Tesco Equal Pay Case Moves to Trial After Appeal Rejected

Tesco has run out of routes to challenge the method that will be used to assess work in a major equal pay case. The UK’s highest court refused the retailer permission to appeal earlier this month, so the claim brought by more than 16,000 shop workers will proceed under the Employment Tribunal’s existing approach.

The decision settles a procedural dispute about how roles should be compared. It does not decide whether Tesco’s pay practices amount to discrimination, or what compensation workers might receive. Those questions remain for the case to address.

A dispute over how to compare jobs

The claims against Tesco are being heard in three stages. The disagreement behind this latest appeal concerns the first step: how the Tribunal should define the work carried out by employees. It decided to rely on generic training documents rather than examine each worker’s day-to-day duties individually.

Tesco challenged that approach through several levels of appeal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal each allowed parts of its challenges, but neither accepted Tesco’s central argument that the Tribunal’s overall method should be overturned. The latest refusal means the retailer cannot take that argument further.

That leaves the case on a defined procedural track, while the underlying comparison between store and distribution centre roles remains contested. Using shared training material gives the Tribunal a common basis for considering the work. The eventual assessment will still need to address the claims before it; the ruling on method does not establish that the roles are equivalent or determine whether differences in pay are justified.

Kiran Daurka, an employment partner at Leigh Day, said: “This is a significant outcome for the 16,000 Tesco workers we represent and brings Tesco’s challenge on this issue to an end.” He said the firm remained focused on securing equal pay for its clients in the wider litigation.

Tesco maintains that the roles differ in their skills and demands. A spokesperson said: “The jobs in our stores and distribution centres are different. These roles require different skills and demands which lead to variations in pay, but this has absolutely nothing to do with gender.” The company said its position on the claims had not changed and that it continued to defend them.

The two sides are therefore emphasizing different questions. The workers’ case concerns whether pay differences between groups of employees can be justified; Tesco says the roles themselves call for different pay. The Tribunal’s process will determine how those arguments are assessed, but the refusal to hear another appeal does not settle their substance.

A wider supermarket dispute

Tesco is one of several UK supermarket groups facing claims that store workers, mainly women, receive less than distribution centre workers, who are mostly men. The wider litigation began in 2018 and involves separate cases against Asda, Next, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and the Co-Op, as well as Tesco. The potential value of the claims has been reported at £4bn.

That figure describes the reported potential scale of the wider dispute, rather than an amount awarded or a confirmed liability. The cases involve different employers and proceedings, so developments in one do not decide the claims against another. For workers and retailers alike, the outcome depends on how each case proceeds and on the evidence about the roles and pay at issue.

The Tesco ruling matters because it closes a lengthy challenge to the framework for examining its case. It allows the Tribunal process to continue without another hearing on that particular question. The next significant developments will concern the substantive stages of the claim: how the jobs are assessed, how the parties’ arguments are considered and whether any remedy follows.

How the Next case compares

Next’s separate equal pay dispute recently produced a different procedural result. The retailer won an appeal that allows it to pay warehouse workers more than shop-floor staff. The case followed a 2024 Employment Tribunal ruling that Next had failed to show that paying its sales consultants, most of whom are women, lower hourly rates than its male-dominated warehouse workforce was not sex discrimination.

Before appealing, Next faced a potential £30m payout. The Employment Appeal Tribunal overturned the earlier decision, citing recruitment and retention pressures affecting warehouse roles that did not apply to sales workers. Next had argued that an adverse outcome would have represented “a hammer blow to retail employment in the UK”.

The Next result highlights why the cases cannot be treated as interchangeable. Both involve comparisons between retail and distribution work, but the evidence and outcomes in one company’s dispute do not resolve another company’s claims. Tesco’s latest setback is narrower: it must proceed using the Tribunal’s chosen method, while retaining its stated position that the jobs differ and continuing to defend the case.

For the workers, the refusal removes a barrier to the next stage of proceedings but does not guarantee a particular finding or payment. For Tesco, the practical consequence is that its challenge to the method has ended and the substantive case will now proceed within that framework. The outcome will turn on what the Tribunal concludes about the work, the pay differences and the arguments each side presents.