Dynacare's specimen collection, laboratory testing and reporting must continue to the extent needed to protect Manitobans during a strike or lockout, the Manitoba Labour Board has ruled, while leaving the staffing arrangements to a further agreement.
The October 1, 2026 decision in Minister of Labour and Immigration, Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals and Gamma-Dynacare Central Medical Laboratory Limited Partnership, Order No. 1776, case 233/26/LRA, followed an interim order that had suspended a strike in September.
The board found all services performed by the bargaining unit essential under Manitoba's Labour Relations Act. That did not amount to a final direction to keep every position staffed at normal levels during any future job action. The decision identified the functions that must continue, limited their maintenance to what public protection requires, and appointed board representatives to help negotiate an essential-services agreement.
From a temporary return to work to a full hearing
The employer and union had agreed in March that essential services did not need to continue during a strike or lockout. The labour minister disagreed and applied to the board on September 1.
After a September 8 hearing, the board issued interim Order No. 1775. It suspended the ongoing strike and required bargaining-unit employees to return for their scheduled shifts on September 9. Dynacare was directed to resume normal operations and staffing until the board decided the minister's application.
The board acknowledged the constitutional importance of striking but found temporary protection justified by the potential consequences for public health, safety and welfare. That interim ruling did not replace the subsequent evidence-based determination of which services were essential.
In the October reasons, the board explained that the minister's application triggered an independent assessment. It was not an inquiry into whether the employer and union had acted improperly when making their earlier agreement.
Routine tests can reveal urgent conditions
The dispute concerned approximately 350 bargaining-unit workers. The board heard medical and operational evidence about specimen collection, diagnostic testing, mobile services and the capacity of public laboratories to absorb patients displaced by a stoppage.
The union challenged the predictions of harm and argued that other providers, including Shared Health, could perform some work. It emphasized the impact of an essential-services designation on meaningful strike pressure and questioned whether the evidence showed more than inconvenience or disruption.
The board accepted that alternatives could perform some services, but found insufficient evidence that public laboratories could absorb a sudden, substantial increase without adversely affecting their existing operations. It relied on medical witnesses' evidence about diagnostic delays, treatment decisions and strains across the health system.
Particularly important was evidence that routine testing identified, on average, 15 critical and potentially life-threatening conditions a day. Those patients would not necessarily have been recognized as requiring urgent investigation before their results arrived. The board found a real and foreseeable risk in interrupting that work, rather than merely a speculative possibility.
Mobile collection also mattered because some patients could not readily travel to a laboratory. Collection and analysis were an integrated process: obtaining a specimen achieved little if it could not then be tested and its results reported.
Protecting services without preserving every normal operation
The board interpreted Manitoba's legislation as preventive. It did not require proof that injury had already happened or was inevitable. But predicted harm still needed an evidentiary foundation; essential-services rules were not meant simply to remove the economic impact of striking or preserve an employer's ordinary business.
It also distinguished Manitoba's statutory language from provisions elsewhere requiring an immediate and serious danger. The Manitoba question was whether services were necessary to prevent a threat to residents' health, safety or welfare.
The two protected functions were community-based specimen collection, including mobile and home visits, and laboratory testing and reporting. To support staffing negotiations, the board ordered disclosure of six months of staffing and vacancy information and complete internal models for staffing during a strike.
The union's procedural-fairness challenge also failed. Although the statutory timetable was compressed, the board found the union had been able to cross-examine witnesses, present evidence and make submissions. It identified opportunities to seek further disclosure or supplement the record, including an invitation to recall a witness after additional material was produced.
The October ruling settled the essential-services question before the board, not the underlying wage dispute. It required protection of necessary diagnostic work while leaving the detailed service levels to the agreement process.
