Fired & Laid-Off Bank Employees

Losing your banking job with a major Canadian bank can be an extremely brutal experience, given that your former employer is one of the largest Canadian companies with a market capitalization in the tens of billions of dollars, seemingly unlimited financial resources and a platoon of high-priced lawyers working relentlessly at their bidding.

However, even with such apparently formidable odds, when you are fired, terminated, laid-off, or even quit, your bank job, you should not simply accept everything that the bank and their lawyers tell you as being the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

For even though they might like you to believe that they can do no wrong, the truth would appear to be far more dark and sinister, as is evident from their own publicly-available documentation and what it means for the bank’s own employees, if it is broken-down and deciphered correctly.

The challenge for Canadian bank employees in understanding and dealing with the end of their bank employment, be it when fired, terminated, laid off or quit / resigned, are the distinctions that differentiate bank employment from most other employment arrangements in Canada.

For unlike most other employees, employees of a Schedule One, Two or Three Bank (as distinct from community and regional banks) are not subject to their province’s employment standards legislation, but instead the Canada Labour Code.

The Canada Labour Code provides legal protections and minimum payment requirements for employees working in specific areas of employment of national consequence, although many of those areas are unionized federal jobs, such as the federal government employees, airlines workers and rail workers, which provides for alternate procedures and representation that is distinct from bank employees and other non-union Canada Labour Code employees.

This has begun to change with recent court litigation against Canada’s major banks, such as the class action cases of Fresco v. CIBC Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Cheetham v. BMO Bank of Montreal, Cunningham v. RBC Royal Bank of Canada - Dominion Securities, Barrett v. RBC Royal Bank of Canada Insurance, Chiang v. TD Toronto Dominion Bank. However, as suggested by numerous employment lawyers, unconnected with our law firm, these class action lawsuits potentially only represent the tip of the iceberg. And in our professional opinion, this is an understatement, with these earlier lawsuits only scratching the surface as to what is wrong with Canada’s major banks and the employee underpayments that have occurred and which bank employees who are fired, terminated, laid off or quit their job with any Canadian bank needs to fully scrutinize, as the legal issue ultimately boils down to money that was fully earned and for which they are legally entitled to, but for the perception of Canadian banks being incapable of making financial-related mistakes and protected by the highest paid lawyers in the country.

However, bank payouts should demand more scrutiny, given what we already know based on our review of the banks’ own public reporting and is confirmed by other information and material that has been placed into the public domain.

If you are a bank employee that has been fired, laid off, terminated or quit their banking job, even in the past few years, contact our law firm to schedule a free confidential initial consultation at Chris@NeufeldLegal.com or 403-400-4092 / 905-616-8864.