The province has just announced new legislation that will introduce new requirements on employers around salary and pay transparency.  This is an effort to address potential pay discrepancies between men and women. 

The legislation contains three key provisions, which have varying degrees of impact on employers and potential action on pay equity.   

Read the Langley Chamber's summary below, and then share your thoughts on whether you support these changes or how they may impact your business > Submit Your Input 

1) Restrictions on Inquiring About Pay

The new law will prohibit an employer from asking about the pay history of a job applicant, either by directly asking the applicant or by going through a 3rd party.   Upon passage of this law, you will not be able to ask an applicant questions like "What were you making in your previous role?".    This rule has been suggested as a way of supporting equal pay by not perpetuating a scenario where someone has been previously underpaid. 

The new law will also prohibit an employer from disciplining in any way existing employees for disclosing or discussing their pay.  Employers may have policies which forbid employees from discussing their salaries with other employees or with future applicants, and this law would prohibit this type of rule or restriction.   This change would need to be effectively communicated to ensure businesses do not run afoul of it inadvertently. 

2) Disclosing Salary in Job Postings

The new law will require employers to include in any publicly-advertised job opportunity either the specific wage for the job, or the expected salary range for the position.   While this is common practice for many employers already, but many others -- particularly smaller businesses -- do not include this information publicly.   There is potential concern that in smaller businesses this may result in defacto exposure personal salaries for those in similar jobs, and for employers who may entertain applicants with varying levels of experience the salary range may prove difficult to articulate.    The law allows the potential for some businesses to be exempted by future regulation, including small businesses. 

3) Issuing Pay Transparency Reports   

The law will require employers to publicly issue each year a Pay Transparency Report, which shares aggregate data on pay levels for various positions, comparing genders and possibly other demographic information.  This would require employers to annually collect demographic information (at least gender) in order to issue this report.  

This will initially impact the BC government and Crown corporations on November 1 of this year. And then it will expand to:
    - Employers with 1,000 employees or more in 2024
    - Employers with 300 employees or more in 2025
    - Employers with 50 employees or more in 2026 (and potentially smaller businesses in following years)

This could be a significant new administrative burden on businesses, depending on how detailed this report is required to be.  There are also privacy concerns with how much personal information will be required to be collected by employers.  

This rule is being put forth as a way of encouraging public and peer accountability and push employers to address any revealed pay discrepancies.