protests that followed the company’s renewal of a controversial lease with the government. Authorities ultimately dropped charges against 40 protesters and freed the others pending trial.
International President David McCall led a USW delegation to a meeting of the unions’ Rio Tinto Steering Committee in London in January 2024.
The gathering occurred shortly after a small plane crashed in Canada’s Northwest Territories, killing six workers en route to a Rio Tinto mine, and much of the discussion centered on improving the company’s health and safety practices.
Union representatives also discussed the ongoing repression in Madagascar and raised concerns about workers in Guinea, where Rio Tinto and Chinese partners are undertaking the world’s largest iron ore project under the auspices of Guinea’s ruling military junta.
USMCA/CUSMA
The USMCA/CUSMA, which took effect in 2020, includes a Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRLM) empowering Mexican workers to file complaints and secure relief when employers violate their rights.
Workers at the Goodyear plant in San Luis Potosi used the RRLM to force the company to comply with Mexico’s industry-wide contract for tire industry employers, resulting last year in a $4.2 million back pay award.
In at least 10 more cases, the complaints led to union recognition, new contracts and significant wage increases.
While these results are encouraging, it would be premature to characterize the RRLM as a success. There haven’t been enough cases so far to measurably affect the yawning wage gap between U.S. and Mexican workers, and the U.S. has already committed the funds it set aside to build the capacity of Mexico’s independent unions.
Moreover, companies continue to obstruct workers’ right to organize. The USW has accompanied Mexican labor activists to the Canadian embassy and spoken out in solidarity when workers went on strike or faced threats because of union activity.
As the trade agreement comes up for review in 2026, the USW is demanding that workers’ rights in all three countries be prioritized over a corporate-led race to the bottom. We’re not only participating in government consultations on the agreement but leading a campaign with unions and other supporters to further our agenda for fair, equitable trade.
The Mexico Labour Solidarity Project, supported by the Steelworkers Humanity Fund, works with four unions in Mexico to provide workshops, courses and radio broadcasts to grow labor consciousness and help workers there leverage their rights.
Vale
USW representatives traveled to Indonesia in March 2024 to investigate working conditions in a nickel supply chain that the U.S. government characterized as riddled with forced labor.
The delegation met with employer and union representatives at the Vale nickel mine in Sorowako. It also met with workers and unions in Morowali, the site of major Chinese nickel mining projects.