Lynn Russell Williams OC (July 21, 1924 – May 5, 2014) was a Canadian labour leader best remembered as the International President of the United Steelworkers union (USW) from 1983 until his retirement in 1994.
It was during the course of his collegiate career that Williams became enamored with the idea of industrial democracy, worker participation in the decision-making process of production.
[1] Williams served one year in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II following completion of his undergraduate studies.
[1] Upon conclusion of the war and his discharge from the military, Williams enrolled in the graduate school of the University of Toronto, where he obtained a Master's degree in Economics and Industrial Relations.
[2] Williams was a founding member of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961, a socialist political organisation formed through the merger of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and trade union activists from the Canadian Labour Congress.
[2] At the time of his assumption of leadership of the USW, the union's membership had plummeted from 1.4 million members in 1979[2] to barely over 600,000 as a result of economic recession and deindustrialization.
[1] In an effort to stem the tide, Williams and the USW made a series of wage and benefit concessions to the struggling North American steel industry.
[3] In recognition of his service as a leader of the organised labour movement, Lynn Williams was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 2005.
In the North American labour movement, workers on strike frequently use the slogan "One Day Longer" to emphasize their determination to hold out as long as it takes in order to have their demands met, as well as their conviction that change is indeed possible.
My entire career in the trade-union movement was based on the belief that, in the face of serious obstacles, workers, whether on strike or not, needed to remain united and committed over the long haul.