125 Years Strong – An IUOE History

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS With employment conditions for operating engineers strong in virtually every geographic region of the United States and Canada and its membership growing, the Great Recession from late-2007 to mid-2009, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, slowed the union’s momentum. However, additional massive jobs manned by I.U.O.E. members that were underway during that time included rebuilding the World Trade Center complex beginning in April 2006. Members of I.U.O.E. locals No. 14 and No. 15 were operating the cranes and dirt-moving equipment on the -billion project, which included construction of the -billion Freedom Tower (1 World Trade Center) that at 1,776-feet tall would be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere when it opened on November 3, 2014. Through the combined skills of some 300 member engineers, the 4-million, 1,900-foot-long Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, suspended 890 feet above the Colorado River, was on its way to becoming the largest concrete support arch in North America when it was completed in October 2010. Another 165 operating engineers with Local No. 520 of southeast Illinois and more than 20 other I.U.O.E. locals were also making history while building the 1,600-megawatt Prairie State Energy Campus in Washington County, Illinois, the largest power plant under construction in the United States before it was completed in 2012 as the largest coal-fired power plant in the country. In the shadow of the recession, 695 delegates from 105 locals attended the 37 th I.U.O.E. Convention from April 27 to 30, 2008, in Las Vegas. The delegates took to heart the convention’s theme, “New Day – New Way – Together,” in unanimously adopting 25 constitutional amendments and 19 resolutions, unanimously re-electing all international Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 66 of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania erect a windmill as part of a power-generating windfarm project in September 2009. Members of I.U.O.E. Local No. 150 of Chicago work above the city’s skyline in 2008 during construction of its 92-story Trump International Tower and Hotel. officers and adopting an I.U.O.E. Code of Ethics “to guide the future conduct of union officers, representatives and employees.” The I.U.O.E. also broke new ground in 2008 with its political action after fundraising gains made by its Engineers Political Education Committee allowed the union to significantly increase its political activities in several critical areas – including for the first time in history launching a country-wide voter-registration program from international headquarters. As part of that effort, the union mailed more than 100,000 voter-registration forms to members in 35 states and instituted a vote-by-mail or early-vote effort in 29 states covering 229,000 members, increasing members’ participation in the political process. In a major new initiative, 43 I.U.O.E. headquarters and field staff were also assigned to work directly with locals in the key election battleground states of Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania prior to the general election. Those efforts eventually led to significant election-night victories for operating engineers on November 4, 2008, including the election of labor-friendly Senator Barack Obama as the 44 th U.S. president. Work then continued on one of the several pipeline jobs employing I.U.O.E. members, the nearly 1,000-mile-long Alberta Clipper Pipeline, a crude-oil line from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, that had begun in 2008, after the U.S. State Department gave final permit to the project on August 20, 2009. The large undertaking employed hundreds of members of Local No. 49 of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota and Local No. 139 of Wisconsin in the United States and similar numbers in Canada before the pipeline was placed into service on April 1, 2010. LABOR OMNIA VINCIT WORK CONQUERS ALL