(ROCHESTER, NEW YORK) - If there’s one lesson United University Professions (UUP) has learned from its first proud half-century as a pioneering Higher Education Union, it’s this: No sooner do you achieve one victory for your Members than you see your next fight for equity and justice coming right at you.

In other words, as UUP President Fred Kowal reminded Delegates at the Fall 2023 Delegate Assembly that was held at the Rochester Hyatt Regency and Rochester Convention Center earlier this month that there is rarely time to sit back and relish your wins.

The Delegate Assembly doubled as a policy-making assembly and a joyous commemoration of UUP’s 1973 founding.

The celebration also marked recent back-to-back victories for UUP: One of the best budgets for the State University of New York (SUNY) in more than a decade - thanks in large part to UUP’s advocacy - and one of the strongest contracts ever, which Members resoundingly ratified in August.

In his plenary address, Kowal deftly dovetailed an overview of UUP’s guiding principles - equity, Social Justice and a commitment to a well-funded Public University System as a path to a productive, successful life - with a call to action regarding the latest threat to SUNY.

“For those of us in UUP, these principles will be needed as we confront the destructive forces of fifteen years of austerity budgets for SUNY,” Kowal told an assembly that included many past UUP Leaders who could recount their own battles against retrenchment and threats of layoffs.

Even when SUNY finally got the funding it needed to help 19 financially distressed campuses, the SUNY Central Administration sent only half of the $163 million to the most cash-strapped campuses.

The balance went to other purposes in the SUNY System.

UUP’s goal, as Kowal laid it out, is to stop planned program cuts at SUNY Potsdam and prevent the administrative fiasco at Potsdam from replicating throughout the SUNY System.

To the UUP Potsdam Chapter Delegation, led by Chapter President Kevin Smith, Kowal pledged: “We are all in Potsdam, because that’s where the battle has been joined.”

To Continue Reading This Labor News Report, Go To: UUP delegates celebrate 50th, prepare to fight SUNY Potsdam cuts (uupinfo.org)