Dynacare strike could lead to lab test logjam

DOCTORS and health-care advocates are raising concerns about patient care if a Sept. 8 strike goes ahead at the private company that provides nearly all medical lab services in Manitoba.

There is no essential services agreement in place with Dynacare, so if its lab techs are off the job, patients who need blood tests and urinalysis will be directed to hospitals and public clinics for those services.

“There’s only so many of those workers and I’m sure that the public folks are bracing for big crunch of additional patients if the strike really goes ahead,” Noah Schulz of the Manitoba Health Coalition said Monday.

Dynacare serves 1.2 million Manitoba patients a year at 23 community lab locations.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals issued the Sept. 8 strike deadline for nearly 350 laboratory professionals working at Dynacare’s lab and health services centres in Manitoba.

“Everybody needs to be aware that there will likely be delays if this strike goes ahead — quite big delays because the public staff are not going to suddenly triple or quadruple overnight and they’re going to be asked to do even more,” Schulz said.

“It’s really scary stuff, frankly.”

Doctors Manitoba said physicians are “very concerned” about a possible Dynacare strike next week.

“Lab testing is an essential part of medical care, helping to diagnose or rule out medical conditions as well as monitoring and fine-tuning treatments,” a spokesman for the physician advocacy organization said Monday.

“A closure of all lab locations would cause a major disruption to patient care, resulting in patients either not getting necessary testing or being sent to labs in hospitals, which are already busy.”

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara was not made available for an interview Monday. Instead, the minister’s press secretary issued a statement saying that the possible strike with Dynacare is being closely monitored.

“Shared Health is working with health system partners on contingency planning to minimize potential impacts to patients and support continued access to necessary lab services. Patient care and safety remain at the centre of that planning. We are working with our partners to ensure Manitobans have access to the care and services they need,” Robel Berhane said.

Dynacare, an Ontario-based subsidiary of North Carolina-based Labcorp, said it is “working hard” to avoid a strike. A statement issued Monday said there have been multiple rounds of negotiation, voluntary mediation and a conciliation process that concluded Monday. It said it has proposed interest arbitration — where a neutral third party hears arguments from the union and employer then makes a binding decision — to avoid any disruption to patient care.

The company said it is in the process of making contingency plans and will share the details with patients, doctors and health-care partners in the coming days.

“We will continue to keep the well-being of our patients at the forefront of our efforts and urge the union to accept interest arbitration so that Manitobans are able to access the laboratory services they depend on,” Dynacare said.

The union says that Dynacare wages have fallen 20 to 50 per cent behind public hospital laboratories since 2017.

Rather than offering wages at parity with the public sector, the corporation is providing profits to its shareholders, union president Jason Linklater said Monday.

“A strike is not something that we want to ever see happen,” he said.

“It’s not good for the people who work at Dynacare. It’s not good for Dynacare, it’s not good for the public,” Linklater said in an interview.

“We just want to see those people have parity and be treated with the same type of respect that people in the public system receive.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca