125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Members of Ladies’ Auxiliary No. 6, which was affiliated with International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers Local No. 68 of
Newark, New Jersey, pose during their Christmas party on December 27, 1917. Ladies’ auxiliaries were often operated by the wives and
girlfriends of I.U.O.E. members to support the social, charitable and community functions of their respective locals into the early 1970s.
President Comerford substantiated – and
conveyed through correspondence and official
reports – any positive outlook of the I.U.S.E in
July 1912 when he conducted a cross-country
journey and visited with multiple locals. In
particular, the president noted that in Portland
and Spokane, Washington, he found “a band
of brave fellows in our organization there, and
with the new young blood which has been
imparted to the life of the locals, the future looks
safe.” He also eagerly announced that union
engineers working on a five-story building
under construction in Seattle were being paid
$5 per day while non-union engineers in the
vicinity were receiving only $4.
Then during the union’s annual convention
beginning September 9, 1912, in St. Paul,
Minnesota, after the general membership
had earlier voted by referendum in favor of
instituting a long-discussed Death Benefit
Fund, a committee submitted a list of
insurance plans through which the fund could
be established. In September the following year,
the union’s General Executive Board presented
four options to the membership, from which,
as a whole, it would select a provider for the
new benefit.
Delegates to the convention also adopted
amendments to the constitution that would
allow the union to better sanction the admission
of apprentice engineers into its membership,
thereby overhauling, as an essay in the January
1913 International Steam Engineer described
it, “the most haphazard way in the past that
our general body has been able to bestow any
consideration at all on the channels through
which men have been admitted into the
practice of the engineers’ calling.” With the new
statutes, the union would be able to exercise
more control over applicants for membership
in regard to their training and experience,
about which the article proclaimed, “This is
one of the foremost requirements to protecting
our organization and promoting its usefulness
to its membership as well as to the craft.”
Reflecting on all of the actions and
accomplishments of the 1912 convention,
the essay lauded the entirety of the engineers’
union organization for making those vital
strides possible:
“They are not the result of last
year’s work or the work of any
given year. They are the necessary
fruits of the work which has been
done all throughout the years of the
existence of the I.U.S.E., and every
member in good standing of the
organization has borne his part in
producing them just as surely, if not
just as effectively, as has the highest
officer or the most influential
member of our body.”
The steam-engineering industry itself was
also progressing, with internal-combustion
engines powered by gasoline and diesel fuel
already beginning to dominate the trades.
Steam shovels, for instance, evolved in 1911
into full-swing power shovels that were lighter
and more versatile and more mobile, and the
gas-powered shovel was becoming the mainstay
for heavy-equipment operators.
On his cross-country trip in the summer of
1912, President Comerford noticed a large
number of portable steam-powered hoisting
engines in a scrap heap in San Francisco,
having been replaced by electric motors and
gasoline engines. He duly noted, “Their days
of usefulness had passed; their places had
been taken by more modern-appliances. …
This is something we cannot afford to pass
by thoughtlessly.”
With the marked increase in the use of the
internal-combustion engines and electric
motors, hydraulic machinery and refrigerating
systems, as well as steam boilers and engines,
the types of work performed by the union’s
growing membership were changing as
members’ roles became more diverse and
more construction workers came into the
organization. Accordingly, during its 1912
convention, the union amended its name to the
International Union of Steam and Operating
Engineers (I.U.S.O.E.) – the “operating”
added to the title as a catchall for operators of
non-steam-powered machinery.
According to The Economic History of a
Trade Union, the union also championed an
immediate name change after an expelled
former member of a New Jersey local organized
and incorporated a group that he called the
“International Union of Steam Engineers.” As
the union had never registered its previous title
of the same name, the book points out, “it took
immediate steps to protect the new one.”
Transformed by Technology
The conversion of the I.U.S.O.E.
from a steam engineers’ union to an
organization of operators of gasoline-,
diesel- and electrically powered machines
would continue into the late 1920s. Along
with that, great strides were being made on
the local level in obtaining better conditions
for members; for example, in 1913, Boston’s
Local No. 16 secured a contract with breweries
that was described as a “model” agreement that
provided $35 weekly pay for chief engineers
and $28 for others, the eight-hour workday
and arbitration of grievances between the
employers and employees.
Correspondingly, in the latter part of 1913,
engineers around the nation were beginning
to learn about the emerging technology of
mechanical refrigeration, as thousands of
butcher shops, creameries, ice-cream factories
and other manufacturers had already installed
refrigerating machineries and abandoned
the use of ice for refrigeration. What’s more,
small refrigerating machines for household
use were coming of age, as was the cooling
of residences, office buildings and theaters,
making it incumbent upon engineers to learn
the mechanics of the new development.
I.U.S.O.E. members then gained their
first-ever international insurance plan at the
beginning of 1914 when, as a result of the
referendum in 1912, the union established a
Death Benefit Fund. The group insurance was
arranged with the Metropolitan Life Insurance
LABOR OMNIA VINCIT
WORK CONQUERS ALL