Release 1518 introduces a new union reporting program, PPP446,
whose purpose is to provide information about employees who have
taken time off for union business.  Per the release letter, "Under the
current contracts between the University and AFSCME and UPTE,
employees may be eligible to take paid leaves of absence for union
business purposes.  The union must then reimburse the University
for the employee's salary and benefits overhead during the union
business leave period."

Such absences are identified by DOS code 'UBL', which you all have
defined in production.  Pay data is obtained from the DB2 PAR for
an earnings month/year identified in a spec card.  Employee name
is obtained from the PER table in the EDB, but if not found there,
is obtained from the EUD table in the PAR.

Release 1522 is a followup fixit for r1518 and should be installed at
the same time.  It addresses the (unusual) situation mentioned above,
where employee name must be looked up in the PAR database.
PPP446 abended when that situation arose because insufficient
fields were selected from the EUD table to ensure uniqueness.
That problem is corrected in r1522, and additionally a flag is set to
assist in diagnosing potential DB2 abends.

There are no table updates associated with these releases, which is
surprising because usually there are new message numbers to go
with any new program.  I've sent an inquiry to Base Payroll to find
out why existing messages for other programs are being used for
error conditions instead of introducing 44-6nn messages.

May I have your approval to install both releases?  They must be
installed for all sites, though Hastings would have no reason to run
the new program, given that it has no union employees.

Additionally I need your input to determine when PPP446 should be run.
The selection of data based on month/year criteria suggests that it
could be run on a monthly basis, and for that we could add it to the
existing PP*MRK monthly reporting job, which already contains other
union reporting (PPP495).  Alternatively, it could be run on request.
Please let us know if you have a preference.

   bvb