125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Moses is the biggest electricity producer in
New York State, generating up to 2.6-million
kilowatts of power.)
Among the other notable projects employing
I.U.O.E. members at that time, more than
3,000 operating engineers were working on
the joint United States-Canadian Saint
Lawrence Seaway construction project, which
took nearly four years of work when completed
in 1959 and cost nearly $1 billion. Another
massive project employing thousands of
members was construction of the Illinois State
tollway, a 187-mile “super highway” that cost
$442 million to build before it first opened in
1958 in the Chicago area.
After 18 years serving as general president
(still in 2021 the longest tenure for that
office in the history of the I.U.O.E.), Brother
Maloney retired from the position in 1958
because of health reasons. He passed on to his
successor, General Secretary-Treasurer Joseph
J. Delaney, an international organization that
had grown from roughly 75,000 to nearly
300,000 members under his leadership and
had a net worth of more than $18 million.
Boston Red Sox Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams
(center), a follower of the highly successful softball
team of Rhode Island-based I.U.O.E. Local No. 57, visits
the local’s union hall sometime during the 1960s.
‘Organize, Organize, Organize’
Almost immediately after being selected
by the General Executive Board on
February 14, 1958, to lead the union,
new General President Delaney initiated a
dynamic program for progress. He made his
intentions clear in a message splashed right on
the front cover of the March 1958 International
Operating Engineer journal:
“We are going to institute the most
aggressive organizing campaign in
our history. Our nation is on the
threshold of a new era in power
and production. Our craft can
make great contributions to this
new advance.
“We are going to organize,
organize, organize – both in the
stationary and portable fields.
“We are going to render improved
service to our present membership
and bring benefits of unionism
to the new fields within our craft
jurisdiction.
“We will meet the challenges
ahead with promptness, vigor and
determination.”
As part of his “seven-point program,” President
Delaney appointed a Director of Organization
to head up what he called “the most aggressive
organizing campaign in the history of our
union.” He further declared that the union would
accelerate its Apprentice Training Program “so
that management will have at its call an available
supply of trained operating engineers for all its
varied and costly equipment.”
To help implement his ambitious program
and support its organizing efforts, President
Delaney created the union’s Department of
Research & Education and on August 1,
1958, appointed Brother Lane Kirkland as
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 653 in Mobile, Alabama, work on construction of the foundation for a highrise building in the city during the 1960s.
its director. Brother Kirkland, who would
later serve as president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
(the A.F.L. and Congress of Industrial
Organizations having merged in 1955) from
1979 to 1995, would be the driving force
behind establishment of the union’s Central
Pension Fund in October 1960, a plan that
would grow remarkably throughout the years.
The new administration established the
I.U.O.E. Canadian Conference in 1959 to
promote closer ties between its Canadian locals.
That year, the union also officially launched
its Nuclear Energy Training Program in San
Francisco on July 14, 1959, with the opening
of a 10-day instructor-training course. Over
the ensuing couple of years, the union added
many elements to the program, including the
use of radioactive material and appropriate
detection and handling instruments – procured
by the union after it obtained a license from the
Atomic Energy Commission – to properly and
effectively teach radiation-safety techniques.
However, passage of the Taft-Hartley Act
in 1947 had over the ensuing years resulted
in multiple states lobbying for and issuing
so-called “right-to-work” statutes, by which
employees of unionized workplaces were not
legally obligated to pay union dues for the
union representation they were receiving.
Throughout that time and into the late 1950s,
the I.U.O.E. had been and was still involved in
campaigns fighting the implementation of the
anti-union mandates in multiple states, and in
1958 alone the union and its organized-labor
allies successfully fended off legislative efforts
in California, Washington, Idaho, Colorado
and Ohio, although Kansas did pass a “rightto-work”
law that year.
Looking back on the union’s efforts to
combat those movements and others, General
President Delaney in his report in the April
1960 International Operating Engineer would
even declare, “No legislative problem at the state
level posed so great a challenge in recent years
as the concerted effort to enact so-called right-
LABOR OMNIA VINCIT
WORK CONQUERS ALL