Thousands of workers at British retailer Next win equal pay case

More than 3,500 current and former workers at British retailer Next have won a six-year legal battle for equal pay, lawyers representing the plaintiffs said on Tuesday.

An employment tribunal ruled that Next had failed to show that paying its sales advisers, the vast majority of whom are women, lower wages than its warehouse workers did not constitute sex discrimination, said Leigh Day, the law firm representing the workers.

Workers involved in the suit would be entitled to back pay dating back to up to six years before the action was filed and since then, totalling an estimated £30 million ($39.6 million), it said.

Leigh Day said the ruling would be a “huge boost” to the 112,000 employees she represented in similar cases at companies including Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Co-op, although each case would be decided on its own facts.

A court in Leeds, northern England, ruled in 2023 that work done by women in Next stores was equal to warehouse work in terms of the demands involved.

Helen Scarsbrook, one of the three lead plaintiffs, said: “It's been six long years of fighting for the equal pay we all felt we deserved, but today we can say we won.”

Elizabeth George, a partner at Leigh Day, said the claim was exactly the type of discrimination that equal pay legislation was intended to address.

“When there are female-dominated jobs that pay less than male-dominated jobs and the work is equal, employers can't pay women less by simply pointing to the market and saying that's the going wage for those jobs,” she said.

The tribunal found that Next could have paid a higher fee but chose not to and that the reason for doing so was purely financial, it said.

The tribunal then held that it had rejected most of the claims, including all claims for direct discrimination and bonuses.

“With respect to the specific terms on which the claim was successful, it is our intention to appeal,” it said in a statement.

“This is the first class action on equal pay in the private sector to reach a decision at the Court level and raises a number of important points of legal principle.”