From its inception, the Women of Steel program has focused on fostering educational opportunities and building solidarity to help women realize their power and take on leadership roles in their locals and communities.
While the program’s mission remains the same, it has since grown and evolved as we’ve welcomed new members and accepted new challenges.
In particular, since the 2022 convention, Women of Steel are working on building momentum around our three core pillars of education, activism and service.
This work includes transforming our workplaces through bargaining and advocacy so that they are safer and more equitable. Women of Steel members are also engaging in political action and even running for elected office. And we continue to give back to our communities, spearheading innovative programs that allow us to maintain strong partnerships inside and outside the labor movement.
Women of Steel members are also engaging in political action and even running for elected office.
Educating for Strength
Building power and driving progress begin with education.
The Women of Steel Leadership Course, offered at least once annually in every district, delivers foundational education on the labor movement, the role of our union and the rights of union members.
Specifically designed to empower women, the course focuses on building confidence, leadership skills, and a deeper understanding of our union while providing valuable opportunities for sisters to network, share experiences and build solidarity.
The Women of Steel Department regularly updates and expands this course to address emerging issues, introduce new strategies for activism and develop the next generation of leaders.
Bringing Women Leaders Together
More than 1,200 WOS activists from the United States and Canada gathered in Pittsburgh for the USW International Women’s Conference in 2023.
The theme –“Know Your Power!” – encouraged members to seize opportunities and blaze new trails.
The conference offered dozens of workshops ranging from civil and human rights topics, such as supporting trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming members, to health and safety sessions covering hazard mapping, aging in the workplace, and improving women’s personal protective equipment (PPE).
The week culminated with a rally on the University of Pittsburgh campus, with WOS activists turning out to support university staff members and graduate workers then in the midst of successful USW organizing campaigns.
The conference and its virtual follow-up were tremendously successful, ushering in a new era for the Women of Steel program with a renewed focus on educational opportunities, activism and service to our union and our communities.
Transforming Workplaces
USW members in Canada developed the Raising the Bar on Women’s Health and Safety initiative in response to widespread calls for greater equity in women’s health, safety and working conditions.
Raising the Bar helps workers view workplace hazards through a gender-specific lens. It also provides activists with resources and tools to address concerns.
Emboldened by the early success in Canada, WOS launched the initiative in the United States about two years ago with training and an action guide tailored to U.S. laws and regulations.
The impact quickly became clear: In local after local, Women of Steel began to secure vital resources and protections, including support for new moms like pregnancy accommodations and lactation pods as well as other necessities like adequate women’s bathrooms and changing facilities.
WOS activists in Local 6787, for example, won accommodations for new mothers at the Cleveland-Cliffs plant in Burns Harbor, Ind.
Members there collaborated with the company to remodel the women’s welfare space and create two Mommy Rooms, ensuring workers feel valued and welcome when they return to work after childbirth.
Across numerous industries, WOS members continue to win contract language providing pregnancy, parental and domestic violence leave, along with lactation and menopause policies and PPE designed for women’s bodies.
Local 9422 members once struggled with ill-fitting clothing assigned to them at Lac des Iles, a palladium mine in Ontario, Canada.
Using the kind of resourcefulness encouraged by the Raising the Bar program, President Sharon Brownson and the local’s WOS members reached out to a women-owned clothing manufacturer and ultimately helped to design their own coveralls.
These workers now have clothing made for them and the jobs they do. Even better, the coveralls are now available for anyone to purchase.
As WOS continues to notch these victories, members of all genders reap the benefits.
“Creating a space for sisters to bring health and safety issues they experience forward where they are respected and then working together to tackle these issues strengthens our solidarity and creates a safer workplace for everyone, regardless of gender,” said Randall Child, president of Local 9-738 at the International Paper mill in Riegelwood, N.C.
Ascending the Ranks
Our union continues to build momentum in these vital areas as women take on a greater number of leadership roles and drive the USW’s advocacy for all workers.
Growing numbers of women serve as local union officers, staff representatives and assistant district directors, positions in which they negotiate contracts, monitor safety and oversee arbitration cases.
