Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario
 | |
| Full name | Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1992 |
| Members | 13,500 |
| Key people | Dave Bulmer, president; Cynthia Watt, vice-president; Glynn Robinson, secretary; Chris Harper, treasurer; Peter Dewar, board chair; Anthony Pizzino, executive director |
| Office location | Toronto, Ontario |
| Country | Canada |
| Website | www.amapceo.on.ca |
The Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario is a trade union representing public sector employees in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It is known exclusively by its acronym AMAPCEO, pronounced "a-map-see-oh", in conjunction with the tagline "Ontario's Professional Employees".
AMAPCEO represents over 13,000 professional and supervisory public servants, most of whom work directly for the Government of Ontario in the Ontario Public Service (or OPS). Of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories, Ontario is the most populous (at 13.6 million in 2014, constituting almost 40 per cent of the Canadian population) and the second largest in area (1.076 million km²).
Ontario's political system is based on the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy and the career public service is apolitical and non-partisan, providing objective advice to, and implementing decisions of, successive governments, regardless of the political party that is elected to form the government at any given time.
AMAPCEO-represented employees in the OPS work in every government ministry and in a number of agencies, boards and commissions in over 130 cities and towns across Ontario and in eleven cities outside Canada. AMAPCEO also represents six bargaining units outside the OPS in the broader public sector (or BPS): the Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth (OPACY), an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario; Public Health Ontario (PHO, formerly known as the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion), an independent provincial Crown agency; Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care (formerly the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre), which was the final psychiatric hospital divested from direct provincial government control; the Evidence Development and Standards Department at Health Quality Ontario (HQO, formerly known as the Ontario Health Quality Council), an independent provincial Crown agency that promotes and monitors quality assurance in the health-care sector; the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an independent agency that promotes and funds artists and arts organizations; and the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner (OFLSC), established as an independent office of the Legislative Assembly in 2014. (A seventh BPS unit at the Ontario Racing Commission was also represented by AMAPCEO until the ORC's 2016 merger with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.)
About eighty per cent of AMAPCEO members work in the provincial capital city of Toronto. Members include policy analysts, financial analysts, auditors, economists, mediators, arbitrators, scientists, chaplains, veterinarians, program supervisors, child and youth advocates, clinical co-ordinators, psychiatric patient advocates, media relations and communications officers, epidemiologists, arts granting officers and many others.
As a trade union, AMAPCEO is relatively young, having been established in 1992 as a grassroots organization to represent employees who, at that time, were excluded from collective bargaining. In 1993, AMAPCEO negotiated a Social Contract sectoral framework agreement with the provincial government on behalf of 12,000 excluded civil servants. When bargaining rights were extended by the government to some previously-excluded employees, AMAPCEO successfully signed up a sufficient number of members (subsequently certified by the Ontario Labour Relations Board) to achieve voluntary recognition by the government as an official bargaining agent in March 1995. At that time, the membership was approximately 4,500 employees; total bargaining unit membership has tripled in size since certification. AMAPCEO celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2012 and will observe its 25th anniversary in 2017.
The founding president was Janet Ballantyne and the first Vice-President was Art Halpert. In 1995, Gary Gannage and Robert Stambula were elected, respectively, as President and Vice-President. Stambula was succeeded in 2013 by Sally Pardaens (subsequently known as Sally Jurcaba). Gannage was succeeded on January 1st, 2015 by current President Dave Bulmer, a professional educator at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in London, Ontario. At the time of his election, Bulmer was AMAPCEO's Treasurer and, before being elected to the Board of Directors, had served as the London Chapter Chair. Cynthia Watt, then Chair of the Education/Training, Colleges and Universities Chapter, was elected to succeed Jurcaba as Vice-President at the 2015 convention, taking office on January 1st, 2016. Besides Bulmer and Watt, the other executive officers are the Secretary, Glynn Robinson, and the Treasurer, Chris Harper.
At a special convention held in June 2016, AMAPCEO adopted a new governance structure and system of member representation that became effective on January 1st, 2017. The new structure is intended to provide more effective representation for members, strengthen the development of union leadership capacity and promote greater member engagement in the work of the organization. One major change saw the functions of two former central governing bodies (a 9-member board and a 32-member council that included board members and chapter chairs) become merged under a single new Board of Directors consisting of 16 members: the four executive officers (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer), who continue to be elected by the annual delegates' convention, plus 12 Directors, each elected directly by and from AMAPCEO members in each of 12 new Districts. Another reform resulted in the 12 Districts, each consisting of roughly equal membership determined geographically, replacing the previous 23 chapters, which were a mix of regionally-based and ministry-affiliated units that ranged considerably in size of membership. Three of the Districts represent members outside the City of Toronto and the remaining 9 Districts represent members working within Toronto, proportionate to the distribution of AMAPCEO members across the province. In a third major change, one of the non-executive Directors is now elected Board Chair and joins the four executive officers on the Board's Executive Committee (the current incumbent is Peter Dewar, Director for the University/Toronto South District).
The Board Director in each District presides over a District Executive Committee, consisting of a number of Delegates, elected roughly on the basis of one Delegate for every 50 members. The annual convention consists of the sixteen members of the Board of Directors plus all Delegates - just over 200 in total at the present time. (In addition to participating as members of their Districts, members in each of the six BPS bargaining units separately elect one dedicated Delegate from their unit.) All Delegates and members of the AMAPCEO Board serve two-year terms, staggered so that one-half of the Delegates, Directors and executive officers are elected annually. During their elected terms, the President and Vice-President are on full-time leave from their bargaining unit positions and work in the AMAPCEO office.
AMAPCEO employs approximately 40 full-time professional staff who provide advice and services to members from a single office in Toronto (located at 1 Dundas Street West at the corner of Dundas and Yonge Streets - a location close to where most members work and where most of our employer counterparts are based). All employees in the office except for the senior staff are members of a bargaining unit represented by the national Canadian union, Unifor. In May 2014, Anthony Pizzino was named as the inaugural Executive Director (or Chief Administrative Officer) of AMAPCEO. Almost all staff are organized in three departments, each headed by a staff director: Michael Mouritsen, Director, Membership Services, Rob Smalley, Director, Labour Relations Services and Angela Stewart, Director, Finance and Administration Services. Other senior staff include: Farrah Charania, Manager, Human Resources and Administrative Services and Ankur Lall, Manager, Strategic Planning and Projects. As part of an office re-organization implemented on July 1st, 2016, three Team Leads were appointed to enhance service delivery to members: Mark Bonaparte, Team Lead, Dispute Resolution and Burke Moffat, Team Lead, Labour Relations and Bargaining, in the Labour Relations Services Unit, and Jennifer Sherwood, Team Lead, Member Engagement, in the Membership Services Unit. The Executive Assistant to the President is Anthony Schein.