Good afternoon! And welcome to the bi-weekly President’s Update, slightly delayed.

Thank you to everyone that joined us at the in-person meeting. It was a strong turn out! We hope everyone joins us on December 10th for our in-person holiday meeting. As a reminder, friends and family are welcome to join. We will be sending out an RSVP form the first week of December. It will be at Trudeau.

With the adoption of the new constitution there has been a slight shift in the EBoard. Matt McDonell has been appointed our Second Vice President and Margolit Sands has joined as an E-Board member-at-large. Melissa Fowlks, after navigating two different negotiations, devoting countless hours to helping members and teaching me how to be better at this, is taking a well deserved break from being Vice President for a few months. It’s going to be difficult without her steady hand and intellect. Jenn Webber will be acting 1st Vice President. Thank you to Matt, Jenn and Margolit for stepping up!

These changes leave us with a temporary vacancy of Recording Secretary (Jenn’s position) and vacancy for Sergeant-at-Arms (Matt McDonell’s former position). If you are interested in either of these positions please reach out.

Our updates include:

1. Survey

2. Pull Notice Update

3. Safety Fair 

4. Budget Timeline and The Re-Org 

5. Prop 50

6. Timecards 

Here we go, starting from the top. 

• Please fill out the survey that went out. 

    From the e-mail that went out on Sunday:

    AFSCME Local 2428 wants to hear your thoughts on how the General Manager leads the District, communicates with staff, and affects the work environment.

There are just over 30 questions in the survey. Your answers are anonymous.

Generalized, compiled data and trends may be communicated to the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors to help them understand how AFSCME employees feel about the effectiveness of the current leadership at the Park District.

Please take a few minutes to fill it out and ask your co-workers to do the same.

• We received notice that members had received DMV pull-notices, and we discussed this at the membership meeting. We spoke with ELR at Meet and Confer, partially because we were not informed that they would be issuing the notices. Below is Meadow’s post on BaseCamp. The bold is my addition.

Update:  we met with the district today to let them know we were not notified of this change for class c licenses. We asked to be noticed and to meet and confer over any policies relating to how this information could be used for discipline. They will provide us with the procedures for how they handle information received. We have asked them to create a policy so people are informed. 

Because are were not properly noticed they agreed to extend the deadline until November 14 and will send an email out with that information.  

Thank you to the members that alerted us to this!  If you are ever asked to sign something you should always check with the union to make sure we are aware so we can ask the district to notice us before asking you to sign something. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we get them. 

• The Safety Fair was a success! New members joined and folks received some pretty cool swag in the form of powerbanks. Special shout out to Jenna Collins for all the prep work she did, Precious Shelton, Jenn Webber and Meadow for the behind the scene work and all the volunteers that came and hung out.

• Proposed Budget and Re-Org: Yesterday, at Meet and Confer, we spoke with ELR about the proposed Re-Org. There are still more questions than answers still, and we are setting up a special meeting to discuss with them further. If you are in an affected classification please e-mail MeetandConfer@afscme2428.org with your thoughts. We are reading all the e-mails we receive to help inform our thoughts and what we ask management. 

We will be speaking at Board Meetings on this topic in November and December, using a template similar to how we have approached the Telework issue. If you are interested in helping to organize around this topic please reach out to us at eboard@afscme2428.org. 

• Prop 50: At the membership meeting we had a speaker from the Contra Costa Labor Council speak to us regarding the importance of voting “YES” on Prop 50. 

Why? Well, Texas redrew congressional districts five years early, under pressure from the President, in order to add more seats to their slim Republican congressional majority. This is only supposed to be done during census years and should be done based on the census, not based on political desire or need. This is bad for the labor movement because part of Project 2025 is getting rid of public sector unions and has already been done so Utah. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have already lost union protection across the country and we want to make sure that we don’t lose the ability to collectively bargain… so, AFSCME, the Contra Costa Labor Council, Alameda Labor Council and a whole slew of others are pushing for “Yes” on 50, which would allow California to redraw our maps in order to add five new Democratic congressional districts.

Some more information: 250912-PROP_50_TALKING_POINTS_2.pdf

• Lastly… check your timecards. If you see irregularities please e-mail us.

Alright! Thank you all! 

More information is coming soon.

Enjoy the beautiful autumn weather,

William and the Eboard