Donnie Blatt

District 1 Director

Donnie Blatt, Director of USW District 1, took office in 2019 and was reelected in 2021.

He joined the USW in April 1979 as a member of Local 5724 at Ormet Aluminum Corp. in Hannibal, Ohio, and has been a dues-paying union activist for 43 years.

Blatt served the members of Local 5724 in many roles, including PAC coordinator and Rapid Response coordinator, as a Civil Rights Committee member and as editor of 5724 Talks. He was elected to the negotiating committee and the grievance committee, spending two terms as its chairman.

At Local 5724, Blatt spearheaded an effort to communicate with union members about legislative issues that evolved into the USW’s Rapid Response program. As grievance committee chairman, he led a yearlong, in-plant contract campaign to win back concessions from Ormet.

Blatt joined the staff of the International Union in March 2001 as the District 1 Rapid Response Coordinator, a position he held for 16 years. He served as the Sub-District 3 Director from January until April 2017, when he was appointed Assistant to the Director. Blatt was also District 1 Political Director. His work was instrumental in establishing the USW District 1 Free College Benefit.

Blatt has been a member of the Ohio AFL-CIO executive board since 2006, a member of its executive committee since 2017. He became chairman of its legislative committee in 2019. He was appointed by former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland to the state’s Unemployment Compensation Advisory Council and has testified before the Ohio legislature about a variety of topics.

In 1998, Blatt served a USW legislative internship in Washington, D.C. He completed the union’s four-year Leadership Scholarship Program in 2001 and graduated from the Harvard University Trade Union Program in Cambridge, Mass., in 2009.

As of March 2022, District 1 encompasses the states of Ohio and Michigan.