UKC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42968342

On the BBC news this evening It showed a female Tescos employee filling shelves in one of their stores and that she should get the same pay as male warehouse staff. I am pretty sure that male employees working in the stores doing the same job as their female colleagues are paid at the same rate. This is certainly the case in Sainsburys. I assume the male colleagues will get back dated pay as well is the case is won.

It all seems a Lidl bit unfair.

I think the male/female angle is a red herring here.

The employee filling the store shelves is paid the same irrespective of their gender.  And the warehouse staff worker is paid the same irrespective of their gender.  However the warehouse worker is paid more for the job they do.

The argument is about both jobs having parity while one is paid less that the other because of job descriptions.

I see, some could be accused of biting the hand that feeds them

I know. Anyone who works Aldi should be entitled to equal pay.

Maybe, maybe not.  If there is indeed parity then Tesco are screwed, and quite possibly countless other industries.  The shop-floor worker may have skills and attributes that once fully assessed bumps up their pay.

Shop staff have to deal with stuff like security, money, customer service and ill fitting uniforms.

Whatever happened to "I'm applying for a job in the warehouse, they get paid more than in here"

W

If men and women are paid equally then this is a somewhat frivolous claim don't you think? It can't be good for the future  application of the equal pay act for employers to have to continuously justify in court why they value one job more highly than another.

I spent today doing a 12 hour shift in a warehouse picking and stacking juice for supermarkets. The tempreture was 3.5 degrees and often involved hefting boxes weighing up to 12kg up to a maximum of 5 feet off the floor to the top of a pallet. I walked several miles over the course of the day.

Sitting at a checkout (8hr shift) in an ambient tempreture shop moving lighter items sideways off a conveyor belt is not a comprable job. Most women are not physically tall enough or strong enough to do supermarket warehouse all day every day. This has been proved by the times female agency staff have been in our place and haven't been able to stack the top layer of a pallet or took an age to do it (which doesn't cut it we have to get 100's of tons of the stuff out the door every day).

I hate the thumbs up and thumbs down button quite a bit because it does not add to a discussion.
Maybe the person who voted the thumbs down could say why because I can't work out which bit of hairyRob's reply is so objectionable.
Warehouse work is physically demanding and whoever does the job deserves the money and as far as the employment law goes I'm assuming that as long as an individual does the job then they get paid irrespective of gender.
I'm also guessing far more people can physically work in a shop environment than can in the warehouse day after day. Supply and demand.

A question to hairyRob, if both jobs paid the same, and you had the skills to do both jobs equally, which would you choose to do?

Don't know if you are the right person to ask here, but it's the internet, so you'll do.

If you call in sick how much revenue does Tesco lose, and how does that compare to a checkout operator?

I ask because there has to be a way of comparing the contribution both roles make to the company's bottom line.

I think a busy day on the tills means moving several tonnes of groceries as well as dealing with tills, money, customers, knowing an awful lot about the shop and goods and working under considerable pressure.  Granted you're not humphing pallets around but just because the several tonnes you shift each day is in small packets doesn't mean it is not a physical job and doesn't mean you should be paid less.

This sort of issue can be seen as jobs that are roughly equivalent but traditionally employ men are generally better paid and there isn't a rational reason for it so it is unfair and unlawful. Arguably the tils and shelf stacking is a more exclusive and better qualified job than humphing OJ on pallets.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/apr/11/equal-pay-women-birmingham-ci...

Working in the warehouse used to be the top job in British Gas, the store men (no ladies in the warehouse in those days) used to price up jobs, over order and flog the surplus to various unsuspecting punters in the pub ... it’s how I got my first gas stove

Of course a checkout job isn’t physical! Argue it’s worth the same or more than a warehouse job if you want, but one requires considerable, strength (or possibly a forklift licence) while the other doesn’t.

You saying that this is about gender and that is the reason why warehouse staff are paid more?

Are women actively stopped from applying for the same jobs in the warehouse?

Of the women who do the same job in the warehouse, are they paid less than their male colleagues?

The gender argument is a smokescreen, unless you are saying that women either can not apply for the better paid job, or they are earning less for doing the same work.

This is a case of pay parity.  And once an independent review is conducted, then we will know if one job has been under paid or not for the last few decades.

