A proposed class action has been filed against RBC Insurance Agency Ltd. and Aviva General Insurance Company, alleging that the firms failed to properly compensate commissioned salespeople for vacation and public holiday pay.
Monkhouse Law filed the $80-million class action on behalf of Kabir Singh, who was an insurance advisor at RBC from 2016 to April 2019. In a release, the law firm said commissioned salespeople were shortchanged by the two companies, which allegedly calculated vacation and public holiday pay based on the employees’ base salary, rather than total compensation.
According to Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, commissioned employees must receive additional vacation pay above and beyond their regular pay, the law firm noted in its release.
“Employers are required under Ontario law to pay their employees vacation pay fairly,” Andrew Monkhouse, founder of Monkhouse Law, said in a statement. “Those employers who do not pay adequate vacation pay may end up on the hook for substantial payments from the entire tenure of the employee.”
Monkhouse Law seeks to have the time period for the class action, which has not yet been certified, run from 1993, when RBC Insurance was founded. Aviva acquired RBC Insurance in 2016.