The AFL-CIO Executive Council celebrates the service of our brother and friend, Eric Dean, retired general president of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.
During his ten years as president and more than four decades of membership with the Ironworkers, Dean was committed to organizing workers and delivering the strongest possible representation for members, at the bargaining table, in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill.
A native of Chicago, Dean’s career in the labor movement started in 1980, when he became an apprentice and joined Local 63 as a fourth generation ironworker. Upon completion of the apprenticeship program and becoming a journeyman, he went on to work as an apprentice instructor and welding inspector.
He became a local union officer in 1989 and served the local in various offices before joining the international staff in 1999 as general organizer. In 2005, he was elected president of the Ironworkers’ Chicago and Vicinity District Council. He was then appointed general vice president of the international in 2008, and general secretary in 2011.
In 2015, Dean was elected the union’s 13th general president by the general executive council of the Ironworkers.
Under Dean’s leadership, the Ironworkers grew its membership, strengthened its pension and health funds, and expanded its political influence to better advocate for members and retirees. He steered the union through a pandemic and launched groundbreaking initiatives such as a paid maternity leave program that became exemplary in the building trades.
Dean served on the AFL-CIO Executive Council as chair of the Committee on Immigration, where he focused the labor movement’s efforts on protecting immigrant workers from tyranny and integrating them into good union jobs.
Eric Dean has been a tireless advocate for Ironworkers and working people everywhere, and on behalf of the nearly 15 million workers of the AFL-CIO, we wish him a long, happy and healthy retirement.