Maybe the warehouse pays more because people don't want to work in there and it needs the extra money to encourage people to take the job? 

The male employees can piggyback on the women’s claim. The key thing is that the store staff are predominantly women and the warehouse staff are predominantly men.

Public sector dealt with all this years ago.

it is a union thingg. Different unions and agreements for warehouse and retail staff. Not a gender issue, no one goes lugging pallets around in the warehouses. Its what the fork lifts and pallet trolleys are for.

I suggest you have a look at some of the widely available job evaluation schemes, you might be surprised at what it considers.

That's Aldi checkout staff. Tescos is more a leisurely move tins over a scanner, avoid eye contact with the customers and chat to your mates kind of role.

If only that were the case. From what I understand the argument you present is underpinned by the argument that store staff are "mainly" female, and warehouse staff are "mainly" male, hence the cry of discrimination.

They're different jobs, with the requirement of different skills, knowledge, and mental and physical demands. As we live in a "free"-market economy, Tesco are more than entitled to pay differently for them. So long as they pay men and women doing the same job the same, they comply with the law AFAIK (and agree with).

Irrelevant. 

Jobs are paid based on supply and demand. What you need to pay to get someone to do the job (who is appropriately qualified to do it.)

Yes, this seems to be the obvious point. If Tesco could pay warehouse staff £8 an hour and get enough staff of the right quality, they would do so.

No, jobs are paid based on supply, demand and relevant legislation, such as national minimum wage, health and safety act work and in this case equalities. Plenty of examples of supply and demand being subverted anyway, it isn’t this perfect solution that some armchair economists think.

The jobs are different but comparable. The physical demands might be greater in one, but mental demands greater in the other.

Rather than me try and describe it more fully:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_evaluation

Comparable doesn't make them quantifiably equatable.  They are different jobs.

Just because a job is perceived as historically predominantly one sex or the other, its historical.  Today, anybody can apply to work on the shop floor or the warehouse and if they are capable and qualified they are employed with the same pay.

You can cry discrimination all you want but there actively is non.

I still can't see why you use the smokescreen of discrimination for the current pay dispute when you agree with me that Tesco are complying that men and women doing the same job are paid the same.

Historically, members of parliament were male however today we have a female prime minister. From what I can gather a MP's job is to shake hands, kiss babies and talk a lot. If we considered the role of the Tesco shop worker, surely they are equally skilled and should be paid the same?

On that basis Stephen Hawking and Olympic weightlifters should be paid the same!  Maybe they are but I don't see it follows that they should.

The law disagrees.

You are twisting the logic somewhat, it is quite a lot more complicated than I am presenting it, I’m just pointing out that lifting heavy weights doesn’t necessarily mean more pay, it is perhaps 1 factor in a list many (13 in the version I had to do).

This is the local government one.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/99104/response/245230/attach/3/njc%2...

"Of course a checkout job isn’t physical!"

Worked long shifts on a busy checkout a lot? or perhaps you're talking bollocks?

I know HR departments love producing that sort of guff but its not how the real world works.  Surgeons get more than mechanics, MPs more than solicitors, forex traders more than metals traders etc. etc. despite the skill levels being comparable.

As it happens, yes. 

What I think you're all missing is there is an extra, meta level to this which seems completely bonkers. As I understand it, the crux of the argument is this: checkout operators earn less than warehouse people. (Though people of either/any sex doing the same job get paid exactly the same - this doesn't seem to be in dispute.) More checkout operators are women, and more warehouse workers are men. Therefore men get higher paid. Therefore it's a gender equality issue.

Seems completely daft, but that's how I heard the case presented the other day. 

Isn't this proving their case?

If women are excluded from a job by a failure to make reasonable adjustments to manual handling procedures and or productivity targets, and then that job attracts a pay premium?

Women are more than able to lift safe loads and use forklifts.

I did when I was 16... easiest job I genuinely ever had! 

To sum this whole thread up.

Different jobs, different pay. Wether they are equatable in different ways or not. The job is different, so it has different pay. That’s just a fact. 

Lets take it to the extreme... the CEO is paid differently to the warehouse worker. But one is physically demanding, one is mentally demanding. Doesn’t mean they should be paid the same! They are different jobs, so they get different wages. 

