125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

Changes to its official name provide a
timeline of sorts for the early history of
the International Union of Operating
Engineers, which was born as the
National Union of Steam Engineers in
1896, became the International Union
of Steam Engineers in 1897 and then
the International Union of Steam and
Operating Engineers in 1912, before finally
taking on its current title on July 1, 1928.
(Abridged from The Operating Engineers: The Economic History of a Trade Union.)
International Union of Operating Engineers
125 YEARS STRONG
The 11 men who set in motion the
formation of what would become the
International Union of Operating
Engineers (I.U.O.E.) when they first assembled
in Chicago on December 7, 1896, did so
with every intention of changing the dreadful
conditions plaguing their steam-engineering
industry. Those 10 stationary and single
portable engineers, who hailed from different
local unions that had been chartered directly by
the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) in
eight states around the United States, gathered
to organize all of the nation’s steam engineers
into a single, nationwide union. To lobby for
and advance its mission, that very first national
assembly of unionized engineers selected three
delegates from those in attendance, Brother
John M. Smales of Denver, Brother L. P.
Tomsen of St. Louis and Brother Charles
J. DeLong of Chicago, to attend the A.F.L.
convention the following week in Cincinnati.
The ensuing events from which the National
Union of Steam Engineers (N.U.S.E.),
the initial predecessor of the I.U.O.E., was
spawned were later documented by one of their
participants – the engineer in charge of the Odd
Fellows Temple in Cincinnati in late 1896. It
was there during one of the early days of the
A.F.L. convention held from December 14 to
These men constituted the first convention of the National Union of Steam Engineers
held in August 1897 (however, their identities were not recorded for the photograph).