Shawnee Love   •  
November 18, 2014

When I heard the news a couple weeks ago that Scotiabank was cutting jobs and closing offices, I wanted to know more. An article in the Globe and Mail reported Scotiabank was clamping down on costs by laying off 1,500 people, 2/3rds of whom are located in Canada.  The report tried to pacify the reader by indicating that 1,500 is only a fraction of the bank’s 87,000 strong workforce.

Turns out, Scotiabank has about 42,000 workers in Canada and cutting 1000 of them is about 2.4% of Scotiabank’s Canadian workforce.

Despite it being “only” 2.4%, it is very likely most Scotiabankers know at least one person who lost his or her job in this cut which was explained and dare I say defended as a necessary cost cutting measure.

Since when does a 5.3 BILLION DOLLAR profit over 3 quarters require cost cutting in the form of layoffs?

When times are bad, layoffs can be a fact of life (albeit short term in their thinking), but when you are pulling in multiple billions of dollars in profit, to argue you need to do layoffs seems wrong to me.

I wonder how you feel about this decision?