We achieved another milestone in July 2023 when Cathy Drummond became the first woman elected to lead a USW district. As the director of District 11, she represents tens of thousands of members in nine states and chairs bargaining for the union’s health care sector.
WOS factored prominently in her journey to leadership.
She previously served as the District 11 assistant to the director and WOS coordinator, helping to grow participation and programming across hundreds of locals.
Now, Drummond brings a fresh perspective to the district director’s position. Her representation on the International Executive Board demonstrates progress in action and underscores the USW’s commitment as everybody’s union.
Electing the Right People and Advocating for Pro-Worker Policies
During the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, Women of Steel partnered with the Political Department to turn out the vote for pro-worker candidates.
We managed the union’s postcard-writing campaign, knocked on countless doors and hosted events aimed at ensuring USW members’ engagement in these crucial elections.
WOS members grasp the link between union advocacy and union activism. Working people need to elect the right people to office so we secure the laws and policies essential to building better lives.
Because no one knows the issues better than people who do tough jobs every day, some union members and WOS activists run for office themselves.
That’s why Libbi Urban, a longtime Local 9231 officer and WOS activist, chose to run for Michigan’s 5th Congressional District seat last year after she retired from Cleveland-Cliffs.
She focused on workers’ issues, highlighted her union and WOS activism, and landed one-third of the vote despite an uphill battle against a deeply entrenched incumbent.
Urban noted after the election that she and her supporters “entered this race to give working families a voice and to ensure the issues important to them received the attention they deserved. We accomplished that mission.”
Fostering Global Solidarity
WOS pursues opportunities to build solidarity with women in other countries, especially in the face of growing threats to workers’ rights across the globe.
Women workers too often bear the brunt of these challenges, so WOS collaborates with IndustriALL in Switzerland and Unite the Union in the United Kingdom to discuss common issues and strategize on how to protect our rights.
These partnerships enable us to share resources, provide training for members and staff, and support campaigns that advocate for women workers around the world.
Tara Cavanagh, who works as a USW staff representative in Calgary, Canada had the opportunity to attend UNITE the Union’s women’s week in August 2024. “It’s about getting a different perspective and knowing that even oceans apart, many of our struggles are the same,” she said.
Lifting Up Communities
Women of Steel commit time, money and other resources to projects that lift up their neighbors and make the union a force for change in the workplace and beyond.
Local 9548’s WOS committee in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, assists a local service organization by donating hundreds of dollars in products for a Tampon Tuesday campaign each year.
Local 105 supports a homeless shelter in the Davenport, Iowa, area. WOS activist Tonya Clark, who helps coordinate this endeavor, knows what it’s like to struggle—she will always remember braving freezing temperatures to stand in the Toys for Tots line for her own kids—and happily gives back now that her good union job enables her to do so.
Other WOS members devote themselves to a wide range of causes, from fundraising for survivors of domestic violence to coaching youth athletics and supporting families of cancer patients. By actively engaging to address the unmet needs of their union siblings and communities, WOS strengthen our union’s solidarity and uphold the USW’s tradition of strong community partnerships.
Iron Sharpening Iron
Veronica Bragassa has been drawing strength from WOS—and giving it right back again—for decades.
She co-chairs Local 560L’s WOS committee and serves as a WOS facilitator, leading workshops on workplace safety and other issues facing women on the job.
Bragassa, a resistance seam welder specialist at Arrowhead Products in Los Alamitos, Calif., knows women have the strength, grit and determination to do any job and win any fight.
But she also knows how much it helps to have union women stand with each other, a support system Bragassa once likened to iron sharpening iron.
It’s this relentless commitment to building one another up that defines Women of Steel and underpins the wide-ranging work our members accomplished since the 2022 convention.
Moving forward, Women of Steel will continue to be a dynamic force within the USW. Our leadership, resilience, and dedication to advancing workers’ rights keep us at the forefront of the labor movement, strengthening our solidarity, and building collective power for the benefit of all workers.