Asda Equal Pay Supreme Court backs the Women
 

This will affect Other Supermarkets


LBC Live debating this now


[Asda loses Supreme Court appeal in equal pay fight]


[The Supreme Court upheld an earlier court ruling that
lower-paid shop staff, who are mostly women,
can compare themselves with higher paid warehouse
workers, who are mostly men.
The judge stressed the ruling did not mean the
45,000 claimants had won the right to equal pay.
However, they are now free to take further action.]


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56534988

Justice :clap1:

The new owners wont be happy.

Good.

So people with different jobs got paid different amounts?

What was stopping the women from working in the warehouse?

A lot of times with Supermarket jobs you apply and are just put where ever you're told to go. Not sure about this case but I worked in Supermarket as a teenager and was just placed wherever the manager told me to go. Both my kids have part time jobs in a local Super market and it was the same thing, my son was put on Tills and my daughter works in their Pizza section, his friend also works there and he was put on the floor/warehouse. They all get paid the same though (actually my daughter gets paid more but that's to do with age bands, under 18's get paid less and she's worked there longer)

Fair, I didn't realise that, I've not worked in a supermarket.

Not saying it's the case here of course, that's just my own personal experience, might be different over there

OK that makes sense then

As otherwise I did see it as a 'different jobs' thing. Warehouse work is so much harder physically obviously, than sitting on the till or something.

As with any manual labour job, it's more physical-strength-intensive and therefore a harder job for most women than for most men, however as neither requires more skill nor qualifications, I think it's very justifiable to say that the roles should have income parity, because women should not be at an income disadvantage because of a completely unavoidable disadvantage in suitability for certain roles. They should have a flat wage structure for unskilled roles with pay variations coming in with experience/managerial roles.

I'm not a huge fan of the age-banding that Niamh mentioned either; all people over 16 should be paid the same hourly wage for doing the same jobs. Labour (and that labourer's time) is not less valuable because of the age of the labourer. It also encourages the hiring of younger people as cheap temporary labour instead of creating real, permanent roles.

Honestly I completely disagree with this stance, wages should be dependant on responsibilities, qualifications and level of experience and not on a subjective impression of "how hard" the job is. Spent far, far too long listening to retired tradies and manual laborers blaring on about how "young'uns these days don't know what a hard days work is" when, frankly, they couldn't have done my job if they merged all their braincells into one head - nor would one of them have had a fraction of the required patience.

Yeah not a massive fan of it either but there are things that under 18's can't do like scan alcohol through the tills and just in regards to the Supermarket my kids work in, it's a small local one and they're really good for employing local teens looking for a part time job in the village, there's only the shop, a cafe, a Chinese take away, a fish and chip shop and a few Pubs there so there's very few options where they wouldn't have to travel to the next town and if they're good they always keep them on and bump their money up when they turn 18

Hmm, I suppose there are limitations for 16-18's in that sense and maybe it needs to be lower to encourage hiring at all (otherwise why wouldn't you just hire an 18 year old who can do the full role)... beyond that though I just can't see the justification for the lower wages for 18-21 year olds, and slightly lower minumum wage for 21-25 year olds. Though I don't know that many places actually pay 21-25 year olds the 50p less an hour or whatever it is, I think MOST places at least have a flat wage structure at 21+.

It's one of the very few things my old place of work did right. Obviously you had to be 18 to work there at all, but then the wage structure was the same whether you were 18 or 50 (in the same role).

My daughter is going to be turning 21 in a couple of months and I'm not actually sure if they will pay her more then, I don't think so but I'm not 100% sure, i must ask her that, as far as I know though 18 up is the same

Agreed for sure. Same job, same bloody pay. Just being younger does not mean they should be exploited.

Same with 'apprenticeships' in silly things. The word apprentice is only used in order to pay pennies..subway needs ' apprentice sandwich artists' indeed :suspect:

Hmm maybe. I may be slightly biased having done both of those jobs so..and I felt so hard done by at the time when in the warehouse tbh :laugh:

I think Apprenticeships are OK if it's a trade, that's valuable training and still getting paid something but not for things like making sandwiches obviously, that's taking the piss

Yeah of course. Its different if its a proper trade. But making out you need loads of qualifications/training to make sandwiches is ridiculous and quite obviously is only about paying the lowest wages possible rather than qualifications.

100%, that's exploitation and should be illegal

"Real" apprenticeships are fine but some of the newer ones - which thankfully from what I can tell have never really taken off - are nothing but slave labour. "Apprenticeship in Retail Customer Service" is an actual joke.

Tesco are also
in the same position as Asda

They need to stop chatting whilst they drag your fresh veg over the dirty beep beep bit, leaving frustrated customers sighing at the lack of speed from 2.8 metres away to earn that extra 3 quid imo.