125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS
Members of I.U.O.E. Marine Division Local No. 25, based in New Jersey
and covering the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, meet on
the deck of the Dredge Georgia during a job sometime in the late 1970s.
Brother Tom McClain Sr., the only living charter member of
I.U.O.E. Local No. 320 of Florence, Alabama, at the time and the
local’s first president and business manager, stands in 1979
in front of the house in which the local’s seven signers of its
charter held the local’s first meeting on December 17, 1933.
two days later, the potential for catastrophic
environmental impact was averted, according
to the management of American Dredging
Company, by more than 175 members of
the local’s Marine Division working around
the clock for more than a week, including
the Fourth of July holiday, to substantially
complete the cleanup.
Picking up the pieces of a shattered San
Francisco Bay Area in the aftermath of the
devastating earthquake that struck there on
the evening of October 17, 1989, fell on the
broad collective shoulders of members of
I.U.O.E. hoisting and portable Local No. 3
and stationary Local No. 39 of San Francisco.
Local No. 3 engineers were on the front lines
of recovery almost immediately, conducting
rescue missions, clearing debris and helping
to restore vital utilities, while their cranes
were soon at work on the collapsed Nimitz
Freeway, the damaged Bay Bridge and other
structures affected by the quake, which killed
63 people and caused an estimated $6 billion
in property damage.
As the decade was drawing to a close, signs
indicated that the I.U.O.E. recovery efforts
were getting results while also making its
signatory contractors more competitive. The
union’s modest increase of more than 2,300
new members during the first nine months
of 1989 was still a gain, nonetheless, and the
union was organizing in the construction,
stationary, industrial and public sectors in
areas that just three years earlier could not be
organized. Reflecting on those achievements
and the capacity for continued success, General
President Dugan announced in the December
1989 International Operating Engineer, “Our
program is working – and working well.”
Innovation Fuels the Revival
General Secretary-Treasurer Frank
Hanley was unanimously selected
general president of the I.U.O.E. by the
union’s General Executive Board after Brother
Dugan announced in early 1990 that health
issues would force him to leave office before his
term expired in April 1993. Upon assuming
his new duties on February 1, 1990, with 30
years of experience in the union behind him,
General President Hanley began eliminating
and merging departments in the international
offices to concentrate resources in key areas and
place qualified people in top staff positions. (2)
The new administration also updated office
equipment and computer systems, and its
General Executive Board would eventually be
composed of experienced and successful local
business managers, according to Union Resilience
in Troubled Times, “who would be policymakers
rather than rubber-stamp approvers.”
But organizing would be the union’s highest
priority, and the Executive Board during its
April 1990 meeting unanimously affirmed
three recommendations and a financial
package by General President Hanley to
reemphasize the international’s commitment to
recruiting new members by providing its locals
additional incentives and resources to establish
ongoing organizing programs. Announcing
those initiatives in that month’s International
Operating Engineer, President Hanley stated:
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