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Canadian Courts have applied the principles of representative proceedings and class actions to explore a range of employment and labour law issues. Class actions have not been limited to product liability claims (e.g. medical devices or defective cars) nor are they limited to mass negligence claims (e.g. blood transfusion cases), but have dealt with wrongful dismissals, mass termination and severance pay cases, claims for over-time pay and vacation pay where there has been a failure to meet minimum wage statutory standards, claims to interpret pension agreements and to deal with disputes about post-retirement health benefits, and complaints of systemic salary discrimination. The use of class actions in the employment law context is limited only by the ingenuity of counsel, the proper application of the criteria for certification of a class action, and by specific statutory preference for alternative remedies in a collective agreement context. Let us look at some of the leading examples of the use of class actions in the employment context, as they illustrate the use of this procedural tool...
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