125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
– using I.U.O.E. skilled labor beginning in
1931 until its completion in 1936, at which
time it was the world’s tallest dam until 1968
and its power plant was the world’s largest
hydroelectric station until 1949.
Surviving Catastrophic Events
The union’s focus on enduring the
turbulent times was violently
interrupted on May 20, 1931, when
a gunman opened fire on General President
Huddell, General Secretary-Treasurer John
Possehl and Brother Frank Langdon, editor
of The International Engineer, as they lunched
at the Robin Hood Coffee Shop directly across
from the union’s headquarters in Washington,
D.C. While Brother Possehl escaped injury
and Brother Huddell was saved when a bullet
aimed at his heart was stopped by a notebook
in his pocket, Brother Langdon lost an eye in
the attack, during which the shooter emptied
two guns at the union leaders.
President Huddell attributed the shooting to
his attempts “to eliminate racketeering in our
union.” Police said they believed the shooting
was the “outgrowth of a labor feud,” the
Associated Press reported the following day.
Prior to the attack, President Huddell and
Secretary-Treasurer Possehl were investigating
former General Secretary-Treasurer Dave
Evans for alleged embezzlement of $36,000
from the union’s Death Benefit Fund between
September 1929 and March 1931. The week
following the shooting, a grand jury began an
investigation into the allegations against Evans,
who President Huddell had replaced as the
union’s secretary-treasurer with Brother Possehl
on March 19, 1931. Evans was convicted of
embezzlement in June the following year and
served one third of a five-year sentence.
Two weeks after the attack, President
Huddell passed away on June 1, 1931, while
he was in a hospital being treated for a cerebral
hemorrhage. No one was ever convicted of
shooting him and Brother Langdon.
Brother Possehl was subsequently named by
the union’s General Executive Board to replace
Brother Huddell as I.U.O.E. general president.
After having served as its general secretarytreasurer
for less than three months, Brother
Possehl took over the union’s top position on
June 5, 1931.
As the depression lingered, I.U.O.E. progress
was greatly aided when the 1933 A.F.L.
convention voted in favor of the engineers’
union in its long-running battle with the
United Brewery Workers to represent engineers
working in breweries.
That year, the start of construction on the
Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco provided
a source of manhours for many engineers until it
was completed in 1937. The longest and tallest
suspension bridge in the world when it opened
that year, the Golden Gate would be declared
one of the “Wonders of the Modern World” by
the American Society of Civil Engineers.
But it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
“New Deal” program, officially known as the
National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, that
created most of the much-needed work for the
operating engineers, in addition to jobs for
millions of people in the United States. After
President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on
June 16, 1933, its new federal agencies and state
and local governments spent over $19 billion
on work-relief projects, most of which was for
construction, to combat the unemployment
caused by the Great Depression.
A side effect of the New Deal was the
I.U.O.E.’s increased determination to establish
branch locals, as existing members “saw the
influx of would-be engineers working those
federally funded jobs as a threat to their
authority within their respective locals,”
according to The Economic History of a Trade
Union. (Branch locals had become official
The I.U.O.E. Constitution Revision Committee that re-drafted the union’s Constitution and General Laws with major
revisions during a conference in Atlantic City in 1938 to strengthen the democratic procedures of the union.
within the international in 1920 as a means
for apprentices to come into the union.) Just
prior to enactment of the New Deal, the
I.U.O.E. had already started working on an
extensive campaign for organizing engineers
of all unorganized industries, which included
chartering “B” branch locals for new members
who were not operating engineers and,
therefore, would not have the same power as
existing members of parent locals. (1)
Organizing stationary engineers as part of its
activities during the early 1930s also brought
the I.U.O.E. into the oil-refining industry.
After employees of the Shell Oil Refinery in
Wood River, Illinois, were organized by the
union in 1933, the international assigned a
full-time representative to the refining industry
in 1936 and the A.F.L. would award the
union jurisdiction over oil-refinery production
workers in 1938. (1) (While the immediate
contribution to membership was insignificant,
organizing the industry would eventually bring
in a total of 15,000 new members in the field
by 1960.)
The end of prohibition with repeal of the 18 th
Amendment by passage of the 21 st Amendment
on December 5, 1933, made the manufacture
and sale of liquor legal again in the United
States and revived the brewing industry, which
created more work for the union’s hoisting,
portable and stationary engineers. However,
the resumption of brewing reignited the
jurisdictional dispute between the I.U.O.E. and
the United Brewery Workers, which renewed
attempts to force engineers in breweries to join
their union, that dated back to 1897. But the
A.F.L. convention in October 1933 reiterated
the verdicts of previous conventions that
had established jurisdiction of the I.U.O.E.
over engineers in breweries, and convention
delegates voted by an overwhelming majority
in favor of the engineers’ union, ending 35
years of jurisdictional controversy.
As great strides were also made in air
conditioning during that period, operating
engineers became more aware of the importance
of acquiring a complete understanding of the
technology if they were to retain positions
in buildings equipped with air-conditioning
systems. Thorough knowledge of electric
refrigeration would prove to be a tremendous
advantage to engineers who were required to
supervise refrigeration plants along with power
and heating plants, and accordingly, the union
promoted study of the emerging technology.
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