The Supreme Court has blocked Tesco from appealing a key ruling in a long-running equal pay claim brought by more than 16,000 shop workers.
The litigation alleges that Tesco underpays its store workers, who are mainly women, compared with distribution centre workers, who are mostly men.
Tesco’s appeal rejected
The case was launched in 2018 by claimant-focused law firms Harcus Parker and Leigh Day. Tesco appealed through multiple courts against the Employment Tribunal’s use of the definition at the centre of the case.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal both rejected Tesco’s main argument that the Tribunal’s overall methodology should be overturned, although both partially allowed Tesco’s appeals.
The UK Supreme Court rejected Tesco’s application to appeal earlier this month, bringing the company’s challenge on the issue to an end, according to Kiran Daurka, an employment partner at Leigh Day.
Daurka 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 added: “We remain focused on securing equal pay for our clients in the wider litigation.”
Wider retail equal pay cases
Separate equal pay cases involving thousands of retail employees also concern Asda, Next, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and the Co-Op. The wider litigation is reportedly worth a potential £4bn.
Last month, Next won an appeal in its equal pay case, allowing it to pay warehouse workers more than shop-floor staff. The retailer had warned that losing the appeal would have represented “a hammer blow to retail employment in the UK”.
The Next appeal followed a 2024 Employment Tribunal ruling that the company failed to show that paying its mostly female sales consultants lower hourly rates than its male-dominated warehouse staff was not sex discrimination.
Next faced a potential £30m payout before appealing. The Employment Appeal Tribunal later overturned the decision, citing recruitment and retention pressures that do not apply to sales workers.
Related: Senior pay rises outpaced junior workers between 2025 and 2026, analysis says
Source: City AM
