Can Doing What Seems to be The Right Thing Turn Out To Be The Wrong Thing In Promoting Protectionism, American Labor May Be Putting US Workers At Risk Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers union is one of America's most progressive and outspoken labor leaders. I was impressed when I met him at a Cornell University conference that brought environmental organizations and labor unions together to fuse a forward looking consensus on the need for green jobs as key to the transformation of our declining industrial base. A union blog speaks of us being in the best of times and the worst of times.