Early Life and Career
Gerard was born in 1947 in Creighton Mine, Ontario, at the time an unincorporated suburb of Sudbury. His father, Wilfred Gerard, was a miner at the Creighton Mine and a key organizer with the International Mine Mill and Smelter Workers' Union (which merged with the United Steelworkers in 1967). He grew up in Sudbury. Taught that unions were supposed to be engaged on social issues and not just collective bargaining, Gerard often listened in on union meetings conducted in the family home. He handed out leaflets on the eve of a strike at the age of 11, and accompanied his father on a union organizing drive at the age of 13.
After graduating from high school, Gerard took a job at the Inco nickel smelter in Sudbury, unclogging tuyeres with a sledgehammer. He was elected steward and then chief steward of the 7,000-member Local 6500. He enrolled at Laurentian University, studying economics and planning to be an economics professor. He quit college in 1977 when he was just a few credits short of graduation, and took a job as a staff representative for the international union.
He married his high school sweetheart, Susan, and they have two daughters.
Gerard rose steadily within the Steelworkers union hierarchy over the next two decades. He was elected director of USW District 6 in 1985 and re-elected in 1989, and was appointed national director of the Canadian division of the USW in August 1991. He was elected secretary-treasurer of the international union in 1993, and again in 1997. While USW secretary-treasurer, Gerard instituted a number of important administrative initiatives. He implemented cost-saving and revenue-generating initiatives, reorganized the secretary-treasurer's office, created an information technology department, developed a new union-to-member communications network, restructured member and local union servicing, and reinvigorated the union's organizing efforts.
Gerard eventually returned to Laurentian University and received a bachelor's degree in economics and politics. The university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1994.
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