Madness on stilts. The start of the BBC piece:
“More than 3,500 current and former workers at Next have won the final stage of a six-year legal battle for equal pay.
An employment tribunal said store staff, who are predominantly women, should not have been paid at lower rates than employees in warehouses, where just over half the staff are male.
Lawyers for the shop staff described the judgement as “hugely significant” and the amount of back-pay owed could amount to more than £30m.
However, Next said it would appeal against the ruling.
Next argued that pay rates for warehouse workers were higher than for retail workers in the wider labour market, justifying the different rates at the company.
But the employment tribunal rejected that argument as a justification for the pay difference.” [J4MB emphasis]
The employment tribunal clearly consists of blithering idiots, probably mostly female blithering idiots. Anyone who thinks there’s an equivalence between store jobs and warehouse jobs cannot have spent much time in warehouses. Warehouse jobs are a great deal more physically and mentally demanding, and often include responsibility for operating expensive equipment. From what I’ve seen, store ‘work’ seems to mainly involve chatting with other store workers, which is surely why the work appeals to women so much.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Yup. First of all it’s only just over half of the warehouse staff that are male, so clearly their pay is not “gendered” and women can and do apply for those sorts of jobs. Which I presume is why the tribunal says there was neither direct nor indirect discrimination. The basis for the ruling apparently because Next was profitable. So the ruling is I’m sure not sound if taken to a higher tribunal. Of course what isn’t taken into account is economics, supply and demand, the going rate reflecting what the industry has to apply to attract workers. Many councils had such cases in the past and generally the result was manual workers lost out. A recent example of what happened illustrates the problem. The council had planted 30 threes in a piece of local park. About two months later a council mowing tractor cut the saplings down , yes every one while mowing. Now prior to the ” equal pay” settlement all the groundsmen had done a college (City and Guilds) course before being taken on. After equal pay the parks and gardens service dwindled and then was “outsourced” cheaply. Result short term employees with no knowledge beyond working their machines. Now of course in a sense there is no economic loss to the council, other than the expense of planting and buying trees. But anyone around here can see the loss of amenity.
To cap it of the massive financial problems of Glasgow and Birmingham are because of such back dated equal pay cases.
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Equal pay for equal work. Warehouse work is more dangerous, more physically taxing and more skilled. Compare how many people in the country can work the shop floor vs a fork lift and you will quickly see the work in the warehouse is much harder and specialized.
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Thanks, I couldn’t agree more! I spent some years working in the logistics sector and was always impressed by the skill and competence of warehouse workers. The idea th.at working in a clothes store should attract the same wages is obscene. If the women want warehouse-level income then they should apply for those jobs. They’ll soon baulk at the hours, hard work, commuting distance, unsocial hours… and so much more.
Somehere in the BBC piece the female lawyer representing the store workers is quoted as saying Next could ‘afford’ to pay the store workers more. The daft bint seems not to understand how capitalism works.
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it was the Judgement that said that Next could have afforded to pay more. Stupid judgement as clearly they could have also paid warehouse staff more too. But as with any business they paid the market rates. The problem with Judges and lawyers trying to run the pay rates for commercial industries. No idea of the actual jobs themselves. The maddest part is that the judgment finds that Next did not discriminate on the basis of sex not was it indirect discrimination! So the judgement is really saying they should have paid more to be nice!
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You have to pay the market rate. Otherwise workers work for rivals. So even if in some way the work was equivalent it’s pretty clear it’s easier to recruit to shop work than wharehousing. Footballers, Rugby Players, cricketers , Hockey players etc. might all work as hard but the popularity of their sports varies wildly hence dramatically different earnings
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As a man who made an equal pay claim to the employment tribunal, I faced significant challenges that I believe stemmed from gender bias within the system. Throughout the preliminary hearings, I encountered a series of female judges, including the regional employment judge, who appeared to act in ways that disadvantaged my case. Despite presenting direct evidence that female comparators were paid more for the same work, the tribunal seemingly disregarded this evidence and failed to hold the employer accountable for the pay disparity.
I was subjected to procedural obstacles and threats of a costs order, which pressured me into withdrawing my claim. The tribunal’s treatment of my case seemed to reflect a bias against male claimants. Arguments that would be unacceptable in a female equal pay claim, such as justifying higher pay for women based on a supposed male-dominated environment, were accepted without scrutiny. Additionally, the tribunal’s handling of evidence regarding positive discrimination was problematic, with the judges dismissing legitimate concerns about bias in favor of what was framed as a “positive environment.”
This experience has led me to believe that men pursuing equal pay claims may face systemic bias, resulting in a lack of fair recourse. The treatment I received also raised concerns about whether my right to a fair and impartial hearing, as guaranteed by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, was upheld.
The difficulties I faced suggest that men seeking equal pay justice may encounter substantial obstacles, and my experience raises important questions about the fairness and impartiality of the tribunal system in such cases.
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Thanks for this. Men face systemic bias in every imaginable area where it might exist. The other side of the coin is, of course, systemic female privilege,
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im sure you are right in your judgement. The successful claims I’m aware of were all in Councils and had the support of Unions acting on behalf of groups of workers. Most were where groups of male manual workers had lost ” bonuses” or seasonal overtime as the result of successful group claims for women.
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One point to consider is whether the predominance of female shop assistants at Next indicates a potential bias or discrimination in the recruitment process against men. If the workplace is predominantly female, the argument that men should be paid more to balance this gender imbalance seems to be overlooked. It’s noteworthy how arguments for higher pay based on a gender imbalance are not applied equally when the situation is reversed. This inconsistency raises questions about how gender-based pay decisions are justified and whether similar considerations are applied when addressing gender disparities in employment.
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