The Ontario government has recently passed new legislation, Bill 88: Working for Workers Act, 2022, which includes amendments to the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA), and the Occupational Health and Safety Act, as well as an entirely new Act, the Digital Platform Workers' Rights Act, 2022. Bill 88 received Royal Assent on April 11, 2022.

This new legislation comes only months after recent amendments to the ESA banning non-competes and requiring a disconnect from work policy, which was discussed in our previous insight Ontario Bill 27: Working for Workers Act, 2021 is Now the Law.

With the passing of this legislation, Ontario is the first province to require employers to have in place an electronic monitoring policy and legislation regarding the regulation of digital work.

Amendment to ESA: Addition of "Electronic Monitoring" Policy

Employers with 25 or more employees (as of January 1 each year) will be required to develop a written "electronic monitoring" policy by March 1 of that year. The intention behind this policy is to protect workers' privacy by requiring employers to be transparent about how they track employees' use of electronic devices, such as computers, cell phones, and GPS systems amongst other devices.

The policy must address:

• whether the employer electronically monitors its workers, and if yes:
  • how and in what circumstances the employer monitors its workers; and
  • set out the purposes for which information obtained through electronic monitoring may be...

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