Lawyers from Roy Elliott Kim O’Connor LLP (REKO) and Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP (SGM) announced today a massive unpaid overtime class action suit against CIBC.

The action covers thousands of current and former non-management, non-unionized employees of CIBC in Canada who are or were tellers or other front-line customer service employees (limited to personal bankers, commercial bankers and account executives) working at CIBC retail branch offices across Canada.

“This is the largest unpaid overtime class action ever launched in Canada,” said Douglas Elliott, partner, Roy Elliott Kim O’Connor, in a release. “And if successful it will result in the bank paying as much as tens of millions of dollars in unpaid overtime to its lowest paid employees.”

The representative of the class action is Dara Fresco, a CIBC teller who has worked in more than a dozen CIBC branches across Toronto for nearly 10 years. Based on her own experience, she claims the unpaid overtime situation is widespread at CIBC among non management employees.

“The average overtime I am required to work ranges from two to five hours a week. Even though we complete time sheets, I am discouraged from recording the extra time I in fact worked,” she said.

“Banks are regulated by the Canada Labour Code which specifically states that federally incorporated businesses may not require or permit non-management employees to work beyond eight hours per day or 40 hours per week without paying overtime,” said Louis Sokolov, partner, Sack Goldblatt Mitchell.

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 CIBC fails to pay for the overtime work in direct contravention of the Canadian Labour Code under which they are regulated.

In order to facilitate affected CIBC employees across Canada joining this class action, REKO and SGM 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.

The law firms have also launched a web site www.unpaidovertime.ca and phone number 1-888-687-2431 that allow other class members to register to obtain more information about the class action.

In the coming weeks, a class action case management judge will be assigned and a case conference will be held to set a timetable for the conduct of the action.