Asda urged to drop equal pay challenge and raise shop-floor wages

Asda is being urged to drop a legal action and increase pay on the shop floor after the supermarket lost its appeal against an equal pay claim from 15,000 workers.

On Thursday, the employment appeal tribunal backed an October ruling that workers in roles across the shop floor can compare their jobs with those done predominantly by men for a higher wage in Asda’s warehouses.

Asda has indicated it would seek permission to take the case to the court of appeal. If the ruling continues to hold, the retailer could be forced to adjust the pay of many of its 100,000-plus shop-floor staff and make back payments going back to 2002, at an estimated cost of up to £100m.

Lawyers representing the mostly female claimants said the they typically earned between £1 and £3 an hour less than staff at Asda’s distribution centres.

The supermarket challenged the ruling on 10 different grounds, but was unsuccessful on all. It said no comparison between the two groups of workers was possible partly because different departments ran the stores and the distribution centres and there were different methods for setting pay in each workplace.

Tim Roache, the general secretary of the GMB union, which is backing the equal pay case, said: “GMB look forward to Asda management sitting down and finding a sensible negotiated solution to recognising that our female members in stores should be paid and valued as equal to the men.

“Instead of wasting money on litigation, we ask Asda to be a market leader in solving this wide-ranging industry problem.”

Chris Benson of Leigh Day, the law firm heading the case for the claimants, said: “After yet another defeat, we hope that Asda take this opportunity to reflect on the merits of the claims, and concentrate on why they pay men more than women for jobs of equal value, rather than trying to stop the claims going ahead at all.”

An Asda spokesperson said: “We are disappointed with this appeal ruling which relates to a technical preliminary issue of whether jobs in different parts of the business can be compared.

“The employment appeal tribunal have given us permission to appeal against this judgment, to the court of appeal. We continue to strongly dispute the claims being made against us.

“The employment tribunal has yet to consider whether the jobs are of equal value in terms of their demands and if some jobs are, only then will the tribunal move on to consider the reasons for the differentials, including the existence of different market rates in different industry sectors.

“At Asda, hourly paid colleagues doing the same job in the same location are paid the same. Men and women doing the same job in our retail stores are paid the same. Men and women doing the same job in our distribution centres are paid the same. Pay rates in stores differ from pay rates in distribution centres for legitimate reasons, including the different market rates for different jobs in different sectors.”

The judgment is expected to have implications for other supermarket equal pay claims, including a case Leigh Day is bringing on behalf of hundreds of Sainsbury’s workers.