LifeLabs workers in GTA and Kitchener poised to strike if deal not reached by Saturday

TORONTO, Sept. 11, 2024 /CNW/ - Thousands of Ontarians across the province rely on LifeLabs facilities for timely and dependable health care results – brokered through the labour of dependable workers. Now, those very workers across the Greater Toronto Area and Kitchener may walk off the job as soon as Saturday over the lack of dependable futures at LifeLabs, with picket lines going up Tuesday.

OPSEU/SEFPO represents members of Local 5119, 150 couriers and mail room clerks operating out LifeLabs locations across the GTA – including Toronto, Mississauga, Peel, Oshawa, Durham, Halton, York, and Vaughan – and members of Local 298, 25 couriers working out of LifeLabs locations in Kitchener. The union says that the company is pushing precarity onto workers just wanting good jobs.

"LifeLabs is a billion-dollar, for-profit company that gets millions of our public health care dollars," said OPSEU/SEFPO President JP Hornick. "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?"

LifeLabs mail clerks process all incoming and outgoing deliveries while couriers pick up tens of thousands of blood samples and other test specimens from hospitals, doctors' offices and pharmacies every day and deliver them to LifeLabs laboratories for testing.

Ted Rietveld, President of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 298, says that unionized workers feel like they're being pushed out, with LifeLabs increasingly contracting out to third-party, agency work.

"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."

Mahmood Alawneh, President of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 5119 and a LifeLabs courier working out of Toronto, says that LifeLabs is eroding working conditions: going after long-standing, consistent schedules and attempting to move worker pay into unguaranteed "allowances" dependent on hours worked, instead of regular wages and gains that can be built on in the future.

"The public relies on us every day as part of their care," added Alawneh. "We hope that we can rely on the public in turn as we fight for the careers we deserve – good jobs, not gig work."

SOURCE Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)

For more information, contact: Ahmar Khan, OPSEU/SEFPO Communications, 416-802-8121, [email protected]