MAPE advances 2022-27 strategic plan and business agent merger
Publish Date
After hundreds of interviews, dozens of meetings and many revisions, MAPE Board of Directors approved a new five-year strategic plan. Highlights include focusing on membership, growing engagement and support of members, negotiations, electoral and legislative work and modernizing our systems.
“Our union is our members, and our members are our union,” said MAPE President Megan Dayton. “In the wake of the Janus court case, as we find our next steps forward, this plan reflects what we need to do.”
Janus vs. AFSCME was the Supreme Court decision in 2018 that obliterated fair share fees for public sector unions like MAPE. The last strategic plan was created in reaction to that decision and helped shepherd MAPE through the aftermath while maintaining strong membership. This next strategic plan aims to build on that momentum growing our membership and power.
“Organized people, organized resources, organized ideas. Those are the pillars of our power,” Dayton said. “Focusing on building those will build our power and ability to win at the bargaining table and at the Capitol.”
To ensure all business agents and leaders have streamlined access to all deployable resources to fight for our members, the business agents ended their split in duties on June 1. Over the last few years, in response to Janus, our business agents were split into enforcement BAs and organizing BAs. This was important at the time, but MAPE can be more powerful with a merged business agent department.
Over the last three months, staff have methodically made this change, including training and outreach to members, with official implementation starting June 1.