ACE Members,
Covid-19 Safety & Mask Survey
We want to know your opinion. We’re asking the same set of questions as we have in the past along with a couple new ones, to determine the policy change outcome we should negotiate for.
Complete the survey if you have not done so already❗
Policy & Bargaining Process
ACE has submitted a demand to bargain the change in working conditions and grievance due to our exclusion from policy development. Our procedure is to always bring our collective voice to the negotiating table. (See survey above☝️) The action we’ve taken should cause Chancellor’s Cabinet to hit pause on their unilateral decision while feedback is collected. We’ll be prepared to navigate this discussion per our agreement as we should have done originally. I hope to hear a response from the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor of HR soon and have this resolved in advance of the Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, October 3rd.
This confusion would have all been avoided with a conversation, per Article 1, section 2 (LINK):
…the adoption or modification of rules, regulations, policies, and practices is discretionary with the District; provided, however, the District shall notify ACE prior to any implementation, and shall afford sufficient time to negotiate over the effects of such a change, or to meet and confer.
No notice was shared with ACE prior to this decision being made on Friday night, which is a contract violation.
Parking Tags
If you have a pre-pandemic FHDA sticker on your car, you may have noticed the expiration date is fast approaching. Initial word from the district is that physical parking tags are no longer being made by our previous vendor. In the future the district may have to adopt a high-tech license plate reader system for parking enforcement. More information to come.
403(b) and 457(b) Vendors
On district opening day a few members approached me with 403(b) and 457(b) questions. ACE has brought in 403bwise.org in the past to provide objective training on these voluntary employee benefits and we will do so again. In the meantime, their website has a wealth of self-paced education (LINK) and a rating system for vendors (LINK). Fidelity and Vanguard are their top rated “Green +” 403(b) vendors. CalSTRS Pension2 is rated “Green” and would be our top 457(b) provider per their independent rankings. Participant data for those plans shows that the majority of people elect for one of those and contribute the greatest dollar amount per participant.
Would you like Fidelity as a 457(b) option? Send me an email expressing your interest. Business Services asks for an arbitrary number of interested employees before making a change to the plan, lets see if we can get there.
Reminder: None of the vendors are vetted or endorsed by the district. If you choose to engage with anyone, ask if they are a Certified Financial Planner(CFP) and insist they abide by the fiduciary standard – putting your financial interests above their own. For more details check out this page on working with a financial professional (LINK). Any salesperson can call themselves a financial advisor, but the standards for a CFP or fiduciary are higher.
In Solidarity,
Scott Olsen (he/him) | ACE President
https://acefhda.org | olsenscott@fhda.edu
650-949-7789| M-F 8:00am-5:00pm