125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
With employment conditions for operating
engineers strong in virtually every geographic
region of the United States and Canada and its
membership growing, the Great Recession from
late-2007 to mid-2009, the worst economic
downturn since the Great Depression, slowed
the union’s momentum.
However, additional massive jobs manned by
I.U.O.E. members that were underway during
that time included rebuilding the World Trade
Center complex beginning in April 2006.
Members of I.U.O.E. locals No. 14 and No.
15 were operating the cranes and dirt-moving
equipment on the $18-billion project, which
included construction of the $4-billion
Freedom Tower (1 World Trade Center) that
at 1,776-feet tall would be the tallest building
in the Western Hemisphere when it opened on
November 3, 2014.
Through the combined skills of some
300 member engineers, the $114-million,
1,900-foot-long Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge,
suspended 890 feet above the Colorado
River, was on its way to becoming the largest
concrete support arch in North America
when it was completed in October 2010.
Another 165 operating engineers with Local
No. 520 of southeast Illinois and more than
20 other I.U.O.E. locals were also making
history while building the 1,600-megawatt
Prairie State Energy Campus in Washington
County, Illinois, the largest power plant under
construction in the United States before it was
completed in 2012 as the largest coal-fired
power plant in the country.
In the shadow of the recession, 695 delegates
from 105 locals attended the 37 th I.U.O.E.
Convention from April 27 to 30, 2008, in
Las Vegas. The delegates took to heart the
convention’s theme, “New Day – New Way
– Together,” in unanimously adopting 25
constitutional amendments and 19 resolutions,
unanimously re-electing all international
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 66 of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania erect
a windmill as part of a power-generating windfarm project in September 2009.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 150 of Chicago work above the city’s skyline in
2008 during construction of its 92-story Trump International Tower and Hotel.
officers and adopting an I.U.O.E. Code of
Ethics “to guide the future conduct of union
officers, representatives and employees.”
The I.U.O.E. also broke new ground in 2008
with its political action after fundraising gains
made by its Engineers Political Education
Committee allowed the union to significantly
increase its political activities in several critical
areas – including for the first time in history
launching a country-wide voter-registration
program from international headquarters. As
part of that effort, the union mailed more than
100,000 voter-registration forms to members
in 35 states and instituted a vote-by-mail or
early-vote effort in 29 states covering 229,000
members, increasing members’ participation
in the political process. In a major new
initiative, 43 I.U.O.E. headquarters and field
staff were also assigned to work directly with
locals in the key election battleground states
of Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Michigan
and Pennsylvania prior to the general election.
Those efforts eventually led to significant
election-night victories for operating engineers
on November 4, 2008, including the election
of labor-friendly Senator Barack Obama as the
44 th U.S. president.
Work then continued on one of the several
pipeline jobs employing I.U.O.E. members,
the nearly 1,000-mile-long Alberta Clipper
Pipeline, a crude-oil line from Hardisty,
Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, that had begun
in 2008, after the U.S. State Department gave
final permit to the project on August 20, 2009.
The large undertaking employed hundreds of
members of Local No. 49 of Minnesota, North
Dakota and South Dakota and Local No. 139
of Wisconsin in the United States and similar
numbers in Canada before the pipeline was
placed into service on April 1, 2010.
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