Tom Conway, steel union chief who backed climate fight, dies at 71 - The Washington Post

Tom Conway, steel union chief who backed climate fight, dies at 71 - The Washington Post

Tom Conway, a onetime millwright in a struggling Midwest steel plant who rose to lead the United Steelworkers union and push the industry to embrace eco-friendly transitions such as wind power in hopes of safeguarding the future of American steel, died Sept. 25 at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 71.

A statement from the union said Mr. Conway had lung cancer.

Mr. Conway’s influence as head of the 850,000-member union since 2019 reached deeply into politics; he was a reliable ally of Democrats, including President Biden, even as many parts of the traditional Rust Belt turned increasingly Republican. In March, Mr. Conway was named to a White House advisory committee on trade policy and negotiations.

For Mr. Conway, political engagement by union leaders was as critical as hammering out favorable contracts. “If the wrong people are in power,” said Mr. Conway, “corporate interests will drown out our voices.”

The arc of Mr. Conway’s union activities covered an era of intense retrenchment for U.S. steel manufacturing and its workers. The industry faced waves of plant closings, bankruptcies and cost-cutting as steel demand slipped and U.S. markets were awash in lower-cost imports. Mr. Conway, as he climbed the union ranks, was on the front lines of battles to stabilize the industry in the United States through loans, company consolidations and political support.

Mr. Conway then sought to rebrand the steel industry as a partner in progress. He promoted steel as essential in the fight against climate change by providing materials for wind turbines and electric vehicles, as well as encouraging carbon-capture technology in smokestack industries. He was a founding board member of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor groups and environmental protection organizations.

“While improving the health of the planet, the growth of clean manufacturing will also energize the economy,” Mr. Conway wrote in a 2021 opinion piece along with Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation. Mr. Conway’s outreach included helping work out a deal for the renewable-energy company US Wind to manufacture turbines at a former Bethlehem Steel plant at Sparrows Point, near Baltimore, for a planned offshore wind farm.

Mr. Conway first entered the union fold in 1978 as once-mighty Bethlehem Steel was starting its tumble toward its ultimate demise and acquisition in 2003. An aircraft mechanic and Air Force veteran, he was recruited as a millwright at Bethlehem Steel’s Burns Harbor coke plant operations in northwest Indiana. He joined various committees in USW Local 6787 just as Bethlehem announced that layoffs were coming.

He took notice, however, that many workers were contractors rather than full-time union employees. “Two work forces, us and them,” he recalled in a biographical sketch compiled by the union. “And when the time comes to go, it’s not going to be them that goes. It will be us — unless we do something about it.”

He took part in negotiations, backed by the union headquarters, that saved the jobs of union workers, and he later crafted a longer-range strategy to use past workplace grievances to recover union jobs lost to outside contractors.

“That to me was a real turning point,” Mr. Conway said. “I sort of cut my teeth on contracting out.”

He joined the union’s central staff in 1987 and was elected as USW international vice president in 2005. He was reelected to the post four times. Mr. Conway endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race and then was often biting in his criticism of Donald Trump after his victory.

He called Trump’s 2018 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports a “ham-fisted approach” to trade policy and said they alienated allies in Europe, Canada and other places.

When Trump called for a boycott of Goodyear tires in 2020 after the company banned workers from displaying some political messages such as Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats, Mr. Conway pointed out that Goodyear was facing tough foreign competition and had ordered layoffs. (The United Steelworkers union represents workers in a broad range of industries including tire manufacturing, chemical production, paper mills and call centers.)

“It would have been nice if the president would have paid as much attention to that loss of American jobs as he does to his MAGA hats,” said Mr. Conway.

Mr. Conway joined Biden on a campaign train trip from Cleveland to Pittsburgh in 2020, discussing ideas that would later become part of Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure act, signed into law in 2021. Mr. Conway was part of an entourage led by Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to promote White House economic initiatives.

“Tom was someone I confided in,” Biden said in a statement. “He had my absolute trust. I knew that if I was doing a good job, he’d tell me — and if I needed to do better, he’d tell me that, too.”

Union family

Thomas Michael Conway was born in Newark on Feb. 14, 1952. His father worked for the operating engineers union, and his mother worked in a brush factory, where she organized a union and negotiated labor contracts.

After serving four years in the Air Force, Mr. Conway attended a trade school for airframe and power plant mechanics. He worked in the aviation industry before taking a job with Bethlehem Steel in 1978.

In 1995, Mr. Conway was appointed as secretary of the Basic Steel Industry Conference, which develops contract bargaining strategies and directs the union’s lobbying efforts. He remained in the post for more than two decades and helped restructure the U.S. steel industry with mergers such as U.S. Steel’s purchase of bankrupt National Steel in 2003.

Mr. Conway’s marriage to Linda Conway ended in divorce. Survivors include his longtime partner, Carol Murphy; three sons from his first marriage; and six grandchildren.

In 2020, Mr. Conway told Senate Democrats that climate-focused efforts could not fully succeed without dedicating research to retooling manufacturing plants, including addressing questions such as how to replace the fossil fuels that produce the extreme heat needed for steel, glass and other products.

“We must be honest that the decarbonization of the industrial sector will be a crucial, massive and difficult undertaking,” he told a Special Committee on the Climate Crisis. “Accomplishing it will take massive support from government and industry. … We must, above all, ensure that American workers are the leaders of this charge, not the victims of it.”