125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
have produced over 1.2 billion manhours of
work, and overall, they have provided more
work for building tradesmen than any other
national agreements.
In 1974, I.U.O.E. Fourth Vice-President
Russell T. Conlon, a member of Seattle’s Local
No. 302, represented the union in negotiations
for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Agreement,
which among other things guaranteed that
construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
(also known as the Alaskan Pipeline) would
use an all-union workforce. Beginning the next
year, thousands of I.U.O.E. members, working
under the jurisdictions of Local No. 2 of St.
Louis and Local No. 302, played major roles
in bringing to fruition the demanding project,
which in addition to the main line included
building highways, pump stations and feeder
lines through at-times challenging terrain and
often in difficult weather conditions.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 463 in Niagara Falls, New York,
build the cofferdam that shut down the American Falls on the
Niagara River in June 1969 for maintenance. (Photos courtesy of
Niagara Falls Thunder Alley/www.niagarafrontier.com.)
Once fully completed in 1977, the 800-mile
Trans-Alaska Pipeline spanned the state from
north to south to deliver oil from Prudhoe
Bay to Valdez, Alaska. An article in the
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 132 of Charleston, West Virginia, gather outside the local’s training facility in Medina, West Virginia, in 1970.
August 1977 International Operating Engineer
subsequently announced:
“After a three-year battle against
the obstacles of both nature and
man, operating engineers have
helped make the largest, privately
funded construction project
in history an awe-inspiring
technological reality.”
I.U.O.E. membership reached a record level
of 420,000 members in the mid-1970s, but
that plateau would not last long as a series of
economic recessions caused by inflation and
an energy shortage hit the United States and
Canada, crippling construction and slowing
down commercial expansion. The deteriorating
conditions helped spur a corresponding rise of
non-union, open-shop contractors.
In his book Union Resilience in Troubled
Times: The Story of the Operating Engineers,
1960-1993, Professor Mangum points out that
union policies and practices also contributed
greatly to the “growth of the open-shop
movement.” He states that by the mid-1970s,
union-won wage and fringe-benefit increases
were far above the inflation rate; a bulk of
construction activity had moved to the suburbs
and beyond; locals were reluctant to make
appropriate concessions; administration of
labor laws had become conservative; openshop
contractors were being admitted into
associations “that once operated solely union;”
and there was a “switch” in contractor policies
regarding “double-breasting” – all of which
contributed to the growth of non-union
competition. (2) As it grew, union contractors
began double-breasting by creating non-union
subsidiaries to compete in markets in which
project owners refused to deal with union
contractors or payment of union wages and
benefits would prevent successful bidding. (2)
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