Message from President Phillip Smith – The proposal to create a UUP Retiree Chapter raises monumentally important issues for our union, and I believe every member should have as much information possible prior to a vote at the Spring Delegate Assembly. That is why this month, I am giving up my "To the point" space to allow you to read two opposing views on the subject. Please tell your delegates how you feel about the proposed constitutional amendment so they can act in your behalf at the DA.

Point: When the statewide Committee on Active Retired Membership (COARM – comprised of one elected chair and seven regional elected reps) was established, there were only a few hundred retirees. Now there are over 3,000 and – with healthy living, good medical coverage and a dose of good luck – we hope to add hundreds more in the next few years. With so many members to represent, a standing committee that must answer to the Executive Board and to the president for every decision is no longer viable. Retirees, many of who helped to build our union, have a lot to offer UUP. Years of experience and passion have served and will continue to serve our members and the entire labor movement. But a union is like a constantly growing organism, and new members, new leadership, must be nurtured and developed if the union is to continue its growth.

So we have a dilemma: How can we continue to use our retirees: abilities and their devotion to unionism and, at the same time, encourage and facilitate new leadership? We believe the answer is in the constitutional proposal to create a retiree chapter (see pages 23-25) with 23 delegates: a chair, a financial officer, seven regional directors and 14 at-large delegates. Of course, many retirees want to continue to be active in their local chapters and that is indeed beneficial for our union. Retirees should continue to serve their local chapters by participating in all functions, as committee members or chairs, as mentors, as members of the local executive board. However, if retirees who are no longer part of the bargaining unit continue to hold elective office at the chapter, it will discourage the creation of new leadership. Thus, the new constitutional language prohibits retirees from holding elective office at the chapters.

There will be a number of retirees who do not wish to see this change; they want to continue to serve their chapters in elective office. We hope they will see that for the future of the union, it is time to pass the torch. Retirees can work, they can mentor, they can advocate, they can aid the active members in numerous ways. But it is crucial that UUP develop new leadership. The creation of a Retiree Chapter should be a win/win situation for UUP. It will help UUP develop new leadership but, at the same time, it will strengthen the retiree organization. It will increase the independence of the retirees, but most critically, it will guarantee that retirees will have a strong base of 23 delegates at the Delegate Assembly. As more and more chapters develop new leadership, as they should, fewer and fewer retirees will be elected as officers and delegates. A retiree chapter will mean that retirees will continue to have a strong voice in the affairs of the union they helped to build.

– Judy Wishnia, Stony Brook

Counterpoint: Discussion during Delegate Assemblies in 2006 showed delegates: unease about changes in retiree organization. Not until August 2007 did the Executive Board adopt a "new" version of the 2005 amendment, rescinded it, then proposed it anew in December. Despite two years of presentations, discussions, hearings, debate, and task-forcing, the Board offers nothing new-the proposed chapter:s executive board hardly differs from our Committee on Active Retired Membership (COARM). The "new" amendment duplicates the 2005 amendment, but deletes language on NYSUT convention seating and prohibits retirees from chairing UUP standing committees (two retirees have done that since 1981). Even a typo from the original "Chapter" language survived into December.

Advocates claim a retiree chapter would strengthen UUP. But the proposal lowers the DA seating formula from one to 75 academic or professional members to one to 70. That may sound like a reasonable trade-off for moving 3,000-plus retirees into a free-standing chapter, but the effect is just the opposite. Using fall 2007 membership figures, the new ratio reduces academic seats in the DA by 16. Fourteen campus chapters lose one delegate; one loses two. Three chapters would lose a professional delegate. For 16 chapters, the numbers do not change.

But for retirees, delegate seating jumps from one to 23, a potentially powerful voting bloc. Some retirees might enjoy becoming power brokers, but most retired members serving in elective or appointed positions do that out of a sense of commitment, not power. Many active retirees feel that they are useful to their chapters, their union and the University. We are walking history, institutional memory, guides that can be consulted about the past to help shape the future.

The proposal would prohibit retired members from serving in any elected position in their campus chapters. But where a chapter elects grievance or newsletter chairs, for example, the amendment would prohibit chapter members from voting for the person they believed most competent, retired or not.

Many UUP retirees continue an association with their home campuses, with office and library space, emeritus/a titles, retiree associations, event admission discounts, general meetings or luncheons. They may serve on college heritage, fund-raising, search and other committees and sometimes remain on departmental mailing lists. Unlike other state employees or elementary and secondary educators, our people remain part of their college-a retiree asked where he or she has retired from will almost always include the campus name, not an amorphous "State University of New York." No one proposes a centralized retiree center at State University Plaza in Albany, and UUP should not try to impose an equivalent organizational structure on retired members.

We would hope that delegates choose to end this ongoing "solution in search of a problem" (to quote Harvey Axlerod of SUNY Buffalo) by voting it down at the Spring Delegate Assembly.

– Ed Alfonsin, Potsdam, and Mac Nelson, Fredonia