Dynacare lab employees, including those in Brandon, voted heavily in favor of a strike earlier this week in a vote conducted by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals earlier this week. According to the MAHCP, union members voted 99.7 percent in favor of the strike.
In a release, the MAHCP said stagnant wages and increased workloads are part of the reason for the strike. Their contract with Dynacare ended on March 31 of the year, and the two sides have been in mediation in pursuit of a new contract since July 15.
“Manitobans and their healthcare providers count on the rapid testing and results our Dynacare members deliver, but workloads have increased while pay has stagnated,” said MAHCP President Jason Linklater. “Dynacare wages used to be competitive with other labs, but since they secured a monopoly on non-hospital testing, Dynacare has shown they care more about corporate profits than they do about their employees.”
According to the release, Dynacare became Manitoba’s only private outpatient provider for laboratory services in 2017, after purchasing competitor Unicity Labs. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Labcorp, an American corporation based in North Carolina. The MAHC said Labcorp has more than doubled their profits from 2023 to 2025.
“Our members perform millions of tests each year for Manitobans,” said Linklater. “They want to keep doing that work, but they need a competitive and equitable contract that recognizes their value to Manitoba’s healthcare system, and to Dynacare.”
The MAHC also said their union represents nearly 350 laboratory technicians and technologists at Dynacare’s 22 laboratory and health services centres in Winnipeg, Brandon and surrounding communities. Those workers completed more than 15 million laboratory tests in the 2024/25 fiscal year, according to Manitoba government records.
