D<\/span>uring an average shift on the shop floor at Next<\/a>, Helen Scarsbrook has to remain polite and keep smiling while she makes split-second judgments about which customers need help and which need to be tactfully discouraged from shoplifting and ushered out of the store.<\/p>\n She and her mostly female colleagues are on their feet for long stretches and regularly do heavy lifting as new stock arrives at the back of the shop. She is confident that her work in one of Next\u2019s 466 UK stores is just as challenging, or more so, as the jobs performed by Next\u2019s mostly male warehouse workers, who have always received higher rates of pay.<\/p>\n This week an employment tribunal judge agreed, in a landmark equal pay ruling<\/a> that could have implications for similar claims being fought by female shop staff in some of Britain\u2019s largest supermarkets.<\/p>\n The reasons given by Next for paying its shop workers less an hour than its warehouse workers were held by the tribunal to be unjustified sex discrimination. As a result, Scarsbrook and 3,539 other Next sales consultants who took the claim would have received more than \u00a330m in compensation if the chain had not immediately announced that it would be appealing against the judgment.<\/p>\n A day after travelling to London to digest the ruling with her Leigh Day lawyers, Scarsdale is back at home in Southampton preparing to return to retail work on a pay rate that is at least 40p less an hour than colleagues in the company\u2019s warehouse. She is triumphant and weary, exhausted by a legal battle that has already dragged on for more than six years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always knew we weren\u2019t well paid; retail work is never well paid. It has a bottom-of-the-rung reputation, which you get used to, but it made me furious when I understood that the warehouse workers were paid more,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not saying that they don\u2019t deserve the money, but the company needs to accept that we work as hard as them.\u201d<\/p>\n She is convinced that the low status and pay accorded to shop workers is tied up with the fact that it is a job primarily done by women. \u201cA difference of 40p an hour may not seem a lot, but 40p every hour, every day, for decades, it adds up. It just makes you feels so undervalued,\u201d she says. \u201cI want retail workers to get a bit more respect. I hope this judgment will inspire other women to come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Scarsbrook is reluctant to criticise a company that has employed her for almost 22 years, and where she plans to continue working. She enjoys her job, speaks warmly of her colleagues and arrives looking smart in a crisp, white Next linen shirt. But she believes the organisation has not acknowledged the degree to which its success has been built on the work of its mostly female shop staff, and she is disappointed to still receive a minimum wage rate despite decades of experience.<\/p>\n \u201cThey haven\u2019t recognised women\u2019s value. I do find that frustrating,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember Barbara Castle; I was at school when she passed the Equal Pay Act. I\u2019m a pensioner now. It\u2019s taken this long for things to change, and they still haven\u2019t really changed. People tend to think that these battles have been won.\u201d<\/p>\n After school, Scarsbrook, 68, trained as a paediatric nurse, but she found the hours difficult after having children. She took a part-time job at Next when her children were teenagers because she could make the hours fit alongside her responsibilities as a single parent. \u201cNobody really chooses to work in retail \u2013 people fall into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Her phone is full of supportive messages from female colleagues (\u201cHelen: you are blooming amazing\u201d; \u201cThank you for helping to make this happen\u201d) but she is disturbed by streams of negative comments from men online. Posting on Facebook beneath news of the judgment, one man said: \u201cWell done. I hope you all feel the same way when you\u2019re all homeless and bankrupt because of these ridiculous pay awards.\u201d (Next reported \u00a3918m in annual pre-tax profits for 2023<\/a>, up 5% from 2022.) Another put: \u201cRidiculous. Let the shop assistants carry huge boxes round then if they want equal pay.\u201d<\/p>\n Scarsbrook says: \u201cThere\u2019s always been this idea that if it\u2019s a physical thing then it\u2019s harder than the mental stress.\u201d<\/p>\n The case has involved a sophisticated calculation of the relative skills and stresses involved with their jobs, with a detailed assessment of 11 aspects of the roles carried out by shop staff and warehouse workers, including everything from physical skills to problem-solving and decision-making. At the end of this calculation, shop staff scored as highly as or higher than warehouse workers. Part of the process has involved Scarsbrook explaining to the tribunal that female shop workers have to lift the same boxes of clothes that their colleagues in the warehouses do when they unpack them and hang them on the rail.<\/p>\n \u201cOn top of that you have to put on a smiling face and be pleasant every day as you wait to serve customers \u2013 some of whom might want to have a joke with you, or they might be in a bad mood, determined to have a fight, want to rob you, or just be on their mobile phones and not acknowledge that you are there. It\u2019s exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n If she were to receive back pay, Scarsbrook estimates that it might total about \u00a36,000. \u201cEnough to pay off my car loan, take a nice holiday, perhaps cut my hours. It would make a real difference,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Next\u2019s lawyers argued that market forces meant warehouse workers received higher rates but the tribunal concluded that \u201cthe business need was not sufficiently great as to overcome the discriminatory effect of lower basic pay\u201d.<\/p>\n Elizabeth George, a Leigh Day partner and barrister representing the successful claimants, said the result was a boost for the 112,000 store staff bringing similar equal pay claims against Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Co-op and Sainsbury\u2019s through Leigh Day. \u201cWhen 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In a statement, Next said the tribunal had rejected claims of direct discrimination by the company and had not accepted all claims of indirect discrimination, highlighting that the tribunal found \u201cthere was no conscious or sub-conscious gender influence in the way Next set pay rates\u201d.<\/p>\n The company said: \u201cIt is our intention to appeal. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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