125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 148 of St. Louis prepare to move a lowpressure
turbine for the Labadie Power Plant near Labadie, Missouri, in 1971.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 18 in Cleveland
break while on a jobsite in August 1971.
“Rising unemployment rates in the 1970s
forced union members to work non-union in
some areas of the country,” Union Resilience
in Troubled Times explains, “and moribund
union organizing programs resulted in the loss
of union contracts, especially in highway and
multiple-family residential construction. …
So successful was that customer-led rebellion
that the construction industry went from 42
percent to 22 percent union in just 20 years.”
However, the I.U.O.E. did not experience
as much loss to the non-union sector than the
other building and construction trades because
the operating engineers’ primary source of
employment was government-financed heavy
and highway, rather than private industrial and
building, construction. (2) Regardless, I.U.O.E.
membership had started a regression that
would decline from nearly 419,000 in 1975 to
a low of around 359,000 in 1987.
But in 1975, the union held its first annual
I.U.O.E. National Hoisting and Portable
Safety Conference in Countryside, Illinois,
which featured representatives of several health
and safety organizations. The 18 conference
delegates from various locals and the
international headquarters passed a number
of strong motions calling for increased safety
standards. By 1979, the symposium would
develop into the annual I.U.O.E. Safety,
Accident-Prevention and Health Conference.
Countering the ‘Union Busters’
Anti-union attitudes and non-union
competition were broadening in the
United States when General Secretary-
Treasurer J. C. Turner succeeded the retiring
Brother Wharton as I.U.O.E. general president
in January 1976 – but the union’s newest leader
was not discouraged. “The answer,” General
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