New USW president faces first contract talks with Nippon Steel
Roxanne Brown, 47, earlier this year became the first woman and first Black person to lead the United Steelworkers union, which represents 850,000 workers from maternity nurses to casket makers. She now faces an early test: contract negotiations with Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel, the union’s first since Tokyo-based Nippon Steel acquired U.S. Steel last year.
Brown’s journey to leading the union did not start in a steel mill. She spent more than two decades in Washington, D.C., advocating for the union’s policy priorities on trade, domestic manufacturing and workers’ rights.
“We’re all interconnected,” Brown said. “Our members in healthcare understand that if a steel mill goes down, it’s not just the jobs in that steel mill that are impacted. The loss of tax base and economic activity from those jobs will impact the hospital funding.”
The union’s attitude toward Nippon Steel has evolved considerably since Brown’s predecessor, Dave McCall, opposed the $14.1 billion purchase, saying Nippon Steel should not be trusted to maintain U.S. Steel’s plants. Nippon Steel committed $11 billion to upgrade existing plants in exchange for the Trump administration’s approval of the purchase, likely keeping unionized plants in Gary, Ind., and near Pittsburgh in service for decades longer.
“That’s lived history. That’s done,” Brown said of the opposition. “Nippon Steel now owns U.S. Steel. What serves us now is bargaining a good contract.”
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt said he considers Brown “a breath of fresh air” for the union’s relationship with the company. “I’m really happy to work with her,” he said in an interview. “We don’t have to agree on everything. When we disagree, we’re going to get things on the table.”
U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs are the largest unionized steel companies in the U.S., with about 20,000 USW members, down from more than 30,000 workers eight years ago. U.S. Steel’s initial proposal included an 18.2% pay increase over five years and a $4,000 contract bonus, but would implement employee copays for health insurance. Union negotiators said this was insufficient and will counter in August.
The union is expected to push to pause additional plant closings, starting with U.S. Steel’s Granite City, Ill., mill. That mill started making steel again this year after sitting idle since 2023 but could still close in 2027 under Nippon Steel’s agreement with the federal government. About 1,200 people now work at the plant.
“Every expectation we have is for those jobs to continue into the future,” Brown said. “It’s what the members are banking on.”
Brown also faces the ongoing lockout of more than 800 union workers at BP’s Whiting, Ind., refinery since March after rejecting the company’s contract offer.
Colleagues describe Brown as charismatic and intelligent. She brings a change in tone compared with her predecessors. McCall said, “I don’t think there was any question on the executive board who ought to be the union’s 10th international president.”
Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and came to the U.S. when she was 2 years old. Raised in White Plains, N.Y., by her mother, a nurse and union member at Lincoln Hospital, and her aunt, also a union member, Brown attended Howard University but dropped out when she ran out of money. She joined the union’s Washington, D.C., staff in early 1999, answering phones and doing data entry.
She later moved into lobbying and policy, witnessing the collapse of the unionized steel industry in the early 2000s when more than two dozen companies filed for bankruptcy. She worked on the Blue Green Alliance between the USW and environmental groups and spent years advocating for tax credits for investments in job creation, renewable energy and the related supply chain, much of which was rolled into the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.