The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (United Steelworkers or USW) is the largest industrial labor union in North America, with 860,294 members. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, U.S., the United Steelworkers represents workers in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. The United Steelworkers represent workers in a diverse range of industries, including primary and fabricated metals, chemicals, glass, rubber, heavy-duty conveyor belting, tires, transportation, utilities, container industries, pharmaceuticals, call centers and health care.

The United Steelworkers is currently affiliated with the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) as well as several international union federations. On July 2, 2008, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement to merge with the United Kingdom and Ireland based union, Unite, to form a new global union entity called Workers Uniting.

Leo W. Gerard (born 1947) is a steelworker and a Canadian and American labor leader. He was elected president of the United Steelworkers (USW) in 2001, and is the second Canadian to head the union. He is also a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

Gerard was born in 1947 in Creighton Mine, Ontario, at the time an unincorporated suburb of Sudbury. His father, Wilfred Gerard, was a miner at the Creighton Mine and a key organizer with the International Mine Mill and Smelter Workers' Union (which merged with the United Steelworkers in 1967). He grew up in Sudbury. Taught that unions were supposed to be engaged on social issues and not just collective bargaining, Gerard often listened in on union meetings conducted in the family home. He handed out leaflets on the eve of a strike at the age of 11, and accompanied his father on a union organizing drive at the age of 13.

After graduating from high school, Gerard took a job at the Inco nickel smelter in Sudbury, unclogging tuyeres with a sledgehammer. He was elected steward and then chief steward of the 7,000-member Local 6500. He enrolled at Laurentian University, studying economics and planning to be an economics professor. He quit college in 1977 when he was just a few credits short of graduation, and took a job as a staff representative for the international union.

Harold Lee Washington (April 15, 1922 – November 25, 1987) was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.

Harold Washington was born on April 15, 1922, to Roy and Bertha Washington. His father had been one of the first precinct captains in the city, a lawyer and a Methodist minister. His mother, Bertha, left a small farm near Centralia, Illinois, to make a fortune in Chicago as a singer. She married Roy soon after arriving in Chicago and had three children, one named Kevin and the other named Ramon Price (from a later marriage), former artist and chief curator of The DuSable Museum of African American History.

Washington grew up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, at the time the epicenter of black culture in the city. He attended DuSable High School, then a new segregated high school, and was a member of the first graduating class. In a 1939 citywide track meet, Washington placed first in the 110 meter high hurdles event, and second in the 220 meter low hurdles event. Between his junior and senior year of high school, Washington dropped out, claiming that he no longer felt challenged by the classwork. He worked at a meat packing plant for a time before his father helped him get a job at the U.S. Treasury. There he met Dorothy Finch, whom he married soon after—Washington was 20, and Dorothy 17. Seven months later, the U.S. was drawn into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.