When AUPE entered a critical round of bargaining across four units — the Government Services Bargaining Committee (GSBC), General Support Services, Nursing Care, and Covenant Care — leadership faced a defining question: how do you keep tens of thousands of members genuinely informed and involved when so many work rotating shifts, irregular hours, and around-the-clock schedules? Bargaining updates couldn't simply be posted and forgotten. Members needed to hear directly from their chief negotiators and bargaining committees, understand the strategy behind the proposals, and have the chance to ask the Secretary-Treasurer, President, and Vice-Presidents how each element of the developing contract would affect their unit and their own lives. Just as importantly, AUPE needed a way to bring members into the decision-making process — to make every member feel that the union and the committee were working on their behalf, not above them. A one-time, single-format meeting would have left shift workers and remote members behind, and with them, the union's clearest read on where members actually stood.

AUPE partnered with Converso to deliver telephone and online town halls designed around the realities of members' working lives. Across 14 engagements, each one was run as 3 to 4 separate events at different times of the day, so that whether a member was finishing a night shift, between rotations, or home on a day off, there was always a session they could join. Rather than asking members to click a link, log in, or navigate to a meeting, Converso called them directly — removing the friction that quietly erodes participation. Once connected, members weren't passive listeners: the two-way live format let them ask questions and give feedback in real time, hearing immediate answers from leadership and the bargaining committees. In some cases, members gathered together and joined as a group by phone or listened to the live audio stream online. The result was a forum where strategy could be explained, concerns could be voiced, and leadership could gauge — live and in the moment — how committed members were to specific elements of the contract, and how prepared they were to take job action if it came to that.

• Each of the 14 engagements ran as 3 to 4 separate town halls at different times of day, ensuring day-shift, night-shift, and off-duty members all had a session they could join.
• Rather than asking members to chase a link or log in, Converso called them directly and connected them into a live, two-way forum — so members could ask questions and give feedback in real time, with answers straight from their chief negotiators and leadership.

Over 14 engagements spanning four bargaining units, AUPE reached its members where they were and when they were available — turning bargaining updates into genuine two-way conversations. The live, call-out format drove participation that a single scheduled meeting could never have matched, and the immediate feedback gave the bargaining committees something invaluable: a real-time understanding of member sentiment, commitment, and readiness as negotiations progressed. Members didn't just receive information — they shaped how their committees approached the negotiation, the proposals on the table, and the path toward a final contract. The town halls reinforced exactly what AUPE set out to prove: that the union was listening, that every voice carried weight, and that members were genuine partners in the decisions affecting their working lives.