The collection consists of committee memoranda, minutes, correspondence. clippings, reports, questionnaires, and statistics. The administrative records are not complete but do provide an overview of the committee's work, based primarily on files from Robben Fleming for the first two years and from co-chairman George Shultz for the period 1962-1968. Files donated by committee participant James L. Stern contain some administrative papers from the late 1960's, but are primarily his files from projects at Kansas City and Omaha.
ADMINISTRATION records, 1959-1970, consist of clippings, correspondence, memoranda, incomplete minutes, scattered financial records, and a few handwritten notes by George P. Shultz. The public members' efforts to find areas of agreement between the unions and Armour and their strategies for making the committee productive can best be seen in the correspondence. Shultz's memoranda to committee members between meetings often provide summaries of on-going committee work in various cities.
The REPORT series, organized alphabetically by author, consists for the most part of the published and unpublished studies commissioned by the committee. Early reports provide information on economic trends in the meatpacking industry and the status of workers already laid off by Armour, while later reports summarize the committee's response to a particular plant closing. The final report of a committee project can usually be found in the REPORT series, while interim reports are filed in PLANT CLOSINGS under the appropriate city heading. The committee's progress report, 1961, and James L. Stern's, “Improved Manpower Planning in Armour Plant Closings from Oklahoma City in 1960 to Omaha in 1968,” are good sources for comparing the committee's approach to labor displacement problems at the outset of its work and after several years' experience with plant shutdowns.
The SUBJECT FILE, 1941-1967, is based on Shultz's general reference file, and includes annual reports and other documents generated by Armour and Company, as well as memoranda, tables, and articles on other topics of interest to the committee, such as educational programs and retirement plans for workers. The Wilcock-Franke Worker Survey Project file, 1960-1961, contains correspondence and questionnaires that were the basis for their profile of Armour workers laid off at plants closed in 1959 and 1960, before committee assistance was available. Of special note is the file on a new Armour plant at Worthington, Minnesota where a fairly successful program was undertaken to absorb sixty black workers and their families into a small white community, following the shutdown of the Kansas City plant where they had been employed.
The largest series in the collection, PLANT CLOSINGS, 1960-1969, consists of clippings, correspondence, reports, statistics, and other materials documenting the committee's projects in several cities, beginning with the shutdown of the Oklahoma City plant, July, 1960. Correspondence and reports by Edwin Young, then chairman of the University of Wisconsin economics department, comprise much of the Oklahoma City file, as he was hired by the committee to spend a month assisting displaced Armour employes there. Included in the Fort Worth file is a transcript of a press conference given by George P. Shultz, November 7, 1963, where he responds to questions about the committee's aid to Armour workers in that city. A tape recording of the conference is also part of the collection.
The Kansas City and Omaha project files reflect the comprehensive approach the committee was able to take in the later closings. Through the notices to workers in the Kansas City file and especially the newsletter of the UPWA local at Omaha (The Bugle), one can trace the chronology of a shutdown and the options presented to the workers. The committee's efforts to establish educational programs for Armour employes and its work with local, state, and federal employment programs is well documented in each file. There are some statistics for both cities on the age, race, sex, educational background, and seniority of workers facing lay-off as well as statistics on the number of employes receiving assistance from the committee. The Omaha papers also contain minutes of the Armour Coordinating Team, a group of local, business, labor, and governmental representatives who constituted the city's official vehicle for providing assistance to workers.
