Announced on 01 September 2021, by the Leigh Day law firm, Sainsbury’s job-role recognition, which comes even before the judges have made their ruling, is an important first victory for the 3,700 employees of the supermarket group who have commenced legal proceedings to secure equal pay. The plaintiffs argue that Sainsbury's in-store staff (for the most part females) are paid less than their colleagues working the group’s warehouses (for the most part males). The UK courts are currently examining more than 50,000 similar supermarket equal-pay claims.
According to Leigh Day, which is standing for the plaintiffs, the difference in hourly pay between supermarket in-store workers and their warehouse counterparts ranges between £1.50 (€1.75) and £4 (€4.66). Mike Keenan, solicitor on the employment team at Leigh Day said, “Now that Sainsbury’s finally agrees shop floor workers compare their roles to workers in distribution centres, we can focus on what’s at the heart of these claims: whether the work is of equal value,” and particularly in terms of skills, while stressing that this change in the group’s position was already “a huge milestone for Sainsbury’s shop floor workers and truly something to celebrate.”
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