When Nippon Steel put a $14.9 billion offer on the table for U.S. Steel in December 2023, the American steel industry looked like this: roughly 89.7 million net tons of raw steel produced that year, about 83,950 workers employed across iron and steel manufacturing, and a United Steelworkers union representing roughly 540,000 reported members across steel, aluminum, mining, and other sectors. 

That was the backdrop against which USW‘s national leadership decided to fight the deal.

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USW’s federal filing numbers have moved in the wrong direction for the union since then. Membership fell from 539,661 in 2023 to 507,315 in 2025, a loss of 32,346 members in two years, while the union still collected $328.9 million in dues. 

An institution that large — and shrinking that quickly — can’t afford to treat rank-and-file trust as an afterthought. Yet USW ended 2025 with more than $1.6 billion in net assets.

Members were leaving, but its net assets kept growing.

USW’s 2025 spending record makes its priorities harder to defend. The union spent $70.1 million on union employees and $9.6 million on political activities and lobbying compared with just $6.5 million in strike benefits.

In 2025, USW held........

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