ACS NEWS News, Reports, People, Meetings November 8,1971

New petition to amend ACS Constitution Proposed amendment to Objects would specifically

define duties of Committee on Professional Relations

As ACS elections draw to a close Nov. 29 with most nominees including professionalism in their platforms, another petition to amend the ACS Constitution to enlarge the Society's role in professional activities has been received by Executive Director Fred­erick T. Wall. Unlike the petition sub­mitted shortly before the Los Angeles meeting, aimed at amending the Ob­jects of ACS (Article I I ) , the new peti­tion would amend the articles con­cerning the Council (Article VII) and the Board of Directors (Article VIII) .

The earlier petition failed to gain "urgent" consideration by the Council and is therefore held over for possible action at the spring meeting in Boston. However, the Committee on Constitu­tion and Bylaws has prepared a sub­stitute petition which is still in the works, also for Council action at Bos­ton, and will receive prior considera­tion, in keeping with the Bylaws.

The petition—containing 66 signa­tures to date—seeks to enlarge ACS's professional activities by very specific additions to the role of the Committee on Professional Relations (CPR), one of the standing committees of the ACS

Petition seeks to enlarge ACS role in professional affairs

The proposed amendment to Article VII (Duties of the Council) of the American Chemical Society Constitution reads: The Council shall have a Committee on Professional Relations which shall su­pervise surveys of economic status and employment of the chemical profes­sions, prepare standards of employ­ment for the chemical professions and publish lists of employers who comply or fall short of compliance with these standards, regularly review employment services offered by the Society and re­strict them to employers who meet the Society's standards of employment, rec­ommend appropriate sanctions against those employers who do not meet the Society's professional standards, super­vise the Society's activities in profes­sional pension programs and conduct liaison work cooperatively with other professional organizations to raise the standards of all professions in the U.S.

Council. At present, Sec. 3 of Bylaw III provides for a standing committee on professional relations and broadly defines its duties. Those duties in­clude initiating investigations and making recommendations to the Coun­cil concerning matters bearing on pro­fessional relations, serving as an ad­visory body to groups of members seeking guidance on matters of a pro­fessional nature, assisting in the de­velopment and implementation of the Society's programs for the advance­ment of the profession of chemistry and chemical engineering, and co­operating with other Society groups in advancing public recognition of the professional status of chemists and chemical engineers.

The newly proposed amendment (see box) would spell out certain duties of the CPR more specifically than do the Bylaws. Commenting on the amendment, Dr. Raymond P. Mariella, chairman of CPR, says, "We [CPR] are already doing most of the things mentioned in the amendment and will continue to do them. In ad­dition, we will broaden our range of activities to include very probably all of the items discussed in the [pro­posed] amendment." For example, standards of employment for the chemical professions are already em­bodied in the ACS Guidelines for Em­ployers. In addition CPR has for many years carried out salary surveys. Recently, at the suggestion of CPR, the ad hoc Committee on Economic Status was formed to provide a complete overview of all aspects of compensa­tion patterns for chemists and chemi­cal engineers. It 's possible, then, that the proposed amendment, if passed, would do little more than state on pa­per what are already the de facto prac­tices of CPR or its Committee on Eco­nomic Status.

A second part of the petition pro­poses an amendment to Article VIII of the Constitution, which defines the duties of the Board of Directors. The amendment would require the Board of Directors "to review the status of employment conditions as reported by the Committee on Professional Rela­tions and direct the executive officers of the Society to take appropriate ac­

tion to effectively maintain the profes­sional standards of the Society."

The petition has been referred by Dr. Wall to the Committee on Con­stitution and Bylaws and to the chair­men of all other standing committees of the Council. Dr. Wall has also brought the petition to the attention of the Society's ad hoc Committee on Professionalism, chaired by President-Elect Max Tishler.

Signers of the petition requested that it be deemed "a matter of ur­gency." The Committee on Constitu­tion and Bylaws will make a recom­mendation on the urgency provision at the Boston meeting of ACS in the spring of 1972. If the Council votes by a three-fourths majority to consider the petition to be urgent, the matter would then come up for immediate action at Boston. Otherwise, it will be dealt with at the 1972 fall meeting.

Correction on Amendment

In the description of the Constitutional amendments for member vote that ap­peared on page 40 of C&EN dated Oct. 11, 1971, there occurred a printer's error with respect to the location of a state­ment to be deleted from the Constitu­tion. The next to the last line of the first column was in error and should have read "Delete Article VIII, Sec. 3(e) reading as follows:". (The deletion was incorrectly identified with Article IX.)

The actual Constitutional statement to be deleted was accurately printed, namely: "The Board of Directors shall appoint all salaried employees of the SOCIETY. Such salaried employees should look to the Board of Directors for guidance and instructions in the per­formance of their duties." This deleted sentence would be replaced by a new statement in Article VI which was ap­proved by the Council and correctly re­ported in the C&EN account.

C&EN regrets the error with respect to the identification of a citation. However, according to legal counsel, the substance of the amendment, which also covered a number of other items, is not affected. Notwithstanding the fact that the printer's error appears to be nonsubstantive, legal counsel has also suggested that any member who has voted on the amendment be per­mitted to change his vote if, in his judg­ment, the error affects his decision. Such changes can be accomplished by letter to the Executive Secretary.

NOV. 8, 1971 C&EN 29