Bargaining
Purity Life Health Products LP – Bargaining 101
June 12, 2026
To: All MoveUP members at Purity Life Health Products LP
Congratulations on becoming members of MoveUP!
The next step to your union journey is to negotiate for your first collective agreement! This is big part of building a collective voice at your workplace, and we are looking forward to working with you on this next stage.
Our goal will be to head to bargaining table as soon as possible to begin negotiating your first collective agreement. Your input and participation are key to our success at the table so we can negotiate a collective agreement that works for you.
We will be holding a membership meeting shortly to go over what you can expect in collective bargaining. In the meantime, here’s briefly what you can expect
Your bargaining committee
Your bargaining committee is who represents you at the table. It is made up of your coworkers and colleagues to ensure your voice and interests are reflected in these upcoming discussions.
The committee will be informed by your feedback and input. You will be able to have your input by completing a bargaining survey. Using the information collected from those surveys, your committee will put together bargaining proposals to go to table.
We will be looking for volunteers who are interested in joining the bargaining committee shortly. Keep an eye out in your email for our upcoming bulletin about joining our bargaining committee and thank you in advance to everyone who is interested in volunteering to represent your colleagues at the bargaining table!
Bargaining survey
The bargaining survey will be sent to your personal email address. It is important that we have your most current contact information. You can update us by logging on to the MoveUP Member Portal. If you have not yet created a Member Portal profile you can find information on how to do that here.
The survey will ask a series of questions about your work and conditions of employment. It is designed to find out what is good about your current working conditions and what could be improved upon.
Please take the time to carefully answer the survey so that we get the best information possible and we can address your interests and concerns at the bargaining table.
Proposals
Once the surveys have been completed, your bargaining committee will take all the information they have collected, along with the one-on-one feedback they’ve heard from you, and draft a series of proposals with your interests and priorities in mind.
It’s a balancing act: no one ever gets everything, but a skillful committee backed up by a determined membership can move the ball forward.
Of course, your employer will bring their own proposals to the table. It’s the bargaining committee’s job to decide if those proposals are in the best interests of their coworkers.
Exchanging proposals
When we meet with your employer to exchange proposals, we often start with the simpler issues first before moving on to discuss more difficult subjects. These simpler issues are often referred to as non-monetary items. Items like wages and benefits – anything dealing with money – are generally the last to be discussed and these are known as monetary items.
If an agreement is reached:
Your bargaining committee and Purity Life Health Product LP will declare they have a tentative agreement. The tentative agreement will then come to you to review and decide whether to accept.
The bargaining committee will give you their recommendation on whether you should vote for or against the agreement. Then, the choice is yours!
If the majority of your coworkers vote to accept the agreement, you have a new agreement.
If you don’t accept the agreement, your bargaining committee and your employer may return to the table, or another path may be required if it’s determined a deal cannot be reached through conventional bargaining. If this is the case, one or both sides may consider some type of job action to turn up the pressure to reach an agreement.
If an agreement can’t be reached:
If the parties are at an impasse and cannot agree on the terms for a new collective agreement, one of several things may happen.
Our union may ask for a strike vote, which would authorize you to take some sort of job action, ranging from a ban on overtime to a full strike walk-out. The employer has that right too and can issue lockout notice. It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of all agreements – over 95 per cent – are concluded without job action.
Your union or your employer may apply for mediation to get a neutral third party to help. In rare circumstances, we may be ordered into binding arbitration, where an arbitrator decides the last outstanding issues.
I hope this answers any questions you may have and makes the process clear.
If you have any further questions or comments, please email me at ateymory@moveuptogether.ca.
In solidarity,
Alina Teymory
Union Representative