Hundreds of Dynacare workers are being ordered back to work by the Manitoba Labour Board, their union says.
The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals said in a statement Tuesday afternoon the workers will have to return to their jobs Wednesday, following a decision delivered by the labour board on the same day lab technicians and technologists at the private company went on strike.
“The government of Manitoba backed a private, American-owned company that is exploiting front-line health-care professionals, instead of supporting those severely underpaid workers,” union president Jason Linklater said in the statement.
Linklater said the decision represents “a profound erosion of trust” in Manitoba’s NDP government. The union is exploring options to address what he called “government interference” but will follow the interim order, said Linklater.
More to come. Read previous story below.
The province says a strike by lab workers with the private company Dynacare could have “catastrophic consequences” for Manitobans, as the government seeks to put a strike by the workers on pause.
During a hearing in front of the Manitoba Labour Board on Tuesday, lawyers made their arguments in a dispute over whether hundreds of striking lab workers should be allowed to continue a work stoppage that began earlier that morning.
The lab technicians and technologists, represented by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, hit the picket line following an impasse in contract negotiations with Dynacare, resulting in some delays to diagnostic testing in the province.
The NDP government is seeking full resumption of those services while the labour board determines whether workers are providing an essential service.
Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino filed the application for the interim order last week, before the strike began, asking the independent body to keep 350 Dynacare employees on the job.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the province argued a full service resumption is reasonably necessary to prevent “catastrophic consequences” from the strike that cannot be addressed after the fact.
Labour board will hear Manitoba’s request to make lab staff essential workers as Dynacare strike set to start
“The risks are immediate, they’re widespread and irreversible,” said Keith LaBossiere, counsel for the labour minister.
LaBossiere said Dynacare workers perform about 40 per cent of all lab testing in Manitoba, including about half of phlebotomies (blood drawing for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes) and two-thirds of cytologies (microscopic examinations for diagnostic purposes).
The stats are drawn from affidavits submitted by Dynacare and provincial health-care leadership, with the company saying it expects a weekly backlog of 34,000 patients without an essential services designation.
The company identifies an average of 15 critical results from routine testing, Dynacare chief medical and scientific officer Jenisa Naidoo said in the documents.
LaBossiere said the strike will result in delays to prenatal and cancer screenings, patients on anti-psychotic medication being left without the required monitoring, and impacts to mobile collection services that help prevent infectious diseases.
“It’s clear Manitobans are not safe or free from significant consequences,” he said, suggesting that redirecting thousands of patients could have an impact on already long wait times for health care, among other consequences.
The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals argued none of the underlying circumstances have changed since March, when Dynacare and the union gave notice to the board they’d agreed an essential services agreement was not required.
Union lawyer Jake Giesbrecht said the union engaged the government before and after that determination.
“This has been sitting for months, for six months, and then all of the sudden at the last minute … the minister decides this is ‘catastrophic,'” he said.
“If it were true that this was urgent and critical and catastrophic, why, oh why, would the government take six months to take action on that?”
Dynacare counsel Benjamin Hecht said in a remote appearance the company would not have signed off on that determination if it had the “overwhelming” evidence the province presented Tuesday, apologizing for that situation.
Giesbrecht argued the question of whether Dynacare workers provide an essential service is a matter to be determined at a later date, saying the province is seeking the “extraordinary” remedy of stopping a legal strike when “none of the evidence shows that is necessary.”
“This is all conjecture,” he said, pointing to Shared Health’s own public-facing communications saying Manitobans might experience a delay only in cases where it’s medically safe, and that there are contingencies in place to minimize disruptions.
Giesbrecht also suggested Dynacare could send tests for processing outside Manitoba as part of contingency plans. He also said the province’s 82 laboratories have the capacity to handle testing.
He argued the province should have provided some justification for only bringing up the essential services matter after Dynacare workers overwhelmingly voted in favour of a strike.
“The onus is on anyone that objects [to the essential worker decision] … to act quickly, because people are relying on that,” he said, adding workers went on strike based on the understanding they were not deemed essential.
LaBossiere said the law does not set a timeline as to when the minister can bring those arguments to the board, and there could be many reasons for a delay, including wanting to wait until all other options had been exhausted.
“Whatever happened, it doesn’t deprive the minister” from making the application, he said.
The labour board said it will make a decision by end of day Tuesday.
