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 | 13,000 |
| Key people | Dave Bulmer, president; Cynthia Watt, vice-president; Glynn Robinson, secretary; Chris Harper, treasurer; 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 by its acronym AMAPCEO, pronounced "a-map-see-oh", plus its 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. Of Canada’s ten provinces, 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 in 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 Ontario Public Service (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. As of April 1st, 2016, 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 provincial government operation; the Medical Advisory Secretariat 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. (An eighth unit at the Ontario Racing Commission was also represented by AMAPCEO until its April 2016 merger with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.)
Over 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, the Association 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 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 almost tripled in size since certification. AMAPCEO celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2012, the 20th anniversary of voluntary recognition in 2015 and the 20th anniversary of the negotiation of our first collective agreement in 2016.
The founding president was Janet Ballantyne; the founding Vice-President was Art Halpert. In 1995, Gary Gannage and Robert Stambula were elected, respectively, as President and Vice-President. Stambula resigned on September 30, 2013, when he retired from the OPS, and was succeeded by Sally Pardaens (subsequently known as Sally Jurcaba), a former Chair of the Finance Chapter, who was elected at the 2013 convention. Gannage completed his final two-year term on December 31st, 2014. In November 2014, the Annual Delegates' Conference elected Dave Bulmer, who was then AMAPCEO Treasurer, as the new President to succeed Gannage, effective January 1st, 2015. At the time of his election, Bulmer worked in London for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care; before being elected to the Board, he was the London Chapter Chair. At the November 2015 ADC, Cynthia Watt, then Chair of the Education/Training, Colleges and Universities Chapter, was elected to succeed Jurcaba as Vice-President. Besides Bulmer and Watt, the other members of the four-person Executive Committee are the Secretary, Glynn Robinson, and the Treasurer, Chris Harper. The Chair of the Board of Directors is Hugh Montgomerie and the Board Vice-Chair is Peter Dewar.
At a special convention of delegates held in June 2016, AMAPCEO adopted a new governance structure to take effect on January 1st, 2017. The two current central governing bodies (the 9-member Board of Directors and 32-member Provincial Council) will be merged into a single Board of Directors consisting of 16 members: four executive officers (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer) to be elected, as now, by the delegates' convention, plus 12 Directors, each to be elected directly by members from each of 12 new Districts. The 12 Districts, consisting of roughly equal membership determined geographically, will replace 23 Chapters, most of which are ministry- or bargaining unit-based. Three of the Districts will represent members outside the City of Toronto and the remaining 9 Districts will represent members working within Toronto. The new governance structure is expected to provide more effective representation for members, strengthen the development of leadership capacity and promote greater member engagement in the work of the organization.
AMAPCEO employs approximately 40 full-time professional staff who provide advice and services to members from an office in Toronto (1 Dundas Street West at the corner of Dundas and Yonge Streets - a location close to where most members work and where our employer counterparts also work). All employees in the office except 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. Other senior staff include: Farrah Charania, Manager, Human Resources and Administrative Services; Ankur Lall, Manager, Strategic Planning and Projects; Michael Mouritsen, Director, Membership Services; Rob Smalley, Director, Labour Relations Services; and Angela Stewart, Director, Finance and Administration Services. 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; Burke Moffat, Team Lead, Labour Relations and Bargaining; and Jennifer Sherwood, Team Lead, Member Engagement.