ABSTRACT
Over the long run, the McClellan committee charges and their legislative aftermath would have little impact on the IUOE. Whatever its public image, the primary test of the effectiveness of a labor organization is its ability, through its relations with employers, to enhance the economic well-being of its members. By wise responses to favorable economic conditions, the union had been eminently successful in that regard during the 1940–60 period. Circumstances remained propitious until the early 1970s, but the collective bargaining successes of 1960–75 would come back to haunt the engineers during the late seventies and eighties, at least on the hoisting and portable side. Local building and construction trades unions were at the peak of their bargaining power, and they used that power to attain wage and fringe increases well above the rate of inflation, as well as work rules that were anathema to some contractors. The economic comeuppance would be the open shop movement described in chapter 6, followed by the IUOE counterattack detailed in chapter 7. The stationary membership would continue in a steadier state, confronted by legal and technological obstacles, which they too would learn to overcome.
