TrampThe work has always been dangerous. By the time delegates met at Moorhead’s Hall in February 1896, the men who erected structural steel for a living were already known for two things: their skill at moving across high steel without falling, and the regularity with which they nevertheless fell. Statistically, roughly one ironworker in a hundred stood to die each year. The first major activity of the new union was distributing $50 burial money to widows.
1896
Year of founding
130K
Active members
130 yrs
Years organizing
4-yr
Apprenticeship
“Cowboys in the sky.” — what the trade has always called itself, and earned.
A Timeline of the Iron Workers
From burial funds and dynamite to the bridges, stadiums, chip plants and data centers of the modern economy.
1870s–1895
The Pre-Union World
Steel erection drew the most daring and most independent men in the trades, and offered them almost nothing in return. No standard wage, no safety rule, no provision for a widow. Men admired from the street for feats of nerve had no protection when the nerve ran out.
Feb 4, 1896
Moorhead’s Hall, Pittsburgh
Delegates from independent locals in New York, Buffalo, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago met and founded the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers of America. In New York, walking delegate Sam Parks is credited with driving the ironworker’s daily wage from $2 to $4 in a single year.
1900–1901
Nearly Broke, Then Doubled
By 1900 the International had 1,731 members and was in debt. The next year was the best in its early history — membership swelled to roughly 6,000, the number of chartered locals more than doubled, and the union affiliated with the AFL.
1903
American Bridge — and the Opposition
The union’s first major success was organizing American Bridge, a U.S. Steel subsidiary. That same year U.S. Steel and American Bridge founded the National Erectors’ Association to promote the open shop and break the union.
1906–1911
The Dynamite Campaign
Facing an employer offensive it could not beat at the bargaining table, the union turned to explosives. Estimates run from 87 to 150 bombings of iron works and job sites across the United States and Canada, most causing property damage and no injuries. It has since been described as perhaps the largest domestic bombing campaign in American history. An NEA spy sat on the union’s own executive board throughout.
Oct 1, 1910
The Los Angeles Times Bombing
At 1:07 a.m., J.B. McNamara set sixteen sticks of dynamite in an alley beside the Los Angeles Times building. The blast ignited gas lines and the fire killed 21 people, most of them non-union printers, and injured more than 100. Publisher Harrison Gray Otis, who had spent twenty years fighting the city’s unions, called it the crime of the century.
1911
The Confessions
Secretary-Treasurer J.J. McNamara had been paying his brother $1,000 a month out of the union treasury. Clarence Darrow took the defense, concluded the brothers would hang, and was arrested attempting to bribe a juror. J.B. got life; J.J. got fifteen years and later returned to the union as an organizer. The labor movement in Los Angeles collapsed and the city stayed largely union-free until the 1930s.
1914–1934
Rebuilding
The union spent two decades climbing out from under the bombings — rebuilding credibility, rebuilding membership, and surviving the open-shop 1920s. The New Deal and the Wagner Act finally put federal law behind the right to organize.
1936–1937
The Golden Gate and the Net
Chief engineer Joseph Strauss rejected the industry’s grim arithmetic of one death per million dollars spent and paid $130,000 for a manila safety net slung fifteen feet beneath the deck. Nineteen men fell into it and lived, calling themselves the Halfway to Hell Club. Al Zampa broke four vertebrae, spent twelve weeks at St. Luke’s, then walked a girder on the unpainted bridge to prove the fall hadn’t taken his nerve. On February 17, 1937, a five-ton platform tore through the net and killed ten men.
1940s–1970s
The Golden Age
War production, the interstate system, and the postwar skyline boom put ironworkers on nearly every major structure in North America — the Gateway Arch, the Sears Tower, the bridges and stadiums. Density was high, apprenticeships were full, and the trade set the standard.
1970s–2000s
The Long Pressure
Organized employers pushed hard for the open shop through the last quarter of the century. Density fell across the building trades, non-union erectors took market share, and the union spent decades on defense.
2015–2025
The Eric Dean Era
A fourth-generation Local 63 ironworker out of Chicago who apprenticed in 1980, Dean served as general president for ten years. Membership grew, pension and health funds strengthened, and the union developed and implemented a maternity leave program for women ironworkers — a first for the trade.
2024–2025
Bridges, Data Centers, Megaprojects
Bridge replacement work, semiconductor fabs, stadium builds and hyperscale data centers pulled hard on the trade. Steel erection and reinforcing became bottleneck crafts on projects measured in billions.
Jan 1, 2026
Bryenton Takes Over
Kevin Bryenton was unanimously elected general president effective January 1, 2026. A Toronto ironworker since 1987 who graduated outstanding apprentice of his year, he came up through Local 721 as an instructor and apprenticeship coordinator before serving as general vice president, executive director of Canadian affairs, and general secretary.
The work has changed. The Iron Workers Have Not.
When delegates met at Moorhead’s Hall in 1896, the skyscraper had only recently been invented and the bridges that would carry the industrial economy were still being drawn. The men who did the work were dying with such regularity that the union’s first real function was burying them. One hundred and thirty years later the Iron Workers do the same essential thing: organize the people who erect, weld, reinforce and finish the steel that holds up the buildings, the bridges, the stadiums, the chip plants and the data centers of North America.
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