125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
A pipeline class at the I.T.E.C.
Making Training a Union-Wide Priority
Highlighting the I.U.O.E.’s accelerated emphasis on training
during the administration of General President Frank Hanley
from 1990 into 2005 was the opening of the I.U.O.E. Southern
Apprenticeship and Training Center at Yellow Creek in northeast
Mississippi in September 1996. The center would serve as a
comprehensive training facility for I.U.O.E. apprentices and journeylevel
members of locals in the southern region of the United States,
providing them with training to operate the latest construction
equipment as well instruction in fields such as hazardous materials
handling and asbestos abatement.
The union took another major stride in the presentation of
its training and education initiatives in December 1997 when it
converted several equipment-training programs to a CD-ROM
format, thereby taking maximum advantage of new technology to
make the teaching aspect of training more effective and on-target,
and the learning aspect more stimulating and simple. The CD-
ROM format allowed I.U.O.E. instructors more flexibility in steering
the direction of the training, which resulted in trainees receiving the
information they required more quickly.
Then, in perhaps one of the more significant developments
for the union’s training during that time, in 2000 the I.U.O.E. and
the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training
developed revised guidelines for teaching heavy-equipment
apprentices and revised apprentice-selection procedures to more
accurately reflect changing trends in the industry, as well as the
economic situations of the time. Among its provisions, the new
Apprenticeship Guidelines for the Joint Apprenticeship Training
Committee decreased on-the-job training hours from a minimum
of 6,000 hours to a minimum of 4,000 hours; redefined the
ratio of apprentices to journey workers as no more than one
apprentice for every five journey-level workers; reduced the
amount of classroom-based, related-studies hours to reflect the
hours of field training; allowed credit for previous experience at the
trade; and added three membership “direct entry” classifications:
apprenticeable military, apprenticeable Job Corps and members
signed on through organizing.
The Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship Training,
Employer and Labor Services formally approved and certified
the new guidelines during a ceremony at I.U.O.E. headquarters in
Washington, D.C., on January 4, 2001. The Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission also ratified the new procedures.
Yet another key accomplishment took place in 2006 when the
union established its National Training Fund to serve as an umbrella
organization for all I.U.O.E. training programs, coordinating policies,
strategies and activities with extensive support and input from its
locals. Notably, the fund would provide a broad range of safety and
health training for the union’s membership and instructors, which
would eventually include the union’s National HAZMAT Program
for the safe, proper handling of hazardous materials.
Equipping the Union for Future Success
By 2017, the I.U.O.E. had in place for many years an
extensive infrastructure of local training facilities, equipment and
learning resources that continue to form the backbone of its craft
instruction. But in July of that year, the union began construction
on a definitive tool in its training arsenal: the I.U.O.E. International
Training and Education Center near Houston.
Built on 265 acres mostly purchased by the union in 2014
in anticipation of a massive construction boom in the Gulf Coast
region, and especially in the oil-and-gas sector, the facility serves
the union’s Hoisting & Portable, Stationary and Petrochemical
branches and set the training standard in that region. “Our goal
is to build a training center that takes the best attributes of all
the outstanding programs developed throughout the international
and amass them in a southern location in order to capture the
upcoming development opportunities,” I.U.O.E. General President
James T. Callahan had announced in the Spring 2014 International
Operating Engineer journal.
Designed with the help of a blue-ribbon panel of local I.U.O.E.
training coordinators from across the United States and Canada,
the state-of-the-art, world-class Training and Education Center
opened in April 2018 as the largest and most comprehensive
training facility for union operating and stationary engineers in North
America. It was specifically developed to advance and improve the
skills of the union’s members, instructors and staff throughout the
country to better meet the needs of the construction industry by
augmenting and enhancing the training programs administered by
the union’s locals.
The center provides the means to host, support and
develop the skills of a constantly expanding and varied group
of construction and maintenance professionals. It
includes an 8,120-square-foot conference space;
17 classrooms and labs; a 15-pad crane field;
equipment simulator rooms; a heavy-equipment
mechanics shop; welding bays; a central utility plant
with training redundancies; a 227-room dormitory;
a fitness center; and full dining facilities. Its ample
outdoor space is used to conduct pipeline training,
crane training and heavy-equipment operations.
“This state-of-the-art facility demonstrates our
union’s commitment to high-quality training to our
signatory contractors, general contractors and
owners,” an article in the Winter 2017 International
Operating Engineer declared.
Stationary Training and Trust
GROWING A PETRO-
CHEMICAL WORKFORCE
As the I.U.O.E. moved into 2020 and towards its
125 th year in 2021, the union was annually investing
over $180 million in training, while its locals were
sponsoring 100 apprenticeship and training programs
Additional developments included the early-2009 launch
at 127 training sites throughout North America. With
A training simulator for machine operation at the I.T.E.C. of the union’s Blackboard Learning System, an online training
1,000 instructors and thousands of acres dedicated A wind turbine maintenance class at Local 150.
clearinghouse and course-delivery platform.
to training throughout North America, the union’s
The new I.U.O.E. Stationary Engineer Apprentice Training
and Trust (SEATT) graduated its first class of operators in
early 2016 at Western Refining in El Paso, Texas, after six
weeks of intensive training. SEATT was formed to work with
participating employers to establish a highly skilled pool of
future petro-chemical operators.
For that initial course, SEATT recruited experienced
operators from the refinery to instruct the students in topics
that petro-chemical operators needed to be safe, efficient and
productive. Classes addressed subjects ranging from basic
hand tools to valves, boilers, reactors, distillation, turbines,
compressors, instrumentation, furnaces, cooling towers, heat
exchangers, physics, chemistry, safe work permitting and hot
work permitting, as well as various other topics.
members have access to training on virtually every topic heavyequipment
operators and stationary engineers require.
Over the years, the comprehensive training programs the
I.U.O.E. has developed and maintained have become widely
recognized as the best in a number of industries – and allow the
union to fulfill its ongoing mission: To provide highly skilled, safe and
productive heavy-equipment operators and facilities engineers to
the construction, pipeline, stationary and environmental industries.
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