It has been more than 50 years since a female strike that sewn seats covers at the Ford car plant in Dagenham has sparked the adoption of the UK's equality of equality – and employers are finally starting to see how far the legislation could be.
A series of recent judicial decisions against large retailers who have traditionally paid warehouse workers more than female store staff could leave the companies responsible for payments reaching billions.
ASDA seems the most exposed, as a complaint involving more than 60,000 current and old employees enter its closing stages. But Tesco, J Sainsbury, WM Morrison and Co -Op all fight similar claims – and so far, the courts have largely found in favor of workers.
Lawyers claim that there is a potential for equal disputes to degenerate in other sectors, because women are increasingly willing to challenge their employers.
“Over the past two years, I have made more salary complaints than in the past decade,” said Jo Keddie, partner of the Forsters law firm.
“Employers are alive … in a way they were not before,” said Stephen Ratcliffe, partner of the Baker McKenzie law firm, adding that the United Kingdom was now taking the lead in the application of the concept of equal salary for equal value work.
This concept, inscribed in the legislation of the 1970s, means that women can provide complaints not only when their employer pays them less than men who do the same work or similar, but also when they are in a different role which is just as demanding in terms of effort, competence or responsibility.
Ford sewing machinists in Dagenham campaigned to receive the same “qualified” remuneration note as men doing a comparable job elsewhere in the factory. Barbara Castle, then Minister of Employment, supported her cause and crossed the legislation.
However, for decades afterwards, the concept of equal value has been largely not tested – because bringing a complaint is an expensive process in three stages that takes years.
In the first step, a court decides if a job can be compared to another with the same employer. The second step determines whether the roles are of equal value, in a labyrinthine process where independent experts compete for the details of work descriptions and mark them for factors such as physical and emotional effort, skills or decision -making.
In the third and last step, the burden of evidence moves to the employer, who must show that they have an objective reason for differences in remuneration which is not based on sex.
A wave of equal salary complaints in the public sector began in the early 2000s after advice carried out job assessments that showed that cooks, cleaners and care staff were systematically paid less than workers in male predominance jobs collecting bins and distributed roads.
These allegations were fed by the entrepreneurial efforts of a lawyer, Stefan CrossWho has seen the potential to register thousands of council workers and to fight their claims on a basis without gain and free of charge.
When the Birmingham Municipal Council reached an agreement To settle his historical allegations of equal remuneration – undergoes responsibilities that have contributed to bankruptcy – he had to reserve sports halls and buses in ACAS conciliators to help workers sign their transactions, according to employment lawyer Darren Newman.
But bringing so long-term claims “only works because the figures are huge,” he added. “You need very large groups of employees on standardized terms and conditions, with a truly clear gender break.”
Equal remuneration requests have wreaked havoc on the finances of local authorities, in particular in the advice managed by the workforce that tended to keep the services at home compared to the conservative councils that adopted outsourcing. In the retail sector, this means that groups with internal distribution are more exposed.
Then, the clothing chain could be the first major employer in the private sector to face a significant remuneration bill, after a Controversial decision of step 3 Last year. The Employment Court noted that if the retailer had shown “no conscious or subconscious gender influence” in the salary fixing, it could not justify higher rates of basic remuneration and overtime in warehouses by asserting that it simply paid the “walking rate”.
The court declared that this would defeat the objective of the legislation if the market forces could be used as a “drop in Trump” in this way, as this would allow indirectly discriminatory practices to be “legally supported by perpetuity”.
Other complaints against retailers are at a previous stage, but the largest unique action, involving more than 60,000 employees of the ASDA supermarket, has taken a stage last month when a court judged that 12 out of 14 stores that he had examined were of equal value to those held by mainly male counterparts in warehouses.
“We are … aware that the other major retailers and their workers are watching us,” said the judges by organizing their conclusions. Based on more than 11,000 pages of expert evidence, judgment dissected the requirements of each role in the smallest detail – weighing the skills, knowledge and judgment required to return pancakes, inject filling in donuts or keep the exhibitions of fresh fruit.
The GMB Union, which supports ASDA workers' complaint, said that “predominance retail workforce is paid up to £ 3.74 less than the predominance workforce of male warehouses”.
ASDA's decision was announced by activists as a sign of cultural change, long awaited, to recognize the real value of the work generally done by women. “People have been waiting for a long time – many people will be satisfied with this result,” said Karen Morren, GMB activist.
Financial issues are raised for employers, as the government is preparing to extend the equal remuneration rights to ethnic workers in minorities and people with disabilities, and as the EU provides new requirements to report and meet remuneration gaps.
Leigh Day, a law firm representing many applicants against ASDA and the other retailers, estimates that the total invoice in the sector could exceed 8 billion pounds sterling. Tesco's potential financial exhibition is the highest, says Leigh Day, although the number of applicants against ASDA is currently greater.
He estimates that the next one may have to pay up to 30 million pounds sterling in compensation and behind, and to equalize the conditions for existing workers.
Next Director of Next said the chain could close certain stores if it loses an appeal from last year's decision. Lord Simon Wolfson insisted that it was not “a threat” or “intended to appear mean” – but that would simply be the consequence of an increase in operating costs, upwards other salary and tax increases and a long -standing drop in high street sales.
Richard Lim, director general of the retail economy council, said that decisions were an concern for an industry that had experienced “excessive waves of disturbances and successive waves of the cost increase”.
Ratcliffe at Baker McKenzie said that “the huge” equal salary Local liability authorities have shown why current cases in the retail sector would be “litigation for many years at the highest level”.
But Paula Lee, partner of Leigh Day representing store workers in their complaint against Tesco, said the recent decisions “sent a clear message to the direction of the trip” which should put other employers on alert.
“If I was an employer, I think, Crikey, the tide is coming now,” she said, adding that equal remuneration problems could be purged in any sector where the roles were separated by the genre.
“When there are high concentrations of women, you will find a low salary,” said Lee, pointing HR and IT services such as potential areas of concern for white passes.
One way for employers to pre-empt the requests for equal remuneration is to make an audit of their workforce, complete roles to identify the remuneration differences and resolve them. But Keddie at Forsters said that companies that had performed equal remuneration audits “do not always like the results” – echoing another lawyer, who said that customers asked how to check if they had an equal remuneration problem without creating paper trace which could be disclosed later in court.
“If you find a problem … you must solve it as quickly as possible. There is no period of grace,” said Charles Cotton, principal advisor to the CIPD organization for HR professionals. “When you end up looking, it could be a fairly large amount of money.”
