125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Gulf Coast region. In total, the union’s locals
and many individual members donated close
to $500,000 to the fund.
The 38 th I.U.O.E. General Convention,
held in Hollywood, Florida, from April 28
to May 1 the following year, asked delegates
and attendees to “Honor the Past, Shape the
Future.” In doing so, delegates unanimously
adopted 17 constitutional amendments and 27
resolutions dealing with organizing; training;
occupational health and safety; prevailing
wage; economic and labor issues; and pension
and healthcare benefits, in addition to various
other issues. The convention also unanimously
elected General President Callahan to his first
full term, as well as all officers serving with the
international at the time.
gas refineries; renewable sources such as wind
and solar; and construction of new liquefiednatural-gas
export facilities. With the surge
of work and more expected to come, and the
fact that large numbers of skilled craft workers
would be retiring within the next five to ten
years, the construction industry was facing
a shortage of skilled craft workers needed to
properly build and maintain the facilities.
In response, the I.U.O.E. began expanding
its training capacity on several fronts. Those
efforts included the National Training Fund
developing a specific training program for
That year, investors had begun increasing
their financing of capital construction projects
again, especially in the energy sector for new
and improved pipelines; expanded oil and
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 57 of Rhode Island and Marine Division Local No. 25, based in New Jersey and covering the eastern
seaboard of the United States, set the foundational structures for a new wind-energy project by placing five 400-ton steel jackets to
support wind turbines in the open ocean, three miles off the coast of Block Island at depths of about 100 feet underwater, in 2015.
The Block Island site, developed by Deepwater Wind, would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States once completed.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 137, which represents operating engineers in the southeast New York counties of Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess, work
on construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge (officially named the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge) over the Hudson River, which was built from spring
2013 into June 2020 to replace the original Tappan Zee Bridge that was the longest bridge in the state when it was completed in December 1955.
members working in refineries and petrochemical
plants and the Stationary Engineers
Apprenticeship and Training Trust (SEATT)
setting a new standard for petro-chemicalindustry
skill training.
Together with its advanced training
programs, the I.U.O.E. also began instituting
a comprehensive organizing strategy to help
convince contractors that the union can supply
them with the highly skilled employees they
required for the coming construction glut.
Flourishing natural-gas production in the
United States continued to benefit operating
engineers, who were in high demand within
the industry during the first half of the decade.
The epicenter of the natural gas business, the
Marcellus Shale beneath Ohio, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania and New York, was the largest
shale gas deposit in North America and was a
source of steady work for operating engineers
within the region.
One of those related projects, the $1.3-billion
Brunswick County Power Station in rural
southern Virginia, for which construction had
begun in September 2013, put many Norfolkbased
Local No. 147 operating engineers back
to work after some “pretty lean years,” the Fall
2014 International Operating Engineer reported.
After it would be completed in April 2016,
the 1,360-megawatt power station, fueled by
natural gas coming out of the Marcellus Shale,
would replace electricity from two aging coalfired
plants that were to be retired for economic
and environmental reasons.
As projects large and small, public and
private throughout the United States and
Canada began to “roar back to life,” as General
President Callahan pronounced in the Fall 2014
journal, that year the I.U.O.E. experienced an
increase in manhours and steadily improving
employment. In fact, in some regions, locals
were challenged to keep pace with requests for
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