(The following story by Brent Jang appeared on the Globe and Mail website on March 26.)
TORONTO — A lawsuit alleges that more than 1,000 current and former supervisors at Canadian National Railway Co. who worked unpaid overtime deserve to be compensated because they were misclassified as managers.
Two Ontario law firms filed the $270-million lawsuit yesterday in Ontario Superior Court, launching the case on behalf of a supervisor, Michael McCracken, who is seeking to certify a class action.
“Mr. McCracken believes his case is representative of an ongoing problem. He works on average 50 hours a week, and he is paid for 40,” lawyer Louis Sokolov said in an interview. Mr. Sokolov is a partner at Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP, which filed the statement of claim with another law firm, Roy Elliott O’Connor LLP.
Mr. McCracken, a CN senior operations officer, was promoted on Jan. 1, 2008, but his “job duties and responsibilities did not materially change,” according to the statement of claim. “The class members have suffered a deprivation, in the form of wages corresponding to the unpaid hours and holidays that they have worked.”
CN spokesman Bryan Tucker said the railway is reviewing the lawsuit, but he declined further comment. An estimated 400 current and 600 former CN supervisors could be affected by the case.
Mr. Sokolov said the CN case follows two separate lawsuits filed last year that also seek overtime pay – the first case was launched against Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the second against Bank of Nova Scotia.
“After the CIBC case was launched, many employees realized that they had entitlements to overtime for which they weren’t being paid,” Mr. Sokolov said.
Freight operations at Montreal-based CN were delayed during a 15-day strike in February, 2007, when supervisors helped keep the trains running by filling in for unionized employees who walked off the job. No bonuses were paid to any CN executives or supervisors for 2007.
“In and after 2003, the defendant has used its overtime policy to misclassify the class members and to attempt to avoid its obligations to pay the class members overtime and holiday pay,” according to the statement of claim.
CN “arbitrarily decided to illegally treat the first-line supervisors as managers who are exempt from entitlement to overtime pay.” CNR (TSX) rose $1.65 to $50.84.