GEORGE BECKER

Commissioner George Becker was reappointed to the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for a three-year term expiring December 31, 2005. He previously served on the Commission as a member beginning February 2001 through January 7, 2003.

A second-generation steelworker, Commissioner Becker grew up across the street from Granite City Steel in Illinois, where he went to work with an open-hearth labor gang at age fifteen during the summer of 1944. From that beginning, Commissioner Becker rose through the ranks until being elected in 1993 and again in 1997 for two terms as the sixth international president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), representing 750,000 industrial workers in the U.S. and Canada.

Prior to being named to the Commission, Commissioner Becker completed a congressional appointment on the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission in 2000. He also served appointments during the Clinton administration to the President's Export Council and the U.S. Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee. As an AFL-CIO vice president and executive council member, Commissioner Becker chaired the national labor federation's powerful Economic Policy Committee. He was a leader in the 1995 revitalization of the AFL-CIO that elected John Sweeney as the current president.

Commissioner Becker was elected two terms in 1985 and 1989 as the USWA's international vice president for administration. While vice president, he headed the union's organizing program and the Aluminum Industry Conference for collective bargaining. Among several corporate campaigns he led involving major labor disputes, the best known was against Ravenswood Aluminum Corp. that achieved the historic firing of 1,300 permanent scab replacement workers and the return to work of 1,600 steelworkers after a twenty-month lockout that ended in 1992.

His working class background includes employment as a crane operator at General Steel Castings and an assembler at General Motors' Fisher Body plant in St. Louis. After serving in the Marine Corps, Commissioner Becker became active in the USWA while an inspector at Dow Chemical's aluminum rolling mill in Madison, IL., where he was elected as the Local 4804 president. He was appointed a USWA staff representative in 1965, negotiating labor contracts and developing a reputation as an expert on occupational health issues. His interest in job safety took him to the union's Pittsburgh headquarters as a technician in the Safety and Health Dept.

He helped establish some of the first national health standards adopted by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration for workers exposed to lead, arsenic, and other toxic substances.

Commissioner Becker's USWA presidency has been marked by many major achievements, including a major restructuring of the USWA's regional districts and executive board; mergers of the 98,000-member United Rubber Workers in 1995 and the 40,000- member Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers in1997; plus a successful twenty-eight-month worldwide campaign for a labor agreement and the return to work of 6,000 permanently terminated workers at Bridgestone/Firestone Corp.

He served as the executive committee member of the Geneva-based International Metalworkers Federation and chairman of the world rubber council of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions in Brussels.

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