Scales are tipped unfairly against Dynacare workers

“The premier has been explicit about how he feels about standing strong against American companies, ensuring that Manitobans are protected. And yet, when it comes to our own workers in this province who are actively being impacted, they’re doing everything they can to stand between these people getting paid properly and protecting an American corporation’s profits.”

— Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals

If you’ve ever stepped foot into a Dynacare centre, particularly in Winnipeg or Brandon, you may well understand just how busy these laboratory and health services facilities can be on a day-to-day basis.

From morning until closure, trained health professionals at Dynacare facilities across the province conduct medical tests and collect specimens like blood work and urine samples. They process thousands of these diagnostic, prenatal and screening tests daily to support the broader health-care system.

These services operate in multiple centres across the province, involving Manitobans from all walks of life. All races, all ages. Every day.

But in recent weeks Dynacare itself has been placed at the centre of a new kind of test, and this time, we’re all in the test tube together.

It’s the first real test for new labour law put in place by the government of Premier Wab Kinew in 2024 — a law that redefined what essential services are for provincially regulated workplaces. Under this law, companies and their employee unions must have an agreement of which employees are essential — which ones must stay on the job during a legal strike for the protection of the health and safety of the public.

Dynacare had that kind of essential employee agreement with its staff and union — the company and the union had agreed the employees were not essential.

But, when Dynacare employees went on strike in September, the province’s labour minister used a clause in the new legislation to ask the Manitoba Labour Board to set aside the existing essential workers’ agreement — something the labour minister can now do in any strike situation.

On Oct. 1, the labour board agreed with the minister, saying essential services “must be maintained in the event of job action involving Dynacare and the (Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals) in order to prevent a threat to the health, safety and welfare of residents of Manitoba.”

There are definitely reasons why Dynacare employees should be deemed to be essential. First and foremost, people depend on the private company to provide critical medical testing. The company’s 14 labs in Winnipeg alone see an average of 5,600 patients per day. Add to that number the tests coming in from its labs outside the Perimeter Highway and it’s clear that this work could not be easily picked up by Shared Health labs.

But there’s a missing piece. The problem is that taking away the right for employees to strike takes away the strongest bargaining chip unionized employees have — and it’s not a decision that should be taken lightly.

To make matters more complex, the government that intervened to effectively halt the strike action is also the government that holds a contract with for-profit Dynacare to provide health-testing services. That’s something you could call a clear conflict of interest.

There is normally a trade-off when employees are held to be essential — in exchange for losing the right to strike, unionized employees gain the right to go to arbitration, often binding arbitration, when their demands and those of their employers reach a stalemate.

Manitoba’s firefighters, police officers and paramedics, for example, are clearly essential employees — and their contracts specify arbitration will occur when a bargaining impasse occurs.

Dynacare employees say they are paid 20 to 50 per cent less than public service employees doing the same work, and say the wages and working conditions mean it will be difficult for Dynacare to continue to find skilled staff. If Dynacare staff truly perform an essential service, something will have to change to bring balance back between business and labour at the negotiating table.

There’s a finger on the scales here — and the oddest part of all is that it is an NDP government that’s putting the squeeze on a labour dispute, in favour of an employer.

And, not inconsequentially, in favour of the government’s own interests — politically, pragmatically and financially.

It does not feel like fair treatment.

» Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun