Lynn R. Williams served two terms as International President of the United Steelworkers beginning in 1983. He was the first Canadian to lead the international trade union and returned to his native Toronto after his retirement in 1994. He is also the first person to have served on the Executive of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the AFL-CIO. Mr. Williams left graduate work in economics and industrial relations at the University of Toronto to take a job on the assembly line at the John Inglis plant in Toronto, joining the USW, Local 2900. A year later, he began work with the CLC full-time, and later the USW staff, where he worked his way up the ranks.