Marshall E. Douglas has been a member of Local 150 of the Operating Engineers since 1993. A graduate of the Midwest Operating Engineers Apprenticeship Program, Marshall represents the new breed of Operating Engineers who cut his teeth at the craft at the Local 150 Apprenticeship Skill Improvement Program Training Site. Marshall earned most of his work experience in excavation and other dirt work including operation of scrapers, finish dozers, and loaders of all kinds. Marshall gained crane and overhead experience working at the ALCOA Plant in Bettendorf, Iowa, and at the construction of the IPSCO Steel Mill in Montpelier, Iowa.
In 1997, Marshall began working as a Task Force Organizer for Local 150. For the next year, he worked in Districts 1, 2, 3, and 7 on campaigns to organize the heavy equipment and rental and repair shops in the Union’s Operation Wrench Campaign, and in the campaign to organize small pavers. As Marshall remembers, it was hard to be away from home for all that time, especially after he got married in 1997. But the experience organizing was tremendous, and learning from people like Jim Sweeney, Bob Paddock, and Dave Fagan was invaluable.
Marshall’s experience in organizing proved most important, however, when he returned to District 8 in 1998. For the next several years, Marshall did double duty as an organizer and business agent policing the Illinois side of the Mississippi River and organizing the unorganized. Throughout that time, Marshall headed campaigns where Local 150 successfully organized RSC, Martin Equipment, Road Machinery and Supply, and Heckett MultiServ. And although organizing Brandt Construction has proved elusive, Marshall has doggedly pursued the Company in salting campaigns, enforcing prevailing wage rights, and in an effort to shut down the production of Brandt's concrete plant.
Marshall Douglas has gained valuable contract-negotiation experience, both in the first contracts with companies he organized as well as with Moline Consumers on the Iowa side, Linwood Mining, and Moline Consumers in Illinois.
Last November, Marshall Douglas played a key role in Local 150’s and the Building Trades’ successful support of Democratic candidates for the Iowa legislature and the Governor of Iowa. A registered lobbyist, Marshall had been working closely with the Illinois, Indiana, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting to spearhead the legislation establishing the Prevailing Wage Law in Iowa.
Along with Officers Jim Sweeney and Dave Fagan, Marshall Douglas is a second-generation Operating Engineer. His father, Marshall E. Douglas, Sr., has been a member of IUOE Local 537 and then Local 150 since 1976. Marshall is proud of his father, Marshall, Sr., who is also a lawyer and served as the elected State’s Attorney of Rock Island County, Illinois.
Marshall is currently serving as Vice-President of the Tri-City Building Trades and a trustee for the Quad-City Federation of Labor.. He is also a lifelong hunter, skilled with both bow and rifle. An avid predator-caller, Marshall is proud of the fact that he paid for his first semester of college trapping beaver, muskrat, raccoon, and mink on a 22-mile stretch of the Mississippi River. Marshall and his wife, Jessica, were both born in Moline, Illinois, where they now live with their eight-year-old daughter.