LAWFUEL – The Law Newswire – Two law firms are heading a $600-million class action lawsuit against CIBC, alleging the bank has failed to pay front-line employees for extra work, CTV.ca reports.
The Canadian firms, Roy Elliott Kim O’Connor LLP and Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP, announced the lawsuit today, saying the action covers thousands of current and former non-management, non-unionized employees of CIBC.
“This lawsuit covers the tellers, the account managers, the kind of people that the public deal with in retail branches across Canada,” Douglas Elliott, of the firm Elliott Kim O’Connor, told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday.
“We say the bank has required people to work beyond their 40 hours and has not paid them time-and-a-half as required by the Canada Labour Code.”
Most of the employees’ employment contracts call for overtime after 37.5 hours, he said.
“But in fact, the evidence that we have suggests that tellers routinely work 42, 45 hours per week to complete their normal duties, and the bank rarely, if ever, will pay overtime for that extra work.”
The bank was just served with the lawsuit on Tuesday morning, Elliott said.
The allegations haven’t yet been proven in a court of law.
In a written response, CIBC said that its employees are the cornerstone of its strength as a company.
“We have comprehensive compensation, benefit and employment programs to ensure we attract, retain and reward our employees and create an environment where they can excel,” said the statement.
“With respect to overtime, we have a clearly defined policy as to how we compensate our frontline retail branch employees that exceeds legislative requirements in Canada. We have just received this lawsuit and will be reviewing it in detail prior to further response.”
