More than 3,500 workers and former employees of Next have won a six-year equal pay claim.
An employment tribunal ruled that Next failed to demonstrate that paying sales consultants, who are mostly women, lower hourly pay rates than warehouse operatives, who tend to be men, was not sex discrimination.
According to law firm Leigh Day, which represented the claimants, sales consultants received between £0.40 and £3 less than warehouse workers, and claimants’ average salary loss was more than £6,000 each.
The staff first submitted the claim in 2018, and may now be entitled to back pay going back up to six years. Their basic hourly pay terms will also be equalised in their existing contracts.
Only those who brought equal pay claims will be entitled to compensation for lost pay, but Leigh Day will continue to submit claims for consultants not in the original 3,500.
At the hearing in May this year, Next argued that market forces had explained the pay difference between the store workers and warehouse employees, and that sex did not come into pay decisions.
Elizabeth George, partner at Leigh Day and barrister representing the claimants, said: “This is exactly the type of pay discrimination that the equal pay legislation was intended to address. When you have female dominated jobs being paid less than male dominated jobs and the work is equal, employers cannot pay women less simply by pointing to the market and saying, it is the going rate for the jobs.
“The employment tribunal has confirmed employers must go further to justify paying the different rates. They rightly found that Next could have afforded to pay a higher rate but chose not to and that the reason for that was purely financial. It is worth reminding people that the financial compensation they will now be entitled to is not a windfall. It is pay that they were always entitled to if Next had complied with its equal pay obligations.”
Beverley Sunderland, partner at Crossland Employment Solicitors, added: “It is a useful reminder of the fact that equal pay is not just about men and women doing the same jobs, but whether men and women are doing work of equal value, so roles rated as equivalent by a job evaluation study, or work that’s not similar but is equivalent in terms of effort, skill, and decision-making.
“There have been many equal pay claims brought, particularly in the public sector, where those working in two seemingly different roles, have successfully argued that it is work of equal value. Here the employees argued that working in the shops was work of equal value to those in the warehouse and that there was no material factor which allowed Next to distinguish the pay rates.”
Next plans to appeal the ruling. In a statement, it 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.”
It added that no cases of direct discrimination had been upheld, and that the tribunal had found “there was no conscious or subconscious gender influence in the way Next set pay rates”.
