125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
New York City Schools custodians who are members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 891
in Brooklyn attend training sessions on school-heating maintenance in 1946.
including new housing, schools, hospitals,
roads, industrial buildings and churches, also
created a construction glut that helped keep
operating engineers working. (1)
However, readjustment in some industries
from wartime to peacetime production resulted
in a lull in employment for some engineers
around the United States. For instance, many
members of Local No. 564 in Texas were laid
off after the war ended when the massive Dow
Chemical Company plants in its jurisdiction
stopped producing for war and were shut down
until new uses or new markets developed. In
July of 1946, the idled Dow plants reopened
and the local’s laid-off members were recalled.
The numerous post-war projects requiring the
skilled services of I.U.O.E. members included
tunnels through the Cascade Mountain range,
the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel under the East
River in New York City, and flood-control
and navigation projects in various sections of
the nation. Construction of the $10-million
Columbia Basin Project to pump irrigation
water throughout east-central Washington state
and the $200-million New York International
Airport in New York City (later renamed John
F. Kennedy International), which would be the
world’s largest airport when completed in 1948,
were also underway and employing scores of
union engineers. In Chicago, the world’s largest
water filtration works were placed in operation
during that time after the city’s mayor selected
Brother Matt J. McBride of Local No. 556 as
chief engineer of the $24-million plant.
It was also during this time that, under
General President Maloney’s direction, the
I.U.O.E. began to enter into vastly more
International Agreements for its hoisting and
portable trades with many of the large, national
construction contractors operating all over the
United States. Consequently, between January
1942 and May 1952, the union’s number
of international agreements with industrial
construction firms, pipeline contractors and
railway-track contractors would increase from
45 to a total of 238. The pacts proved to be of
great assistance to the union in territories that
were traditionally operated on a non-union,
open-shop basis, and had a positive effect as
an organizing tool in protecting the union’s
jurisdiction and in meeting its manpower
responsibilities to the industry. (1)
Enjoying some of the most lucrative conditions
in its existence, on December 7, 1946, the
I.U.O.E. reached the 50 th Anniversary since it
was formed by 11 operating engineers during
a meeting in Chicago. To mark the milestone
occasion, General President Maloney and
General Secretary-Treasurer Fitzgerald saluted
the union’s first half century in their forward
for the 50 th Anniversary edition of The
International Engineer:
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 564 of Richwood,
Texas, work at one of the Dow Chemical plants in
its jurisdiction sometime during the late 1940s.
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