Asda workers take supermarket to Court in sex discrimination case

Asda workers are set to sue the retail giant after complaining that their colleagues in the warehouses receive a higher wage.

More than 60,000 supermarket employees are taking their grievances to the Employment Tribunal, which is thought to be the largest of its kind in the private sector.

One of their main grievances involve female retail staff claiming that they are being paid less than their male warehouse counterparts. The Union which represents Asda workers argues that the female retail workers are paid up to £3.74 an hour less than the predominantly male warehouse workforce.

Asda worker and Equal Pay Campaigner, Saliha Patel, told GMB:

“What the guys in the depot are doing, we are doing exactly the same on the other side. 

“You know they are putting the cages on they are stacking the pallets. We are unloading the pallets

“The additional part of the job we do is dealing with the customers, dealing with the abuse  that we get on a daily basis.

“And that’s why every man and woman in the retail sector and on the shop floor need to be treated fairly.”

Nadine Houghton, GMB national officer, said:

“Asda workers are making history. The result of this hearing will call time on the retailers undervaluing their predominantly women shop floor workers.

“The entire retail sector has been built on the structural undervaluing of women’s work but GMB members are changing this.”

The legal battle involving one the biggest retailers in the UK has been underway for ten years, as workers accuse the supermarket of sex discrimination.

It comes after an email leaked to ITV News revealed that an independent expert, who was commissioned by the court to compare the store workers’ jobs to those in the distribution centres, had concluded that the women’s roles were of equal value.

Discrimination at work

Discrimination in the workplace can occur in many different ways. Below we aim to break down the list of protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, which provides legal protection to employees.

Protected characteristics encompass fundamental parts of you as an individual, and cannot be legally discriminated against by an employer. If you have been discriminated against you may be entitled to make a claim.

List of protected characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnerships
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

Examples of discrimination

• Direct Discrimination – Where an employee is treated less favourably than their colleagues due to one or more of the above protected characteristics.
• Indirect Discrimination – Where a workplace practice or infrastructure is not in place with the intention to discriminate or disadvantage, but ends up doing so. An example may be where a task expected to be manageable by all ends up being difficult for an employee with a disability.
• Harassment – This is when an employee is targeted in some way, creating a humiliating, hostile or offensive working environment which in some way intentionally connects with a protected characteristic.
• Victimisation – This is when an employee is punished in some way for reporting something they believe to be unfair, or raise a complaint that they are being discriminated against.

Could I be eligible to take legal action?

If you have raised a grievance with your employer and the situation has either not changed, has become worse, or has not been looked into at all – you may be eligible to make a legal claim for compensation against them.

Further reading

Workplace discrimination – Oakwood Solicitors

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