Category: ACE News

ACE Members,

Personal Cell Phones
Are you using your personal cell phone for college/district business? STOP! 🛑

First, there is a district smartphone allowance if calling or texting is asked of you:

If your manager or supervisor is requiring you to use a smartphone as a tool to do your job, the college/district should pay to provide it (and they do for many employees.) Again, STOP if you are doing this for free and ask about receiving the cell phone stipend. The Cisco Jabber desktop application is the method provided for maintaining contact with your supervisor/manager and authenticating using Duo. The onus is on the district to provide what is necessary to complete your work. If Jabber is not functional, let your supervisor/manager know.

Second, you are inviting a workplace related investigation into your personal life if you are using a personal device (phone, computer, tablet, etc.) to store work related text messages, emails, and documents. That device can be seized, and all its contents can be examined. Keep your work data completely separate from your personal data.

The following sections of the agreement in our contract are intended to maintain boundaries if work creeps into your unpaid personal time:

13.2.3 … For the purpose of determining the number of hours worked, time during which the worker is excused from work because of holidays, sick leave, vacation, compensatory time off, or other paid leave of absence shall be considered as time worked by the worker.

13.2.4 Call Back Time

Occasionally a worker may be called back for work in the evening or on a weekend to accommodate a special need. In such cases, travel time to and from home will be counted as time worked. In order to make the disturbance of normal time off worthwhile, the pay for combined work and travel time shall be for a minimum of four hours.

13.2.6.1 Stand-By

No worker shall be required or requested to be available for handling potential emergency situations or available to answer questions by telephone after he or she has clocked out for the day.

13.2.6.2 Compensation for Work Performed after Workers have Clocked Out for the Day

Workers who are contacted by telephone, beeper, or computer after they have clocked out for the day, but prior to 11:00 p.m., to answer questions or handle emergencies from home, shall be paid a minimum of fifteen (15) minutes overtime and shall be paid in quarter hour (15 minute) increments after the first fifteen (15) minutes.

Workers who are contacted by telephone, beeper or computer after 11:00 p.m. to answer questions or handle emergency situations from home shall be paid a minimum of two hours overtime.

Workers who are contacted by telephone, beeper, or computer for emergencies which begin prior to 11:00 p.m., but continue past 11:00 p.m., will be paid the two-hour minimum.

Your supervisor/manager contacting you while you are on leave is not ok.

Contact an ACE steward if you are continuously being asked to use your personal cell phone.

CalPERS Service Credit Purchase
We’ve had a number of former temporary employees join us as full-time employees. You may be eligible to purchase service credit if you worked for a CalPERS-covered employer before you became a CalPERS member. CalPERS has a number of resources on the topic, but the process begins with them:

From “A Guide to Your CalPERS Service Credit Purchase Options” (LINK):
To request your service credit electronically, log in to your myCalPERS account at https://my.calpers.ca.gov/
On the home page under Service Credit, select Make a Service Credit Purchase

Depending on the type of service credit you are requesting, certification may be required
If certification is needed from an employer or reciprocal agency, you and the agency will be notified electronically The agency will have 30 days to provide the required certification to CalPERS

Per Payroll:

Once the request is received in CalPERS, HR validates the employment & position data in the request (if there are errors, it will be rejected) and Payroll completes the pay history by month and HR finishes off with certification within 30 days upon the member’s request.

More Information:
CalPERS Quick Tip | Service Credit Purchase (YouTube LINK)
CalPERS Service Credit (YouTube LINK)
CalPERS Service Credit Cost Estimator (LINK)

For those that have taken a leave of absence, you may also be eligible to purchase service credit. Use cost estimator link above to see if the leave type (maternity/parental, education, service, sabbatical, serious illness.) you’ve taken qualifies.

Fall Mask Policy
Survey results are available here (LINK.)

Quick takeaways:

• 136 of 337 members participated (40% response rate)
• The majority of ACE members do not want covid-19 policy updates on Friday nights.
• The majority of respondents were from public facing offices.

Why did ACE conduct a survey?
To determine what we want as a membership and respond accordingly as representatives. ACE is committed to ensuring the health and safety of our members.

Why would ACE demand to bargain the latest policy?
The district is compelled to negotiate the impact of unannounced unilateral changes when asked to do so by ACE. The survey results speak to our overall concern. We’ve never really known the impact of covid-19 on district employees due to lack of a “covid dashboard” displaying statistics. As such we have submitted an information request for case and exposure data throughout this year. Again, ACE is committed to ensuring the health and safety of our members.

To be honest, I expected this issue would have been resolved within an hour. ACE has a history of arriving at reasonable compromises. At this time district administration is refusing to sit down to have conversation to discuss this matter even after delivering our survey data. In the past we’ve submitted similar feedback to shape policy and been alerted prior to implementation:

Per Judy Aug 16 : “After a robust discussion at this afternoon’s Consultation Task Force meeting, we reached consensus to continue to require face coverings in all indoor classes and public-facing offices and to recommend masks in all other areas.”

Per Judy Sep 23: “As I stated in my original message, this change does not eliminate the ability of faculty and managers to require masking in their respective instructional and public-facing areas or the ability of individual employees to continue to wear masks as they choose.”

We attended a week’s worth of “opening day” events in person where this could have been announced, addressed, and discussed.

It’s been said, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Currently we’ve been reduced to the bare minimum entitled to us by virtue of our position. Our agreement has been violated, our demand to bargain remains unresolved, and to date our voice has been disregarded.

I am committed to keeping you informed. I do my best to keep these communications as factual as possible, but there are circumstances when it is challenging not to be agitated. ACE continues to fight for dignity and respect on the job for the members we represent.

In Solidarity,

Scott Olsen (he/him) | ACE President
https://acefhda.org | olsenscott@fhda.edu
650-949-7789 | M-F 8:00am-5:00pm

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 3^rd.

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