Committees, Task Forces, and Working Groups [RESTRICTED], 1978 February-1993 May

The records in this series document, to varying degrees, the activities of UUP's standing committees, ad hoc committees, joint labor-management committees, task forces, and working groups. Included for most committees are the administrative correspondence created at UUP's administrative office setting up meetings, obtaining approval from the Governor's Office of Employee Relations for organizational leave time for meeting attendees, and confirming committee appointments. Lists of committee members are also frequently included.

The substantive work of each committee is documented by meeting agendas and minutes; the materials, such as third-party reports, distributed to committee members for their use in preparing for committee meetings; correspondence between UUP's President and the committee chairperson; and correspondence from UUP's officers and the committee chairperson to the committee as a whole. The records for joint labor-management committees include reports and correspondence prepared by the state with regard to the committee, as well as communications between only UUP's participants on those committees. If a formal report was at some point prepared by a committee or task force, drafts of the report are often included in that committee's or task force's records. Finally, the reports made by the committee chairperson to Delegate Assemblies are occasionally included in this series. (Committee chairperson reports are also found in the Delegate Assembly records in Series 2 of this Subgroup.)

As of February 2001, UUP's standing committees are: Retired Membership, Affirmative Action, Elections and Credentials, Finance, Grievance, Legislation, Membership, Negotiations, Part-Time Concerns, Solidarity, and Women's Rights and Concerns. Over the years, UUP's ad hoc committees, task forces, and working groups have addressed a variety of issues, particularly in the area of higher education and improving SUNY (for example, the Student Retention and Recruitment Committee, the Public Education Committee, the Undergraduate Education Task Force, the Teacher Education Task Force, the University Development Committee, and the Excellence Committee). Issues of concern to particular segments of UUP's bargaining unit have also been addressed (for example, the Colleges of Technology Task Force, the Health Science Center Concerns Committee, and the Nursing Profession Work Group). Joint labor-management committees have addressed safety and health issues, child care, health benefits, professional study leaves, employee assistance programs, salary disparities, and providing retraining and re-education opportunities for retrenched employees. Finally, some of UUP's committees have focused on improving UUP and its operations such as the Constitutional Study Committee, the Computer Technology Committee, and the Re-Imagine UUP Committee.

Committee-specific materials include election result reports and correspondence on possible election irregularities for the Elections and Credentials Committee; financial summaries and the report of the treasurer, and chapter budget requests and approval requests for extraordinary expenditures for the Finance Committee; chapter responses to a survey on membership and membership recruitment activities in 1982 for the Membership Committee; proposed legislation and state budgets for the Legislation Committee; and studies on indoor air pollution and other workplace health concerns for the Safety and Health Committee. There is some overlap between the records of the Membership Committee and Retired Membership Committee because correspondence were occasionally addressed to both groups, and they deal with an overlapping area of interest. The files for the Negotiations Committee has correspondence, appointment letters, and meeting information for UUP's Negotiations Team and its Ad Hoc Advisory Committee for Negotiations, occasional negotiations bulletins and responses to members on issues of concern for negotiations, and multiple copies of lists of committee and team members as well as some attendance lists for negotiations meetings and workshops. Grievance committee records include reports to the president recommending the continued pursuit or the abandonment of specific grievances. Background materials for some of the applications submitted to the Legal Defense Fund Committee are included with the records of that committee.

The amount of materials available for each committee, task force, and working group, and the degree of organization of those materials, varies. The records that make up this series were primarily taken from the main committee records maintained by UUP's statewide secretary. Frequently, however, additional folders for specific committees were encountered during processing and incorporated into this series. Except in a few instances when the additional materials were retained separately because the identity of the individual maintaining the records was known, the new materials were interfiled in chronological order into the main committee files, which were themselves organized, to the extent possible, into chronological order during processing. The records for the Legislation Committee during the 1980s were in particular disarray and it was only possible to put them in rough chronological order. Throughout this series, undated materials were kept near their original location but due to the sometimes widely varying dates of the documents found on either side of undated documents, some undated materials may not be correctly located by date. The names of a few committees and task forces have changed over the years, however for the most part just one name is used for each committee in the folder list for this series.

Materials related to committee work during the mid-1970s can also be found in the SPA/UUP Administrative Office General Files in Series 2 of Subgroup II, usually under the name of the topic that each committee dealt with rather than the committee name itself (i.e., Legislation or Membership rather than Legislation Committee or Membership Committee). Committee files for 1975-1981 are also located in Subgroup III, Subseries 3.1, Wakshull Administration, Subject Files. Finally, the project and subject files in Series 5 of Subgroup III include materials relating to the work of some committees, task forces, and working groups during the Reilly presidency from May 1987 to May 1993.