125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
health insurance and pension provisions, the
new program was created because smaller
locals that lacked the membership to sponsor a
pension plan were being left without retirement
benefits for members. Initially, Local No.
501 of Los Angeles was used as a base for the
Central Pension Fund into which other locals
could join. (By 1992, the plan’s assets totaled $3
billion, and it was paying close to $140 million
in annual benefits to 35,000 beneficiaries.) (2)
Other developments during that time
included the I.U.O.E. combining services
in 1962 to form the Department of
Organization, Research and Education for
greater effectiveness in those areas. Brother
Reese Hammond, former head of the Research
and Education Department and a member of
Local No. 94 in New York City, was named to
lead the new group.
Out in the field during the early 1960s,
I.U.O.E. members were being kept busy
on jobs that included constructing U.S.
Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
(I.C.B.M.) bases throughout the country. Also
of note, members were operating one of the
most completely automated electrical power
complexes in the world, the Meramec Power
Generating Plant in South St. Louis, after it
went online in 1961.
Tragedy struck the union’s general office once
again when General President Delaney died
suddenly on September 9, 1962, at age 65. The
union’s 12-member Executive Board unanimously
elected General Secretary-Treasurer Hunter P.
Wharton to take over the presidency.
Jobs, Goals Reach for the Sky
Into 1963 and under new leadership, a
great number of I.U.O.E. engineers were
at work in all parts of the country on
pipeline construction, while others were still
working in just about every part of the nation
on the Interstate Highway System, which was
about one-third complete at the beginning of
the year. To supply the rapid growth of the use
of electricity on its power grid, the Tennessee
Valley Authority had $47-million worth of
transmission facilities under construction
with a major use of I.U.O.E. members, and
union engineers were also performing a high
volume of work to shore up the nation’s
military defense installations.
E.P.E.C. Formed in 1967
COMMITTEE HELPS WIELD UNION’S POLITICAL STRENGTH
The I.U.O.E. established its own political education
organization, the Engineers Political Education Committee or
E.P.E.C., in April 1967. Its initial officers were I.U.O.E. General
President Hunter P. Wharton as chairman, General Secretary-
Treasurer Newell J. Carman as secretary-treasurer and
Executive Vice-President Richard H. Nolan as vice chairman.
The union’s General
Executive Board first acted on
forming the committee during its
September 23, 1966, meeting
when Brother Carman made a
motion to create the committee
“to further, directly and
indirectly, the joint interest of the
members of the International
Union in the betterment of
general economic and social
conditions in the world, by
engaging in legislative, political,
educational, civic, welfare and
other appropriate activities.” The
motion was duly seconded, put
to a vote and unanimously adopted by the board.
“In recent years, legislation which demands the attention of
labor has resulted in more and more participation in politics
by our people,” General President Wharton explained shortly
after the committee was created. “The formation of E.P.E.C.
is one mechanism whereby our people can express in a
tangible form their wish to support the friends and penalize
the enemies of labor.”
The E.P.E.C. took its first action in mid-April 1967 when
Secretary-Treasurer Carman sent out receipt books to all
locals of the I.U.O.E. to be used for voluntary contributions by
individual members to the E.P.E.C. The goal of the organization
was to receive at least $1 per member in voluntary
contributions, while not pressuring any member to donate.
I.U.O.E. Executive Vice President Richard H. Nolan (left), General Secretary-Treasurer Newell J.
Carman (center) and General President Hunter P. Wharton make the first voluntary contributions
to the new I.U.O.E. Engineers Political Education Committee in 1967.
Since first organizing the E.P.E.C., the union has continued
to operate the federal committee by raising money through
voluntary contributions from its members and their families.
The I.U.O.E. then uses those funds to back political candidates
who support the interests of the union and organized labor
in general, including critical issues such as infrastructure
investments, prevailing-wage standards, healthcare, training
and worker safety.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 14 in Flushing, New York,
construct the iconic Unisphere for the 1964 World’s Fair.
But that year, it was perhaps the February
12 start and subsequent construction of the
630-foot-high Gateway Arch in St. Louis, which
operating engineers from Local No. 513 would
play a key role in raising, that garnered the most
attention. Manning special hoisting “creeper
cranes” that crawled up the two opposing legs
of the structure as each was erected before
meeting at the top, the I.U.O.E. members and
their special skills were key factors in the success
of the job. Completed on October 28, 1965,
the now-iconic monument at the Jefferson
National Expansion Memorial overlooking the
western banks of the Mississippi River is the
world’s tallest arch and the highest man-made
monument in the Western Hemisphere.
Union engineers also began work on the
Oroville Dam on the Feather River east of
Oroville, California, in 1961, which when
completed in 1968 would be the tallest dam
in the United States. The operators essentially
moved mountains during the project,
surpassing the record of ton-miles of materials
moved on any other earth-transporting project
in modern history by ten times.
The 1964 I.U.O.E. Convention in San
Francisco was a high point of that year, with the
union’s great strides in organizing setting a pattern
for conference activity. Afterwards in remarks in
an article in the December 1964 International
Operating Engineer, General President Wharton
summed up 1964 as a “Year of Achievement,”
during which the union and its roughly
290,000-strong membership had relatively
effective control of its construction jurisdiction.
With construction work during the mid-
1960s at all-time record levels, the operating
engineers continued to place an increased
emphasis on job safety. Its efforts at both the
international and local levels were consequently
recognized several times, including General
President Wharton receiving a plaque for
distinguished service at the 1965 Labor
Conference of the National Safety Council.
(Continued after following "Training & Education" section.)
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