Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario
AMAPCEO, formerly known as the Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario, is a trade union representing public servants in the Canadian Province of Ontario. The name is pronounced "a-map-see-oh", and is typically displayed with the tagline "Ontario's Professional Employees".
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| Full name | Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1992 |
| Members | 14,000 |
| Key people | Dave Bulmer, president; Cynthia Watt, vice-president; Glynn Robinson, secretary; Chris Harper, treasurer; Angela Freeman, board chair; Rob Smalley, chief operating officer |
| Office location | Toronto, Ontario |
| Country | Canada |
| Website | www.amapceo.on.ca |
AMAPCEO represents just over 14,000 professional and supervisory public servants, most of whom work directly for the Government of Ontario in the Ontario Public Service (or OPS). The union also represents six bargaining units outside the OPS in the Broader Public Sector (or BPS).
Overview
Of Canada's ten provinces and three territories, Ontario is the most populous (at 14.3 million in April 2018, 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 twelve cities outside Canada. The six BPS bargaining units consist of: the Office of the Ontario Child Advocate (OCA), originally established as an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and more recently merged with the Office of the Ombudsman (also an independent office of the Legislature); 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, but more recently merged with the Office of the Ombudsman. (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, educators, information technology professionals, scientists, chaplains, veterinarians, program supervisors, clinical co-ordinators, psychiatric patient advocates, media relations and communications officers, epidemiologists, arts granting officers and many others. The union also represents senior economic officers in the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, who are based in Canadian high commissions, embassies and consulates abroad.
History
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 (and who were not legally entitled, therefore, to join a union). In 1993, AMAPCEO negotiated a Social Contract sectoral framework agreement with the provincial government on behalf of 12,000 non-unionized 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 in a single bargaining unit within the OPS; total bargaining unit membership has more than tripled in size since certification, encompassing sIx bargaining units in both the OPS and the BPS.
AMAPCEO celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2012 and its 25th anniversary in 2017. Since its establishment in 1992, AMAPCEO has negotiated contracts with governments representing all three of Ontario's major political parties.
Governance
Under a governance structure implemented on January 1, 2017, members are assigned to one of eleven geographic Districts based on where they work; there are eight Districts in the City of Toronto and three outside Toronto, proportionate to the distribution of AMAPCEO members across the province. Ten of the Districts are about the same size (roughly between 1,000 and 1,300 members), with the Northern District slightly smaller. The AMAPCEO Board of Directors consists of fifteen members: the four executive officers (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer), who are elected by Delegates at the annual convention, and eleven Directors, each elected from and by the members in one of the 11 Districts.
The Board Director in each District presides over a District Executive Committee, consisting of that District's Delegates, who are elected roughly on the basis of one Delegate for every 50 members. The annual convention consists of the fifteen 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, to ensure that all bargaining units are represented at the annual convention.) All Delegates and members of the AMAPCEO Board serve two-year terms, staggered so that approximately one-half of the Delegates, Directors and executive officers are elected annually.
Leadership
Before his initial election as President on January 1, 2015, Dave Bulmer, worked as a professional educator in London for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. He has subsequently been re-elected. He previously served as AMAPCEO's Treasurer and before that, as a Director on the Board. Vice-President Cynthia Watt was first elected effective January 1, 2016, and has subsequently been re-elected. At the time of her election, Watt worked as a senior policy advisor on postsecondary matters, based in Toronto, where she was chair of the AMAPCEO chapter in the Ministries of Education and Advanced Education and Skills Development. During their terms of office, the President and Vice-President are on full-time leave from their bargaining unit positions and work in the AMAPCEO office in Toronto.
The other two elected executive officers are the Secretary, Glynn Robinson, and the Treasurer, Chris Harper. The Executive Committee consists of the four executive officers plus the Board Chair, who is a Director elected by the Board each year (currently Angela Freeman, Director for the University/Toronto South District).
Dave Bulmer is AMAPCEO's third President and Cynthia Watt is the fourth Vice-President. They were preceded by: Founding President Janet Ballantyne, 1992-1995 (the Vice-President during that period was Arthur (Art) Halpert), and immediate past President Gary (Gary) Gannage, 1995-2014 (who worked with former Vice-Presidents Robert (Bob) Stambula, 1995-2013, and Sally Jurcaba [aka Sally Pardaens, and previously as Sally Rudka], whose sole two-year term in 2014-2015 straddled the final year of the Gannage Era and the first year of Dave Bulmer's presidency).
AMAPCEO employs just over 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 the union's employer counterparts are based). All employees in the office, except for the senior management staff, are members of a bargaining unit represented by the national Canadian union, Unifor. Rob Smalley is the Chief Operating Officer. Other senior management staff include: Angela Stewart, Director of Finance and Administrative Services; Jennifer Sherwood, Director of Membership Services, and Farrah Charania, Manager, Human Resources and Administrative Services.