Tesco argues equal pay claim disregards ‘economic reality’
https://www.ft.com/content/9fd5fca7-05ee-4823-bc37-b807479a648e
Posted by 457655676
Tesco argues equal pay claim disregards ‘economic reality’
https://www.ft.com/content/9fd5fca7-05ee-4823-bc37-b807479a648e
Posted by 457655676
34 Comments
because it does.
equal pay should be 2 people doing the same job its simple really
This old chestnut again
Both positions are open to everyone
The shop floor is full of women, who knows why
The warehouse, with its cold environment, heavy lifting and handling and potentially far more dangerous, is full of men
The job with harsher conditions, more physical work and more dangerous, gets paid more
That’s apparently unfair. Keeping in mind, no one is being told they can’t go from the shop floor to the warehouse
Anyone that’s worked both (I did in my teens) understands why it’s paid differently
> and argues that store workers, most of whom are women, are paid far less than employees in the supermarket’s distribution centres, where nearly 90 per cent of workers are men.
They’re different jobs.
It shouldn’t matter what percentage of people doing those jobs are men or women, they are different jobs!
It would be like trying to claim that cleaners, who are mostly women, should be paid the same as doctors, who are mostly men, because they work at the same hospital.
Anyone with half an ounce of sense would laugh you out of the room.
There is nothing stopping women from applying to work in the warehouse if they want the better pay 🤷♂️
Who is stopping the women from working in the warehouse exactly? No one?
Oh so it’s ok for women to make £30k a month on OnlyFans, but when I get my knob out on the internet the only thing I get is a restraining order. Where’s my equal pay?
The problem is that the equal pay legislation is completely insane when it comes to defining equal work.
The only definition of equal work that makes sense is the “like work” definition – i.e, a job that is very similar or the same. Binmen and binmen, cleaners and cleaners etc.
But the equal pay legislation also has other definitions of equal work that essentially allow the courts to step in and say that two completely different jobs are equal and entitled to equal pay. Which is stupid.
The legislation needs amending.
I worked both in the warehouse and on the shop floor of supermarkets. The warehouse was far more taxing physically. The only woman was our boss, whose only contribution was to tell us her boyfriend, ( another manager), would beat us up if we didn’t do as she said, which at least gave us something to laugh about. I ended up getting sciatica after a nasty slip whilst dragging a roll cage into a walk in freezer. It still plays up 22 years later
It’s like complaining nights gets paid more. You’re welcome to apply!
Some of these claims, starting with the Birmingham council one (which is still screwing the council over today) and including the Next one and this one, are just pure bullshit. The jobs they are claiming to be “equivalent” just aren’t, and if the women on the shop floor feel jealous of the wages of the warehouse workers, they’re free to apply to do that job instead.
In general they don’t want to because that job is harder, more physical and in less pleasant conditions. Which is why it’s paid more.
And like the Birmingham situation, this argument appears to hinge on “but they’re designated the same band so bonuses/differential rates are unfair”. Which is also bullshit – the grade designation is just an arbitrary classification, it has nothing to do with whether the work is actually equal.
Unfortunately we have an awful precedent and there’s no chance a Labour government will intervene to clarify the law in this area, especially when the lower paid workers can claim “think of the women”. So Tesco will probably lose and be forced to reduce the pay of warehouse workers.
This is part of the governments plan to get as many people on minimum wage as possible. Slowly
, eventually, the vast majority of jobs will pay the same money.
These are the same politicians who say we have to pay CEOs more money to attract the correct people to stay in multi national companies, or they would walk, same should exist in other companies, it’s not about discrimination but retaining correct workers
This whole case feels fundamentally wrong. Equal pay law was meant to stop women being paid less for the same job, not to let lawyers and judges define how the job market should operate. Now they’re arguing Tesco can’t rely on market rates because Tesco is big enough to influence the market. That’s a wild stretch – every major employer shapes its labour market. That doesn’t mean they control it or that every pay difference is discrimination.
Warehouse work and shop floor work aren’t the same job. They don’t recruit from the same labour pool, don’t have the same risks, skills, hours or shortages. Pretending they’re interchangeable just to force a pay rise through the courts feels like an abuse of what the law was created for. It turns a targeted anti‑discrimination rule into a blunt tool for rewriting wages across whole industries.
It’s hard to see how anyone thinks this is a healthy direction for employment law and economic productivity.
When this was brought up before I don’t know why a bunch of the shop floor staff weren’t redeployed to the warehouse, just to make a point more than anything. If the jobs are considered the same then this would be perfectly legal.
Where does the phenomenon of supermarkets charging more for the same products in small city shops fit into the economic reality?
It’s pretty wild how they keep framing this as a gender issue when the real split is between a chilled warehouse shift and dealing with grumpy customers on the tills. Anyone who’s actually done both knows the pay difference comes down to the physical toll and conditions, not a conspiracy. Treating different roles with different demands as equal work just ignores basic economics.
done both jobs, would choose warehouse any time 😀 dealing with customers… bleah!