End of story really

Just because more men work in a warehouse than women surely can't be a gender issue if women are capable of doing the work just as equally, but choose not to.  The case can be presented any way it wants but, there is equality today.

The BBC has male and female International Editors on vastly different pay.  Now that's an argument for gender equality.  Same job different pay.

How Tesco and any employer decides on the worth of an employee is more how the argument should be posed.  And that is the issue.

So renumeration is not linked to the effect an employee has on the company performance, but only related to "can I hire someone similar, for less"?

Lots of chief execs will be worried.

Do you alway treat UKC like some kind of academic debate?  

I wasn't being, or intending to be, comprehensive. Simply point out that most jobs pay are based on what it costs to hire someone, not what they do for the company.

Not really, you need to think more broadly. 

In that case it would be 'what options and bonuses are needed to hire and retain a suitable CEO' 

Actually, if I understand well, the case is based on the claim that Tesco has been rewarding  jobs traditionally taken up by women less than jobs traditionally taken up by men, even though these jobs are - according to them - comparable in terms of skills, difficulty , etc etc.

Let’s be honnest, we’ve all probably observed in our professional lives that companies often reward jobs with high proportions of females less than those with high proportion of males, for apparently no good reason.

'for apparently no good reason.' Er yes there is a good reason. If more people of whatever gender want to work in checkouts than warehouses, which appears to be the case, then their wages will drift down.

I'm not a great believer in markets but this seems self evident.

What makes you think that more people want to work in checkouts than warehouses ? That seems made up.

In any case, even if like myself, you believed in markets, you know full well that typically wages can have a high degree of inelasticity. Of course, you are correct, discrimination would simply not be possible if we had perfectly competitive markets, but perfectly competitive markets do not exist.

That what the lawyers are seeking to show in this case, that Tesco rewarded different jobs at comparable skills with comparable market demands, for no good reason.

It might be that some jobs in some companies are often poorly rewarded, not because they are easy, or because nobody is willing to do them, but just because they are viewed as “women’s jobs”

No, but is that really a problem.

This is a good example of why employers need to give more consideration to the laws they are subject to.

I’ll assume you haven’t read it if you think it would assign mechanics and surgeons a similar score.

What law is that?

I visited our new local Tesco for the first time the other day. Judging by the number of staff that were just hanging around doing beggar all I'm guessing that it is quite likely that their warehouse staff work considerably harder.

If  they want to get paid the same as the warehouse staff, the shop staff should get a job in the warehouse

In the article it says jobs that require comparable skills, have similar levels of responsibility and are of comparable worth to the employer, should also be rewarded equally, according to the law. 

In this case the law is an ass because it takes no account of supply and demand of people willing to do those jobs.

The Equality Act 2010, which largely supersedes the Equal Pay Act 1970.

Realistically there is no difference in supply or demand. Arguably it’s a lot easy to get a warehouse job. If you are a man anyway.

What makes you think that?

So Tesco should go down the Aldi route. All Aldi retail employees are expected to do all the tasks needed in a shop (checkout, shelf stacking, promotions, store room stuff ) and get paid exactly the same rate. 

Dont know if they get the same rate as Aldi distribution  staff in a central warehouse, but this would be a demonstrably different role in a different location. 

Experience and talking to employers. Certainly locally the market rate for warehouse work is actually lower than supermarket work.

Diagnosis, detailed system knowledge, skilled.use of tools, life safety implications.

Is it? 

How many Tesco shops are there vs Tesco warehouses? 

I’ll let you in to a secret, Tesco does not represent 100% of the jobs market.

Show me the statistics and I'll believe you.

It should do... Tesco has food... I like food... alot

Section 65 Equal Work?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/65

If so, then it's entirely down to how comparable the two jobs are.
You've come to the conclusion, without actually knowing the details of either job, that they are comparable.  Tesco's think differently and are therefore paying the amounts they are accordingly.
The woman bringing the case thinks they are comparable and that's what the Courts will decide upon.  
On the face of it, they are totally different jobs: one sedentary in a pleasant environment and the other involving heavy lifting in an environment dictated by the outside temperature.  I think it would be a long stretch to say that the individual factors of such diverse jobs could somehow cancel each other out and result in the same 'score' as regards to pay, etc.

