125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 30, which covers parts of New York
and Connecticut, march in the 2019 New York City Labor Day parade.
membership to about 395,000 – a nearly
10-percent increase from the economic
downturn the union endured a decade earlier.
Its organizing campaigns and political
activities still proving successful, 2019 was
another extremely productive year for the
I.U.O.E.’s operating engineers throughout
North America, during which the union
continued to grow membership and gain
market share while working on major projects
including the $1.2-billion expansion of
Terminal 5 at O’Hare International Airport
in Chicago. Among many union-wide
organizing victories that year, a multi-local
drive on a hydrovac contractor in the northeast
gave more than 200 workers their first union
contract, and later that fall a campaign
involving several locals in the eastern United
States organized more than 340 workers into
the I.U.O.E. by October.
In Canada, employment of I.U.O.E.
members in 2019 improved over the previous
year, as well.
Concurrently, the union experienced
an extremely high rate of success with
contract grievances settled and won by
I.U.O.E. regional directors and international
representatives under a myriad of international
and national agreements. What’s more, several
national contractors entered the wind-turbine
business that year, and ongoing conversations
and negotiations with those employers
helped ensure that the I.U.O.E.’s equity and
jurisdiction in that market were properly and
securely protected.
To sustain and expand that growth, the union
continued to widen its training programs and set
the standards for others to follow in the hoisting
and portable, pipeline and stationary engineering
industries. As such, the International Training &
Education Center’s 2019-2020 Pipeline Training
Program alone offered 175 classes during the
training season, and throughout 2019, the
facility conducted nearly 125,000 total training
hours for members.
By year’s end, a surge in membership put the
union at a 10-year high of more than 400,000
members. Following a drop off in 2008 after
a steady rise in membership in the 1990s and
2000s, the efforts of I.U.O.E. headquarters and
field staff in the organizing and special projects
departments, as well as the work of locals
showcasing the union’s unparalleled training,
state-of-the-art equipment and promising
career paths, drove the continued increase in
new members during the 2010s.
Despite its many gains, among the
challenges the union faced in 2019 were
ongoing infringements by other crafts on the
traditional work jurisdiction of the I.U.O.E.,
which was compounded by the N.L.R.B.’s
continued support of the I.B.E.W. position
that their outside-lineman branch
was not bound to the Plan for
the Settlement of Jurisdictional
Disputes. By year’s end, while
some positive progress had been
made with the I.B.E.W., little
could be accomplished and the
outside linemen continued to
expand their scope of jurisdiction
into work traditionally handled
by operating engineers.
Regardless, as 2019 was coming to a close,
General President Callahan optimistically
reflected in the Fall International Operating
Engineer, “This past year, like so many, had its
highs and lows, but our union marches forward
with unity and strength. We are ready for the
challenges and opportunities that await us in
the new year.”
But the momentum the I.U.O.E. had built
as it moved into and through early 2020
was abruptly and tragically checked when
the global, lethal coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic struck the United States and
Locals throughout the I.U.O.E. have a long and proud history of supporting community and
charitable causes. Here, Local No. 904 in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in
Canada donates $1 million to the Janeway Children’s Hospital Foundation in December
2019, which at the time was the largest donation ever received by the foundation.
I.U.O.E. Local No. 4 in Boston, some of whose members and Business Manager William McLaughlin (fifth from left)
are shown here, partners with Boston Children’s Hospital every year for a blood drive at the local’s training center.
LABOR OMNIA VINCIT
WORK CONQUERS ALL