Dynacare workers approve strike mandate

The Brandon Dynacare location could halt operations after the company’s lab workers in the province voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate if negotiations for better wages cannot be met.

Dynacare — a laboratory service provider with 22 locations in Manitoba — tests for a variety of things such as cholesterol, glucose, liver-kidney function, blood counts and more, usually for doctor’s offices.

Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals — which represent almost 350 lab technicians and technologists across the province — said almost every Dynacare member attended the vote over a 48-hour period that closed Wednesday at noon.

The result, he said, was 99.7 per cent approval of the strike mandate.

No strike deadline has been set and no negotiations are scheduled.

“(There’s) no doubt in our mind that their frustration is driven by that gap in wages,” Linklater said in an interview Thursday.

According to Linklater, Dynacare employees make 20 to 50 per cent less than Shared Health employees.

Technicians are 32 per cent behind in wages, making about $9 less an hour, technologists have a $13.50 per hour gap and charge technologists have the largest gap at $19 less, he said.

“The issue for the people at Dynacare is that gap between the public system and them, who do the same work. The positions are the same.”

Linklater claims the reason for the wage gap is a monopoly that Dynacare secured in Manitoba nine years ago, after buying its sole competitor, Unicity Labs.

The company is a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of a North Carolina-based company called Labcorp, the union said in a press release Thursday.

In May 2025, the NDP government signed a five-year contract initially valued at $42.4 million, saying the contract would allow for seven new collection sites to open in the province. Only one location, in Selkirk, has since been built.

“What we know is that the government has signed a contract with Dynacare … Within that contract, they are the sole provider of lab services in the community,” Linklater said.

“It really is an integral part of the system functioning, so a strike or withdrawal of service is not something we want to see at all,” he said.

In the 2024-25 fiscal year, 15 million laboratory tests were conducted by Dynacare in Manitoba. While most of the tests were carried out for private practitioners, some were also requested by public hospitals “in certain situation,” Linklater said.

The Brandon location employs 10 full-time staff and is the company’s only location west of Portage la Prairie.

Linklater says he thinks more people will use the public site at the Brandon Regional Health Centre for testing, if it becomes the only option, but he doesn’t want negotiations to come to that.

“What we’re saying is, let’s do the right thing here, by the proper process, by avoiding any public disturbance.”

Dynacare did not grant an interview with a spokesperson but provided an email statement.

“We respect the right of our employees to bargain in good faith, as represented by a third party. Our focus remains on providing quality health-care services in Manitoba,” the statement said.

Prairie Mountain Health did not comment on the possible impact of a Dynacare strike, directing questions to the provincial government.

A spokesperson for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara provided an email statement late Thursday afternoon.

”We are closely monitoring the situation and will continue to work with health system partners to ensure care is available to Manitobans,” the statement said.

» rgerrard@brandonsun.com