Salary Transparency Laws Lag as Many Employers Withhold Pay Details
Ontario’s new pay transparency rules that came into effect Jan. 1 were supposed to end confusion and wasted time in the job application process.
But dozens of employers are still hiding salary ranges in online job postings.
The province passed legislation as part of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act that includes disclosure requirements for employers in online job postings.
As of the new year, job postings by employers with 25 or more workers are required to include salary ranges, and alert job hunters if artificial intelligence is used in the hiring process.
For salaries less than $200,000, the range must be within $50,000. Salaries over $200,000 are exempt from the rules altogether.
According to job posts on employment platforms, many companies have yet to comply with the new rules, causing some critics to worry about enforcement. Others say that the rules aren’t targeted enough to inform applicants or rectify pay disparities.
“The current pay transparency rules are utterly pointless,” says Fay Faraday of the Equal Pay Coalition, a non-partisan group that advocates for women’s pay equity in Ontario. “This is a weak job-posting provision, and shouldn’t be confused with real transparency.”
The Star canvassed online employment platforms such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter to find dozens of job postings across several sectors that either failed to list salaries or included salary ranges that exceed $50,000.
“There really is very little enforcement, and no real indication of how this government is going to ensure that this act is put in place,” says Ontario Federation of Labour president, Laura Walton.
Ontario’s ministry of labour said in an emailed statement that to ensure compliance, the government has doubled the maximum fine for individuals convicted under the Employment Standards Act from $50,000 to $100,000 and increased administrative penalties for repeat offenders from $1,000 to $5,000.
The Equal Pay coalition pointed to the Ford government’s historically weak enforcement of employment standards that led to high levels of wage theft in Ontario in the last several years.
Without enforcement, Walton says that the onus will be on workers to report non-compliant employers — something she says could present a professional risk for applicants and current employees.
“What are the chances that that person is going to be able to access that position after raising the flag?” asks Walton.
In a statement to The Star, Ontario labour minister David Piccini said the “pre-employment framework” of the new legislation will support workers during the hiring process.
“Anyone looking for work deserves to know three things up front: what the job pays, whether the job is real, and how your application is being judged. This is about putting time, money and power back in the hands of job seekers, instead of leaving them guessing or wasting their energy on dead-ends,” read the statement.
But Walton says the legislation isn’t enough to give workers the information they need to make choices in the job market.
“There is a big difference in a salary range of $50,000,” says Walton. “It’s the difference between having to work one or two jobs.”
Faraday says the current legislation allows employers to hide pay gaps, exacerbating already existing gender wage disparities.
“You could post something that says the pay range is $50,000 to $100,000, and you could hire in a woman at 50,000 and hire a man at 100,000 and you’d be complying with the act.”
Maria Constantine, a Toronto-based lawyer at law firm Cassels, says there is value in increased pay transparency, but echoed that the pay range may have undesired effects across different demographics.
“We know that women, for example, are less likely to request a salary on the higher end (of a salary range) than male candidates,” she says. “Candidates from marginalized groups may fear that they are less likely to get the job unless they put forward an offer on the low end of the salary range.”
Language that stipulates a salary “up to” a certain salary is also non-compliant, says Constantine, noting that the lower end of that range could be minimum wage.
This article was first reported by The Star
