Thomas Conway, international president of the United Steelworkers (USW) union that represents 850,000 North American steel, paper, health, education and oil workers, has died at the age of 71.

Conway joined the union in 1978 at a Bethlehem Steel plant in Northwest Indiana and became its top negotiator and later president in 2019.

The son of a union member and a U.S. Air Force veteran, Conway immersed himself in operational details, finances and economics when he entered negotiations, said Michael Wright, a retired USW official who was involved in contract talks with Conway.

"Any company that had gone up against Tom in negotiations knew they would not get away with any BS," said Wright. "He was a brilliant negotiator, but he also knew that a good contract was more than wages and benefits. A good union did a lot more for its members and society in general than just negotiate contracts."

He died after falling ill earlier this year. The Pittsburgh-based union's executive board is due to meet later this week to name a successor, said USW spokesperson Jess Kamm Broomell.

"Tom followed two simple guiding principles: the dignity of work and the power of working people," said David McCall, the USW’s international vice president of administration.

The 6-foot-tall (183 cm) Conway was a chain-smoker with a reputation as a bulldog during contract talks.

He advocated for government to enforce anti-dumping laws and prevent subsidized products from damaging domestic industries and stem a decline in union membership by pushing into clean energy, electric vehicles and retail industries.

In 2017, he told a union convention that workers must be prepared to act on their demands.

"Be ready for it, because the fights will come whether we want them or not. But when the fights do come, we can win those fights," Conway said.

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Additional reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Sonali Paul)