Samfiru Tumarkin LLP launches lawsuit against HBC after worker hours, benefits eliminated

After seeing her benefits eliminated and hours of work slashed to zero, 21-year Hudson’s Bay Company employee Yvette Mitchell has filed a constructive dismissal claim against the retail giant.

The claim is seeking damages for her lost benefits and pension entitlements, accrued vacation pay and lost salary and commissions. It is also seeking damages for the bad faith manner of termination and punitive damages.

“It felt like they were forcing me to quit,” says Mitchell, who works at the company’s flagship store in downtown Toronto.”

She was informed through a letter that, come September 2021, she will go from a guaranteed 30-hour work week to zero to 27 hours a week. As a result of the change, she will also lose her dental and health benefits, five-weeks vacation, and potentially her pension entitlements.

“What HBC is trying to do is change the terms of her employment such that they could potentially aware her zero hours of work in any given week,” says Lior Samfiru, employment lawyer and co-founding partner at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, the firm representing Mitchell.

“This move is completely illegal – even during the pandemic – and an employee has the option of treating it as a termination with full severance pay.”

Samfiru says that he has seen similar examples in the past where a company has drastically cut down a long-term employee’s hours.

“Once that individual has worked under this new arrangement long enough, they are let go from their job and offered a grossly inadequate severance package, based not on their previous qualifications, but instead their new and reduced hours of work.”

HBC announced 600 layoffs across Canada in late January 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In May 2020, HBC restored full severance pay to 100 terminated employees following public backlash after reporting by Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.

Read employment lawyer Mackenzie Irwin’s interview in The Canadian Press.

To speak to Lior Samfiru about the claim against HBC, please contact Ryan Bonnar, Media Relations Manager at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.