Dynacare lab workers on strike in Manitoba after contract talks hit impasse over wages: union

Some non-urgent diagnostic tests will be delayed for two weeks in Manitoba after Dynacare lab workers walked off the job across the province.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals says 350 laboratory technicians and technologists are on strike as of 6 a.m. Tuesday, halting operations at all Dynacare locations in the province.

Workers started to picket outside Dynacare’s Garden City, King Edward and St. Boniface locations in Winnipeg, in addition to locations in Brandon, Winkler and Steinbach, at 8 a.m. Tuesday, the union said.

The workers have not had a contract since the last one expired April 1. The union says contract talks collapsed last week after the company refused to raise wages Friday.

The union says its workers earn as much as 20 to 50 per cent less than counterparts in the public system and workloads are heavy.

Shayleen Quiring, a Dynacare lab technician, said she and her colleagues are “tired of working understaffed” and for less pay than their Shared Health counterparts.

“When we do the same work as the hospitals, and we’re getting paid 20, 50 per cent less, it’s a little bit crazy,” she told CBC News outside the St. Boniface location.

“We’re on our feet eight hours a day. It’s exhausting,”

In light of the labour disruption, Shared Health is asking Manitobans not to go to emergency rooms or urgent care departments to get bloodwork done, unless their doctor has told them to.

Shared Health says it will expand both capacity and hours at select diagnostic service locations “in phases” and add more appointment and collection spaces.

Temporary collection locations may also be added to meet the need if demand remains high, the health authority said.

Testing delays

Dr. Chris Christodoulou, interim CEO of Shared Health, said those measures are to prioritize patients with urgent tests, including cancer and preoperative surgical tests.

Certain tests ordered as part of routine physical exams will be delayed during the strike, he said.

“We’ve asked our physicians to delay those tests for a minimum of two weeks … based on the clinical need of the patient,” he told CBC Manitoba’s Information Radio on Tuesday.

The health authority is “doing everything we can” to maintain services for people with time-sensitive testing needs, Christodoulou said.

“The longer this continues, the greater the impacts this will have on our staff being able to deliver these services.”

Dynacare — a subsidiary of Labcorp, an American corporation — became Manitoba’s only private outpatient provider for laboratory services following the purchase of competitor Unicity Labs in 2017, the union said previously.

Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino filed an application to the Manitoba Labour Board last week, asking it to issue an interim order that the 350 employees remain on the job at Dynacare locations across the province.

The board is scheduled to listen to that request Tuesday morning.

Jason Linklater, president of the MAHCP, said the Dynacare workers he represents “feel betrayed” by Manitoba’s NDP government because of its request to the labour board.

“These are the workers they should be standing with, not American-owned companies with $1.2 billion in profits,” he said Tuesday.

The union had an agreement with Dynacare that said their work doesn’t need to continue during a strike, since people can go to Shared Health labs for testing, he said.

“Certainly a strike would cause disruptions and backlogs,” he said. “But really that is the point — to put pressure on Dynacare to get to a deal. It’s meant to put pressure on the American company to pay their people what they’re worth.”

Last month, the union said the workers voted 99.7 per cent in favour of strike action, with 87 per cent of them casting ballots.