Supermarket giant Asda faces legal action over equal pay

ASDA is facing a mass legal action over equal pay.

Law firm Leigh Day said it has been approached by more than 19,000 people and confirmed it is currently representing hundreds of former and current employees of the Yorkshire supermarket chain, mostly female, who feel they have been paid less than others.

The law firm says that investigations revealed employees in the Asda-owned distribution centres were paid more than staff working in the supermarkets themselves.

If the case against Asda, which has 175,000 employees, is successful, claimants may be entitled to six years’ worth of back pay to compensate for the difference in earnings.

Discrimination and employment law expert Michael Newman, warned that the implications of these legal claims were ‘enormous for Asda and many other supermarkets in the UK’.

He said: “In the supermarkets the check-out staff and shelf-stackers are mostly women. The people in the warehouses are pretty much all men. And, as a whole, the group that is mostly men gets paid more.

“Our investigations suggest that the jobs are pretty much the same, in that warehouse staff are responsible for taking items off shelves, putting them on pallets and loading them into lorries. In the supermarket, they do the reverse: taking the pallets off the lorries, unstacking them and putting the items on the shelves. Where the jobs are not similar, we still think they are of equal value.

“Although there have been huge advancements in equal pay within the public sector, there is still a long way to go in the private sector. Compulsory audits are the only way to make sure the gender pay gap is being narrowed.

“Until now cases simply have not been brought, so you still get very segregated workplaces.”

But Asda said it will “robustly defend” its record on equal pay.

Asda told reports: “A firm of no win, no fee lawyers is hoping to challenge our award-winning reputation as an equal opportunities employer.

“We do not discriminate and are very proud of our record in this area which, if it comes to it, we will robustly defend.”