Latest employment law reform includes new disclosure rules for AI used for job applicant screening
The Law Times spoke to Josh Mandryk about the “Working for Workers Four Act”, which recently passed into law.
Among other things, the legislation requires employers to disclose whether they use AI during the hiring process. It does not, however, govern how employers may or may not use AI.
Josh Mandryk, a labour lawyer and partner at Goldblatt Partners LLP in Toronto, says the provisions on AI use in the hiring process should do more than mandate minimal disclosure obligations. “It should instead be providing workers with substantive protections,” he says.
Other provisions of the legislation ban unpaid trial shifts for workers in the restaurant and hospitality sector, and prevent employers from deducting employee wages when customers leave without paying.
However, Mandryk says the provisions banning these types of wage deductions merely prohibit conduct that was already against the law and represent the province’s intention to “be seen as helping workers, rather than actually doing so.”
“In many areas, such as the prohibition on trial shifts and the prohibition on deducting wages for lost or stolen property, these practices were already prohibited by existing law,” he says. “The biggest problem is enforcement. Rather than expanding protections for workers, the Act in many cases merely restates existing protections in a manner that is both redundant and inconsistent with the broad reading the Employment Standards Act requires.”