Introduction
More than 60,000 current and former ASDA employees have advanced to the final stage of their Equal Pay claim; if successful, the Tribunal could award individual claimants up to £20,000.
In this article we break down the elements of an equal pay claim, and comment on the key takeaways from the case so far.
Equal pay
According to the Equality Act 2010, a female employee must be paid the same as her male counterpart if they perform different jobs which are of equal value. Unless the employer is able to highlight a non-discriminatory material factor which can explain the difference in pay, the employee may be able to claim for equal pay.
A claim similar to the ASDA claim was made towards the end of 2024 in Thandi and others; in this case, a number of female employees working on the shop-floor for NEXT argued that they were being paid less than the male staff working in the store’s warehouse, despite their work being of equal value. Ultimately the Tribunal decided that the work was of equal value, and that the material factors (reasons why sex wasn’t the reason for the pay differential) argued by NEXT were indirectly discriminatory.
The ASDA claim
Thousands of claimants contend that the respondent, ASDA, failed to pay store workers the same as warehouse workers, despite the two roles being of equal value. The claimants have argued that as store workers are predominantly female, in comparison to warehouse workers who are predominantly male, the lack of equal pay equated to sex discrimination.
At this stage the Tribunal has found in favour of 12 out of the 14 women acting as lead claimants, agreeing that their work is of equal value of some of the male comparators; this means that the case will now move to the final stage where the Respondent will attempt to provide a non-discriminatory reason for the differential pay.
LeighDay, the Claimants’ representative, have described this as “the largest ever private sector equal pay claim”, and have predicted that if successful the entire claim could amount to £1.2 billion.
Final thoughts
Whilst this claim has been an overwhelming success so far, the Tribunal has found that some of the retail roles were not of equal value to hose of the warehouse workers. GMB National Officer Nadine Houghton has described this finding as a “crushing blow”, with the Claimants’ representatives confirming that they will be pushing for an appeal.
For now we eagerly await the final stage of the claim where ASDA will attempt to defend the discrepancies in pay.