On December 10, 2007, SGM and Roy Elliott O'Connor LLP filed a class action lawsuit against Scotiabank for unpaid overtime.
The lawsuit covers thousands of current and former non-management, non-unionized employees of Scotiabank who are or were personal bankers or other front-line customer service employees (limited to personal bankers, commercial bankers and account executives) working at Scotiabank retail branch offices across Canada (the "class members").
The representative of the class action is Cindy Fulawka, a personal banking representative who has worked in several Scotiabank branches in Saskatchewan and Ontario for over 15 years. Based on her own experience, she claims the unpaid overtime situation is widespread at the bank among non management employees.
The statement of claim alleges that class members are assigned heavier workloads than can be completed within their standard working hours. They are required or permitted to work overtime to meet the demands of their jobs and Scotiabank fails to pay for the overtime work in direct contravention of the Canada Labour Code under which they are regulated.
The class action filed against Scotiabank raises similar issues to those raised in the CIBC class action.
In order to facilitate other affected Scotiabank employees across Canada joining this class action, SGM and REO are working with Camp Fiorante Matthews in British Columbia, Chivers Carpenter Lawyers in Alberta, Kapoor Selnes in Saskatchewan, Myers Weinberg LLP in Manitoba, Melançon, Marceau, Grenier et Sciortino in Quebec and Pink Breen Larkin in Atlantic Canada. Employees will have access to local counsel to determine whether they qualify to be a member of the class.
On February 19, 2010, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified the action, which means it will proceed as a class action. Scotiabank appealed to the Divisional Court, but the appeal was dismissed on June 3, 2011.
Update: Scotiabank was granted leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal. That appeal took place on November 30 and December 1 and 2, 2011, at the same time as the appeal in the CIBC unpaid overtime class action. The panel hearing the appeal (Winkler C.J.O., Lang and Watt JJ.A.) reserved its decision.
For details about the case, go to www.unpaidovertime.ca.
For more information please call (toll free) 1-888-687-2431 or contact Louis Sokolov.
For more information about class actions generally, click here.
