B.C.’s Pay Transparency Act (PTA) is seeing a lack of compliance and no clear proof that it works a year after being enacted.
Friday (Nov. 1) marks one year since the provincial government imposed the PTA, which aims to close the gender pay gap and address systemic discrimination.
The PTA was met with skepticism at first, with some organizations understanding its purpose and others looking at it as a hurdle, said David Bolton, a regional director for employment agency Robert Half Canada Inc.
“It was initially received with ambiguity, I think also because it was rolled out, and is still very much the case now, with no real control or governing body around it,” said Bolton, who oversees offices in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
The legislation requires employers in B.C. to include salaries and salary ranges in job postings, prevents them from asking job applicants what they’ve been paid in the past and, protects employees who reveal their pay to co-workers or job applicants.
For employers above certain sizes, annual reports must also be prepared to identify pay disparities in women, gender-diverse groups and others.
One of the most significant benefits of the act, according to Bolton, was a greater number of applications for job postings. But he added that this doesn’t always translate to qualified candidates.
On the other hand, greater transparency also comes with some challenges, as some companies have been forced to conduct internal pay reviews to match the salaries of new job postings.
“A large number of our clients had to do some pay reviews internally,” said Bolton “They knew that they might need to post an advert to [$]90-100,000 for example, when the team was already constituted of people that were paid [$]80,000 in the current market.”
This led to some companies having to increase the pay of current teams before they could attract additional talent.
Another challenge from the perspective of a candidate is the employer's inability to ask how much they’ve been paid previously, which a lot of them are still doing.
“If you are a candidate, and you're interviewing for a job that you really like, and someone asks you your salary whilst they're not meant to, what do you do?” asked Bolton. “Do you come across as confrontational? Or as someone that's been a troublemaker in the past, because they won't answer a real simple question?”
Or should a candidate answer and maybe risk being seen as a conformist? These are some of the biggest hurdles people are still trying to navigate, he added.
In British Columbia, job postings with salary details surged from 49 per cent in the third quarter of 2023 to 76 per cent in February 2024, according to a report from job site Indeed.
However, it's a mixed bag when it comes to organizations complying with the act, as there are no clear consequences for not doing so.
Algorithms in job sites are prioritizing postings with salaries on the first few pages, but these postings begin to fade as you keep scrolling, said Bolton.
Initially, it was believed smaller companies would be the ones not aware of new legislation.
However, some larger organizations are not following the act either because their job advertising process might be the same nationally. This would require a different process for the local market and perhaps companies are not aware of new legislation.
“We don't have anything to say, yes, salaries have become fair as a result of that [PTA], and part of the reason being is we can't ask,” said Bolton.
Looking towards the future, the PTA could ensure equity in the starting salary, but it doesn’t necessarily ensure compensation increases over time.
If two individuals get hired in a fair fashion and are offered a $70,000 salary, their performance over three years could potentially affect their pay over time.
However, if the PTA is widely adopted and more regulations on how it’s adopted are put in place, there’s definite benefits to it, said Bolton.
“We saw when the acts were first rolled out in America, somebody would post a salary range from $40,000 to $300,000, and whilst they're abiding by the letter of the act, they're not abided by the spirit of it,” he explained.
“I think there's definitely positives that can come out of it, but there's a long way to go before we'll probably see what they can be.”
A minimal improvement to B.C.’s gender pay gap last year
In 2022, B.C.’s median gender pay gap was 18 per cent, higher than the national 16 per cent and only below Alberta’s 21 per cent, according to a June 2024 PTA report.
That year, women in B.C. earned $0.82 for every dollar a man made in median hourly pay. Once the PTA was introduced in 2023, women in B.C. earned $0.83 to every dollar a man earned, according to the report.
Respectively, the gender pay gap in 2023 reduced slightly to 17 per cent year-to-year, still larger than the national gap of 14 per cent and only lower than Alberta with 24 per cent.
Although it is premature to tell if the PTA influenced the pay gap in 2023, the modest improvement could be due to increased participation of women in higher-paying, full-time employment. Compared to lower-paying, part-time employment, says the report.
In Canada, Prince Edward Island is the only province where women make more than men. In 2022, women in that province made $1.00 per every dollar a man made. The following year, women made $1.04 for every dollar a man made.
