Recruiter comes under fire for discriminatory job ads
Posted May 3, 2017 7:51 pm.
Last Updated February 6, 2019 4:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
An online job ad on Indeed is turning heads for all the wrong reasons.
A recruiting company looking for general labourers said women would be paid $11.50 an hour while men would bring home an extra 50 cents for apparently doing the same job.
The ad was posted on Tuesday by Delta Staffing Services, along with a second one calling for general labourers, preferably from “the Asian and European community.”
A manager at Delta Staffing Services told CityNews the ads were posted in error by an intern.
“We’ve got a lot of complaints on that,” he said.
“It was a typo, and the person who posted the ad wasn’t being detailed about it.”
The staffing manager claimed the ad didn’t mention the difference in wages is because the jobs offered are different. Employees doing heavy work would be paid more, regardless of their gender.
Delta wouldn’t say which company they were hiring for, only that it had nothing to do with the mixup.
Employment lawyer Daniel Lublin said the typo still doesn’t make the ad legal.
“This is what we call a smoking gun,” he explained. “This is completely discrimination, there’s no question about it.”
Lublin said the law in Canada is clear. Both ads are discriminatory and complaints could be filed with the Human Rights Commission.
“I think there’s a greater public responsibility to ensure the advertisements on your website do not expressively discriminate against people,” Lublin added.
Indeed is also coming under fire for allowing the posts on its website.
A spokesperson said while there is a team to review the over 20 million ads submitted, there are some challenges.
“Unfortunately sometimes job advertisements slip through that do not meet our standards, and we reserve the right to remove any such ads,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The search engine said the job ads do not meet their standards and have been removed. As of Wednesday afternoon, one post was taken down, while the second was updated with the wage distinction removed.