125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
extensive growth of the I.U.O.E. in the first
half of the 1950s, during which organizing
efforts among pipeline workers resulted in an
initial influx of over 15,000 new members
working under the union’s National Pipeline
Agreement. (1) As a result, by the end of 1955 the
union’s active membership stood at 241,391,
an increase of nearly 50,000 members from
just four years earlier.
A highly successful, carefully planned
organizing campaign had turned the tables on
the pipeline industry, in which prior to 1949
practically all pipelines in the country were
being constructed by non-union contractors.
In September 1949, the union signed an
agreement with 13 large pipeline companies
that had withdrawn from the Associated
General Contractors because of various
conflicts and formed the Pipeline Contractors’
Association in 1948. The pact contained
many concessions on conditions established
for building construction and set wage rates
for pipeline work at those prevailing on area
highway construction. (1)
Just three years after signing the agreement,
by 1952 the I.U.O.E. campaign had organized
92 percent of the pipeline industry, with 72
contractors having joined into the contract,
and by 1956, the agreement involved 200
signatory contractors and 25,000 new pipeline
members had been added to the union.
But the union was again impacted by war
when the Korean Conflict between Sovietbacked
North Korea and U.S.-backed South
Korea broke out on June 25, 1950, and over
the next three years, the union and its members
played vital roles in the war. In addition
to members distinguishing themselves in
combat and at home on materiel production,
Before construction began on the new (and current) I.U.O.E. headquarters building in Washington, D.C., on
April 8, 1955, General Secretary-Treasurer Charles B. Gramling turns the first shovelful of dirt at the building
site during a groundbreaking ceremony attended by many local and international officers of the union.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 3 in San Francisco stand with contractors and government officials in
front of an HD 21 tractor during a project at Ponderay Lake (or Lake Pend Oreille) in Idaho in 1953.
when the war broke out, stepped-up work on
atomic energy installations also required the
full skillsets of I.U.O.E. engineers. As such,
General President Maloney issued an order
to all locals that “full cooperation with the
Department of Defense and with the Atomic
Energy Commission was to be given and that
work stoppages on vital government projects
were to be kept to a minimum.”
The early 1950s also saw the union push
member participation in an improved program
that had been instituted in July 1949 to inform
and educate its engineers about accident
prevention – an effort that has endured
and been expanded over the decades since.
The importance of accident prevention was
accentuated during 1950 and 1951 when the
union paid out more than $50,000 in death
benefits for members killed as the result of onthe-job
accidents.
LABOR OMNIA VINCIT
Unprecedented prosperity in the United
States and Canada during the mid-1950s,
and the subsequent expansion of the industry
sector and its increase in factory activity and
the construction of new schools, institutions,
hotels and office buildings, created even more
work for the I.U.O.E. membership. Along
with the boom in industrial construction,
the government also continued to expand
its atomic-energy program, keeping many
operating engineers employed in that sector.
During that time, on November 1, 1954,
the I.U.O.E. and the laborers, teamsters and
carpenters unions formed the National Joint
Heavy and Highway Committee to moreactively
pursue the abundance of heavy and
highway work taking place throughout their
jurisdictions. The committee was tasked
with expediting work in the field, preventing
jurisdictional disputes and protecting the
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