Equal Pay Award from Next to Female Workers After 6-Years

Next Retail may have to pay out more than £30 million to thousands of female workers after they won a 6-year legal battle over equal pay in a landmark decision by an employment tribunal.

The Tribunal has ruled that Next should have paid its store staff, who are mostly women, the same hourly rates as its mostly male warehouse workers.

More than 3,500 current and former shop workers will now be entitled to compensation going back to when the claim was first lodged in 2018. Next is planning to appeal the Decision.

The Tribunal ruling is likely to unravel other retail bosses as it marks the first claim of this type against a national retailer to secure a win. More than 112,000 store staff across Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Co-op are making similar claims.

A spokesman said: “This is the first equal pay group action in the private sector to reach a decision at tribunal level and raises a number of important points of legal principle.”

Just over 50% of Next’s warehouse workers are men, while over 77% of shop staff are women. Next argued that it was paying market rates to both groups.

The tribunal found that there was “no conscious or subconscious influence of gender which affected the basic rates of pay”.

Instead, it said the “drive and imperative was to reduce cost and enhance profit”.

It ruled that the “business need was not sufficiently great as to overcome the discriminatory effect of lower basic pay”.

Under the Equality Act 2010 work of equal value must be paid equally unless an employer can prove that the salary difference is due to a reason that is not to do with someone’s sex. 

A difference in pay can be justified for one of the following reasons:

• • they’re better qualified, if their skills are crucial to the job and hard to recruit
• • where they are located – for example, in London where the cost of living is higher
• • they do different shifts, and the employer has a good reason to pay one shift more than another shift

Helen Scarsbrook (aged 68), one of the leading claimants in the case, has worked for Next for more than 20 years. She said: “Anyone who works in retail knows that it is a physically and emotionally tough job.”

Helen told the BBC that her compensation, which is likely to amount to several thousand pounds, would help her pay off her car loan, take a “very nice” holiday, or perhaps retire.

She said: “You become so used to having your work undervalued that you can easily start to doubt it yourself. I am so grateful to the judges for seeing our jobs for what they really are – equal.”

This news will be particularly unwelcome for some of the country’s businesses and may lead to further successful equal pay claims, some of which are currently in progress.

If you require assistance with any equal pay disputes, or any other employment issues, then please contact us on 01273 662750, or email Yasmin Govan at ygovan@edward-harte.co.uk