Shop workers win equal pay claim

Following a six-year legal case, more than 3500 current and former store staff of national fashion retailer Next have won their fight for equal pay.

An employment tribunal has ruled that the employees, who are predominantly women, should not have been paid at lower rates than those working in the company’s warehouses, where just over half the staff are male.

According to Leigh Day, the law firm which represented the workers bring the claim, this is the first equal pay claim of this type against a national retailer to reach the final legal stage and result in a win for the claimants.

It said that Next had failed to show that paying their sales consultants lower hourly pay rates than their warehouse operatives, was not sex discrimination. With differences ranging from £0.40 to £3 an hour, the claimants’ average salary loss is estimated to be more than £6000 each.

The store staff who brought the claim will now be entitled to compensation by way of pay going back up to six years from when they put in their claims and including the time that has elapsed since they put in those claims.

Next claimed that it had to pay more to warehouse workers because of the going rate in the wider labour market, an argument that has also been advanced by Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and the Co-op who are defending similar claims.

The ruling found that there has to be something more to justify the inequality.

Elizabeth George, barrister and partner at Leigh Day, said this would be a huge encouragement to workers in other areas such as the care sector, hospitality or construction.

“When you have female dominated jobs being paid less than male dominated jobs and the work is equal,” she said, “employers cannot pay women less simply by pointing to the market and saying — it is the going rate for the jobs.”

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