‘Good jobs, not gig work:’ Couriers, clerks who handle your blood test samples are poised to strike

LifeLabs couriers and mail clerks in the GTA and Kitchener who transport and process bloodwork and other specimen samples to labs for testing are poised to walk off the job as early as Saturday.
The nearly 200 couriers and mail room clerks, represented by OPSEU/SEFPO, work at LifeLabs locations across the GTA, including Toronto, Mississauga, Peel, Oshawa, Durham, Halton, York, and Vaughan, and in Kitchener.
The two sides are currently in negotiations for a new collective agreement.
“LifeLabs is a billion-dollar, for-profit company that gets millions of our public health care dollars,” said JP Hornick, the LifeLabs union president, in a Sept. 11 news release. “It can absolutely afford to treat workers fairly — yet even full-time workers are struggling to pay rent as some of the lowest paid employees in the company. How are you supposed to keep up with the cost of living when your rent hike is higher than your wage increase?”
If a strike does happen, LifeLabs says it will “take all possible actions to minimize disruption to customers and healthcare providers.
“We will implement a business continuity plan to ensure that we can continue to provide Ontarians with access to important health care services,” said LifeLabs in a Sept. 12 email. “Patient services centres will remain open, and laboratories will continue to function as usual.”
The unionized workers says they are being pushed out by the use of contract workers, said Ted Rietveld, president of local 298 which represents 25 couriers working in Kitchener, in the news release.
“We have experienced couriers and mail clerks in-house that closely follow protocols around safe handling and transport of test specimens to preserve the integrity of the sample,” said Rietveld. “But the company has no issues recruiting agency workers and handing them a LifeLabs T-shirt so the public can’t tell the difference.”
The company did not respond when asked about the use of contract workers.
Mahmood Alawneh, president of local 5119, which represents 150 LifeLabs couriers and mail room clerks across the GTA, said the company is “eroding” working conditions.
“The public relies on us every day as part of their care,” he said. “We hope that we can rely on the public in turn as we fight for the careers we deserve — good jobs, not gig work.”
In a Sept. 12 email, spokesman Ahmar Khan said the union bargaining team “remains engaged with Lifelabs to come to an agreement ahead of the strike deadline.”