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AFL-CIO Office of the President, State and Local Central Bodies Merger records

 Collection 0019-LBR-RG1-028

After the 1955 merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the assistants to President George Meany, Peter M. McGavin and R.J. Thomas, were responsible for managing the state and local mergers. The records in this collection consist of correspondence, transcripts, minutes, and agreements that describe the steps necessary to unify state and local organizations after the merger on December 7, 1955.

Dates

  • 1955-1962

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.

Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.

Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.

Extent

4.50 Linear Feet

Scope and Content of the Collection

After the 1955 merger of the AFL and CIO, the assistants to President George Meany, Peter M. McGavin and R.J. Thomas, were responsible for managing the state and local mergers. The records in this collection consist of correspondence, transcripts, minutes, and agreements that describe the steps necessary to unify state and local organizations after the merger on December 7, 1955.

Biographical / Historical

The Merger Agreement signed February 9, 1955 Section 6 (g) called for merger of existing state and local central bodies of the AFL and CIO ... within two years after the date of the merger of the two national federations by the process of negotiation and agreement under the guidance of the officers of the merged federation. Administrative responsibility within the Office of the President for bringing about the mergers was given to Peter M. McGavin and R. J. Thomas, assistants to President Meany.

Arrangement

The records in this collection are arranged alphabetically by state.

Custodial History

The George Meany Memorial Archives received these records sometime before 1984. The George Meany Memorial Archives transferred these records as part of a major transfer of their archive and library holdings to the University of Maryland Libraries in 2013.

Processing Information

Peter D. Hoefer at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed these records in 1984. The University of Maryland Libraries received the records and the finding aid in 2013. In 2017, Bria Parker exported and cleaned the finding aid contents from the Eloquent Systems database using OpenRefine, and finally transformed the finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) using a series of programmatic scripts. The finding aid was ingested into ArchivesSpace in 2017, at which point Jennifer Eidson updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Jennifer Eidson also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.

Title
Guide to the AFL-CIO Office of the President, State and Local Central Bodies Merger records
Status
Completed
Author
Processed by Peter D. Hoefer at the George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archives.
Date
1984-07
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Library Details

Part of the Special Collections and University Archives

Contact:
University of Maryland Libraries
Hornbake Library
4130 Campus Drive
College Park Maryland 20742
301-405-9212