Manitobans are paying the price for privatization today as over 350 Dynacare laboratory professionals go on strike. These workers are fighting for fair wages and safe working conditions so that they can continue to care for their patients.
Instead of supporting workers and patients, the province and American-owned private employer Dyancare Labcorp are trying to play games and call these workers essential without treating them like it and paying them what they’re worth.
This leaves patients and workers in the lurch.
The Manitoba Health Coalition supports the rights of workers to strike. We know that working conditions are caring conditions. Fair wages and supportive working conditions are the only way to retain and recruit the skilled health care professionals Manitobans depend on for timely, high quality diagnostic services.
If these health care professionals are sent back to work without a fair deal, the real issues that led 99.7 per cent of them to support a strike will not be resolved. They are currently underpaid to a tune of 30-50 per cent compared to lab professionals in the public system. The last deal offered to them by Dynacare would still leave them 20-30 per cent behind their public counterparts.
To really address this inequity and ensure continuity of care, all community lab services should be public. To build a sustainable workforce, all lab professionals, whether in hospital settings or community clinics, should be able to expect equal pay for equal work.
We cannot recruit and retain skilled health care professionals without paying them fairly, but Dynacare is more concerned with increasing their profits than they are with paying their workers fairly and ensuring working conditions are safe and supportive. This is an ever present danger and predictable outcome of privatization in our health care system.
Private, for-profit companies will always put profits ahead of people. A public system serves the public good, and measures success based on the quality and accessibility of patient care, not profits.
This is the system we must protect and expand across Manitoba. It starts with tearing up the government’s contract with the American-owned Labcorp and investing in all Manitobans by paying the health care professionals we all depend on what they’re worth.
MHC is in solidarity with Dynacare lab professionals and all health care workers fighting for fair wages and safe working conditions, but we know that the only secure route to those things is a well-funded and fully public health care system.
