Carl B. Frankel
November 22, 1934 - May 5, 2025

CARL B. FRANKEL: A distinguished labor attorney and former general counsel of the United Steelworkers, died May 5, 2025 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He retired in 2000 from the USW after a 32-year career defending and supporting union members in court and at the bargaining table.

Frankel was born on Nov. 22, 1934, in Chicago, a son of immigrants from Russia. His father, Max, worked in a laundry and operated a newsstand where Frankel worked as a boy. His mother, Minnie, was a garment worker and steward in her shop for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

Frankel's wife, Rita A. Frankel, an advertising executive, preceded him in death on April 10, 2012. She held creative positions with several advertising firms in Pittsburgh, starting with Ketchum, MacLeod and Grove, and was a pioneer in television commercials that featured women in executive positions.

Frankel was a two-term member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Society Board of Directors and its Community Outreach Committee, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Cardozo Society, a charitable organization of Jewish lawyers.

A scholarship student, Frankel earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1954, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1957 at age 22. He played on the men's basketball team one year and joked that he led the league in two categories, bench slivers and shooting percentage (one for one).

Early in his career, after a few years of private practice specializing in workers' compensation cases and as a labor law editor for the Commerce Clearinghouse, Frankel became a supervising or trial attorney in the Chicago and Milwaukee offices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Frankel received a Sustained Superior Performance Award from the NLRB in 1966 and an Outstanding Performance Award in 1967. An NLRB colleague described Frankel in Steelabor, then the union's membership magazine, as "the best agent they ever had. He burned with a white heat in doing everything he could to help working people."

Frankel joined the USW's legal department in 1968. He served the union under four International Presidents - I.W. Abel, Lloyd McBride, Lynn R. Williams and George Becker.

Frankel served as an associate general counsel for the USW from 1968 to 1997, when he was named general counsel, a position he held until his retirement in 2000.

Frankel was a close advisor to Williams as he presided over the union during the tumultuous steel industry collapse of the 1980s. In his memoir, "One Day Longer," Williams described Frankel as a "brilliant lawyer, writer and draughtsman, a detail person of enormous patience."

As general counsel, he oversaw all of the union's legal affairs in the United States and Canada. He also served as lead counsel in massive trade litigation involving anti-dumping and subsidy cases, and in steel trade negotiations with foreign nations.

Frankel argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and in nearly all U.S. Courts of Appeal. He was supervising counsel in a groundbreaking lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which led to massive job losses in American industry.

He helped to train younger staff lawyers in the USW's well-regarded legal department, and acted as legal advisor to the union's officers, directors and staff, and supervised outside counsel. 

"One of my most satisfying efforts was helping to train and lead the finest set of young lawyers in the land," Frankel said in 2019. "In case after case, they produced significant victories not only for the Steelworkers but for workers generally."

As associate general counsel, Frankel defended a 1974 consent decree with the government that reformed seniority systems in basic steel plants to resolve problems of equal employment opportunity for black workers and women.

Frankel was proud of his role in a hard-fought campaign to unseat an entrenched company union at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, and establish USW Local 8888. Local 8888 is the union's largest local. 

The representation election was held on Jan. 31, 1978. Open to 19,000 ship builders, it was the largest single workplace election ever held in the South and the largest election conducted by the NLRB in the 1970s. The union won, but the shipyard appealed the victory.

Delays in recognizing the union led to a strike a year later. A return to work that April led to a bloody confrontation with police and, in October 1979, an appeals court upheld the NLRB's decision that the election was fair.

Today the local represents more than 10,000 workers at Newport News Shipbuilding operated by Huntington Ingalls Industries, a Navy contractor that builds and refurbishes technologically advanced warships including aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines.

Throughout his years with the union, Frankel was an active participant in contract negotiations with the steel industry, including efforts to save several steel companies in bankruptcy and the jobs they provided. He led or actively participated in 10 rounds of USW bargaining with the steel industry, three rounds in the can manufacturing industry, three rounds in aluminum and two rounds in the tire industry.

During the steel crisis of the late 1980s, the union was confronted by corporate demands for concessions. The union took the approach that concessions should be recognized as investments to be returned when corporate profitability resumed.

Improvements were made in union rights and non-monetary issues during this period, since USW bargaining leverage was significant, but the possibility of important economic gains was constrained.

The employment of outside contractors by LTV and other steel companies to replace union workers whose jobs were already at risk was an enormous issue for rank-and-file members across the industry.

At the direction of Williams, Frankel developed new language to curb the use of outside contractors, and protect union jobs. That work, Williams later said, became the basis for "the best contracting out language in any agreements in industrial America."

The new language was first adopted in 1986 by LTV, then the weakest company, followed by Bethlehem Steel, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, and U.S. Steel after a six-month lockout. 

"We were working to save what we could of the industry, not for contractors, but for our members, for their communities and for their sons and daughters," Williams wrote in his memoir.

Frankel was a union-nominated member of the Kaiser Aluminum corporate board of directors from 2006 to 2009, and later director emeritus. He was a member of the LTV board of directors from 2001 to 2009.

He was an elected fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, and a member of the Board of Directors of US TOO, a prostate cancer support and advocacy organization.

In retirement, Frankel was executive director of the USW's Campaign Conduct Administrative Committee, which oversees the union's election of officers and district directors. Frankel also taught courses at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. And at age 83, he began to learn how to play a guitar, a lifelong ambition.

In 2019, Frankel was appointed as a patient representative to a research and outreach advisory board at the Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh.

Carl B. Frankel was the beloved husband of the late Rita Frankel. Son of the late Max and Minnie Frankel. Brother of the late Sol Frankel. Survived by nieces Gail Turrett, Deborah Frankel, and Judith Lamb; nephews-and-niece-by-marriage Rich Ansell, Bruce Ansell, and Amy Ansell Statman; and dear friend Bonnie Wax. Services at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., 5509 Centre Avenue, Shadyside on Friday, May 9, 2025 at 12 Noon. Visitation one hour prior to services (11 AM to 12 Noon). Interment PRIVATE. Contributions may be made to the Odyssey Endowment Fund at the University of Chicago, 5802 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 or the Steelworkers Charitable and Educational Organization, 60 Boulevard of the Allies, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. www.schugar.com

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