Steve Davison, who chaired the executive council of the Amicus trade union from 2003 to 2007, has died aged 71.
Key role in global union creation
He played a key role in creating the first global union, Workers Uniting, which consists of Amicus, with 1.2 million members, and the 800,000-strong United Steelworkers of the USA and Canada. He was also influential in forming the UK's biggest union, Unite, through a 2007 merger between Amicus and the TGWU.
During his high-level union roles, Steve worked as a tutor at the Trade Union Studies Centre in Bradford, which he eventually ran for several years until its closure.
Early life and career
Steve was born in Alston, Cumbria, to James, a car mechanic, and Audrey (née Fawcett), a district nurse. He attended Samuel King's school in Alston and left Cumbria in 1973 to study history and politics at Bradford University.
Settling in West Yorkshire, his first job was as an engineer at Anderton International, a Bradford engineering company, where he met Diane Maude, who worked on the production line. They married in 1980.
Union activism and blacklisting
Having joined the engineers' union, AEU, he soon became a shop steward and then a factory convener, while also being active in the Labour party and Trades Council in Keighley.
In the mid-1980s he was made redundant by Anderton and was placed on an employment blacklist due to his trade union activities – a common experience in engineering and construction industries at the time. He took various poorly paid short-term jobs, including office work in London, before finding a post at the Trade Union Studies Centre in Bradford, where he taught basic courses for union members and higher level diploma units for union reps.
Later work and internationalism
By the 1990s he was running the centre. After it closed in 2015 due to funding cuts, he took on freelance tutoring work for individual unions and taught on international courses, notably with unions from Norway.
A committed internationalist, Steve visited Bangladesh for Amicus and Workers Uniting, helping shipbreakers there to unionise and improve dangerous working conditions. He addressed the Venezuelan parliament in 2017 and met Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2008.
He is survived by Diane, their children Jennie and James, three grandchildren, and his sisters Val and Judith.
