125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
involved 50 industrial contractors, was
implemented to shorten construction time
requirements on heavy industrial projects,
contain costs and provide greater stability in
the industry. (2) Later addressing the agreement,
General President Turner told attendees at
the 1984 I.U.O.E. Convention, “The pact is
openly and frankly a response by the unionized
sector of the construction industry to recent
open-shop advances in the area of industrial
plant construction and preserving jobs for
union members.”
I.U.O.E. Local No. 793 operators work on
construction of the SkyPod portion of the CN Tower
in Toronto, which when completed in 1976 was the
world’s tallest free-standing structure until 2007.
Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 793 in Ontario, Canada, excavate
the site for construction of the CN Tower in Toronto circa 1973.
Into and through 1978, the union and much of
the country were still feeling the lingering effects
of the 1973-1975 recession and its so-called
“stagflation,” in which high unemployment and
high inflation existed simultaneously. Despite
improvements to the economy and construction
Graduating apprenticeship class of I.U.O.E. Local No. 99 of Washington, D.C., in 1973.
employment, union members all around
North America were still concerned about jobs,
manpower, and the costs of living. “We still face
the overall inflation situation,” President Turner
wrote to the membership in the November 1978
International Operating Engineer, “and labor
families are the first to face its devastating effects.”
During the final years of the 1970s, among
the major projects I.U.O.E. locals handled,
Local No. 400 was instrumental in the fouryear
construction of the largest air-cooled
power plant in the world, the 330,000-kilowatt
Wyodak Power Plant near Gillette, Wyoming,
which was completed in 1978. The following
year, operating engineers from Local No. 370
in Spokane, Washington, became the first
to make a lift with the world’s largest, landtransportable
mobile crane, the Neil F. Lampson
company’s Transi-Lift. The members used the
mammoth crane, with a 340-foot boom, a
190-foot mast and a capacity of 2,000 tons, to
lift a 1,100-ton nuclear reactor pressure vessel
280 feet to place it in a containment building at
the under-construction U.S. Hanford Nuclear
Reservation in southern Washington state’s
Benton County.
Then in 1979 during the 60 th Convention of
the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Building and Construction
Trades Department in San Diego, the I.U.O.E.
and other building-trades unions launched a
massive offensive against the nation’s “union
busters,” who for years had been working to
put organized construction craftspeople out of
work and reduce their collective standard of
living. The I.U.O.E. delegates at the convention
gave a strong, united voice to the campaign
against, as the December 1979 International
Operating Engineer described them, “unionbusting
contractors, their right-wing political
puppets and the corporations that have been
masterminding the conspiracy to turn the entire
industry into a low-wage, open-shop empire.”
Training to Make a Comeback
Throughout much of the first half
of 1980s, the I.U.O.E. and most
building-trades unions struggled in the
throes of a severe economic depression that
engulfed the country during the first nearly
four years of the decade and a continuing
anti-union environment. As a result, into the
second half of the decade, membership growth
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