And many mentions that women should go to warehouses as well, but there are many many women here. Only position I hope I never see a woman pick is in produce section where potatoes/carrots/ onions aka heaviest totes are picked. Even not all men can do that job. Those lads need to be paid extra.
im sure r/unitedkingdom has lots of measured and wise takes on this
Current wages ignore ‘economic reality’ more so than your worrying about cunty shareholders. Get fucked
I worked in a place that has this same issue come up time and time again.
The warehouse staff would get paid 50p more per hour than shop floor staff.
Also the firm i worked for had issue keeping warehouse staff.
Eventually the mostly female shop floor staff wanted the same pay as warehouse because of i think the Asda thing from a few years back.
Well as we had issue with keeping warehouse staff all shop floor staff were offered to work in the warehouse for the extra pay and as you gathered mostly men took up the work and the only woman who did work are what i describe as tomboys so had the sort of personalities to cope if not be driven to prove capable.
Well as you can image this proved successful in a way but not in the way the shop floor staff wanted.
The company wanting to not have the same issue as Asda simply got rid of the warehouse role And made in mandatory for all staff to work the warehouse once a week.
Eventually the store would change to a 95% male workforce because of the warehouse work.
We lost diversity of gender in our work place.
I believe up till a few years ago the company become extra profitable because of that change.
Not sure how the company as a whole is doing now but now my old place does not have a warehouse anymore and the staff is mostly made up of woman again.
Im assuming they set the warehouse location elsewhere and just deliver cages already broken down.
They are different jobs. If it was the same role with the same responsibilities I’d buy it but they are completely delusional if they think shop floor work is worth the same as warehousing in bulk.
The lady who answers the phone at our company earns less than me, doing a manual job,
Definitely bigotry, nothing else going on at all. Let’s ignore the years of training, skill, and pressure of my job. Let’s ignore that there is nothing stopping her training and doing my job. But it is easier to argue about it than actually do it…
It isn’t 1:1 but it is essentially what all these arguments boil down to. Ignore every other factors, than pay and genders of those who chose the job.
Tesco can afford to run this for a year at a couple of stores. Everyone on equal pay. Everyone rotated through the warehouse, freezer and night shift.
WHAT?!? A harder job than tis open to everyone is paid more? The outrage.
Billion pound company who ceo is tax registered in Ireland to dodge tax on his £10m salary……
Just to add;
When this shit started at Asda, Asda pulled their “fire and rehire” bullshit on shop workers to change their terms in order to bring them closer to warehouse workers terms.
Suddenly store workers were expected to work bank holidays – something that warehouse employees have always had to do if they were rota’d in.
GMB union basically embarrassed themselves fucking crying about it (when the truth is gmb in my experience is useless when an individual needs them, but this bullshit they’ll fight over even though they did kinda cause it)
Now, I’m against fire and rehire bullshit and certainly don’t like siding with any companies, but honestly I kinda get it this time. If they want warehouse wages the bare minimum should be warehouse terms. Imagine we get payed the same because “the jobs are the same” but the less dangerous, more accessible, lighter job also happens to get more time off.
I’m sure the economically illiterate idiots in this sub will love this.
This is all due to the equality act. It needs to be scrapped.
‘Economic reality’ is that big corps and exec rather pocket more than pay their employees properly
Three things are clear to me from this thread,
– people don’t understand that a roles value to the employer isn’t always reflected in the pay
– most people seem keen to keep the pitiful shop workers wages at the level they currently are rather than being hopeful they will rise
– warehouse workers seem to tolerate dreadful conditions despite Tesco suggesting staff are hard to attract and retain.
Here’s hoping they lose the case and it costs them millions in compensation!
My understanding is most of these arrise because warehouse workers in shops are paid the same as the other shop floor staff. I worked for Asda in my youth and the warehouse people in the back that took deliveries was paid the same as me as a shop floor worker, and had the same job title.
That means that the shops have said those two roles are equal responsibility and deserving of equal pay.
The issue is the work a warehouse worker does in store is pretty much identical to a warehouse worker in a distribution centre. The issue is distribution centres tend to have better trade union membership so are able to fight for better wages.
Because each workforce is gender biased towards men/women it leaves them open for this claim.
It’s not too dissimilar to the councils, except in this occasion there is directly comparable jobs paid differently, but in both you have the shop/organisation declaring they think the work is equal due to banding etc.
FWIW both sides will have experts putting forward their views as to how and why they are equal/not equal and then the court will additionally use independent experts to compare roles etc.
A lot of these claims are the responsibility of the shop/council and how they went about assessing jobs and banding them. Any organisation that has a particularly strong bargaining unit role/s with trade unions should band that job and any identical roles separately so that they are not open to this sort of claim.
The economic reality is that they can pay more and higher wages but refuse to unless the government raises the minimum wage to realistic levels, these fuckers got monopolies because of the Leo wages that allowed them to grow quickly
I have some Tesco shares. They went up in the last 2 years by more than 50%.
CEO does nothing, takes millions. Manager breaks his back with his fellow employees. Is fired if they ask for a raise.
That’s the type of creatures we deal with.