Thousands of workers at British retailer Next win equal pay lawsuit By Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – More than 3,500 current and former store workers at British retailer Next have won a six-year legal battle for equal pay, lawyers representing the claimants said on Tuesday.

An employment tribunal ruled that Next had failed to demonstrate that paying its sales consultants, who are predominantly women, lower wages than its warehouse workers did not constitute sex discrimination, according to Leigh Day, the law firm representing the workers.

Workers who file the claim are entitled to back pay for up to six years before they filed the lawsuit and for the time since then. The total amount is estimated to be more than £30 million ($39.6 million), the report said.

Leigh Day said the ruling would be a “huge encouragement” to the 112,000 employees the firm has represented in similar cases at companies including Asda, Tesco (OTC:), Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and the Co-op, although each company would decide on its own facts.

A court in Leeds, northern England, ruled in 2023 that the work the women did in the Next stores was equivalent in terms of the demands placed on it to work in the warehouse.

Helen Scarsbrook, one of the three lead claimants, said: “We have fought for six long years for the equal pay we all deserve, but today we can say we have won.”

According to Elizabeth George, a partner at Leigh Day, this claim was precisely the kind of discrimination that equal pay legislation was intended to address.

“If you have jobs that are predominantly female and are paid less than jobs that are predominantly male, and the work is equal, employers cannot pay women less by simply pointing to the market and saying, this is the going rate for those jobs,” she said.

The court ruled that Next could have afforded to pay a higher interest rate, but chose not to, for purely financial reasons, she said.

The court then found that most of the claims had been dismissed, including all claims of direct discrimination and bonus payments.

“With respect to the specific conditions under which the claim was successful, it is our intention to appeal,” the statement said.

“This is the first private sector lawsuit to reach a class action equal pay decision at the district court level. It raises a number of important legal principles.”

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