I’m sure you can google just as well as well as me, but a quick look at averages gives £7.45 per hour for warehouse workers (total jobs) and a quick look at the pay rates for four of the big supermarkets gives pay of £7.53 (Asda) to £8.45 (Aldi).

No I haven’t. All I am saying is that it should be considered. Tesco haven’t done an evaluation, if they had and it fairly showed a higher score, the case could easily be dismissed. I believe Asda and Sainsbury’s have already lost a similar cases.

Is that up to date? Just the £7.45 for warehouse workers is below the statutory minimum.

As said earlier, there is often price inelasticity when it comes to the job market, employers can therefore have a degree of monopsonistic wage setting power. The law aims to tamper that somewhat (whether it works, I’m not sure, I suspect compliance is low !)

Yes, I assume it is because some employers are deliberately targeting younger, cheaper staff. 

Good point.....and i suspect you are right in you assertion regarding targeting the young.

I've just done a quick job comparison on the back of my hand.

You need a license to operate a forklift (prerequisite for most warehouse jobs). You just need fingers to operate a till.

There's a reason you need to wear high vis and steelies in a warehouse but you're OK in a tabard on the shop floor.

If a shopping trolley runs into you, you're going to be a bit miffed. If a fork lift runs into you you're going to A&E. If a jar of pickles falls on you from the top shelf, you'll need a pan and brush to remove the mess. If a pallet of jarred pickles falls on you from the top rack, your colleagues will need a pan and brush to remove you.

.....and yes, I've worked a till and I've worked in warehouses.

Warehouse operatives with tickets for forklifts (most haven’t) get paid more. Job evaluation would support that. Dangerous work environment and health and safety knowledge will be part of any job evaluation. All Tesco have to do is fairly carry out the evaluation, submit to a bit of independent verification, show that the warehouse staff got a higher job evaluation score and they win the case. They may be able to do that, Asda and Sainsbury’s didn’t manage to.

Ive worked retail and warehouse as well, admittedly a long time ago.

What are you basing this assertion on, and could you point me at the source? My own knowledge is based purely on personal experience of working in 3 warehouses where virtually everyone had to have a reach or counterbalance license, preferably both.

Edit: http://www.hse.gov.uk/logistics/warehousing.htm 

Latest stats I could find for warehouse injuries. Note the 1600 serious injuries (amputations or fractures). There are far more retail workers than warehouse staff, but injury rates are just not comparable. Things like this seem to get lost in the noise when comparing jobs.

I don't think the law prescribes anything in anything other than a qualititive sense.  Quantitive weighting is down to the employer.

Strikes me Tesco should allow free transfer of staff between roles / pay scales and we'll see how equivalent they really are in peoples eyes.  Much easier to organise within a company than on the open jobs market.

Surely if it is easier to get a warehouse job that is an indicator that demand is higher than it is for retail staff and that the wages should be higher?

No, clearly not.

What will be relevant is the situation at Tesco warehouses, which I don’t know. A job evaluation will resolve that.

The main thing the HSE figures suggests to me is that safety in warehousing is not what it should be, but that is a different matter and safety is covered by job evaluation.

Different jobs, different rates. Market forces innit.

It's not as if this is an instance where men and women are doing the same job and yet are paid vastly different amounts while everyone turns a blind eye. (male and female fashion models anyone?).

I think you missed my point; we're on the same side here - I was clarifying the argument at play by those who initiated the case. IMO, the discrimination argument is utterly ridiculous. As for evaluation of remuneration of the two job roles? I've done neither, have limited understanding of what they require and frankly don't care enough (this isn't meant to sound aggressive, apologies if it does) to learn enough about them to consider how the two compare.

Ahh.

Rodger that.

I’m bailing out of this one as my head is hurting from repeatedly hitting it against a brick wall. Below is a description of what the Equality Act 2010 describes as Equal Pay for Equal Work. This is the basis of the case that has been brought and the basis of the cases lost by Asda and Sainsbury’s.

Equal pay for equal work

Women (or men) can claim equal pay with colleagues of the opposite sex where they are in the same employment and doing:

• Work which is the same or broadly similar (known as ‘like work’)
• Work rated as equivalent under an analytical job evaluation scheme ( known as ‘work rated as equivalent’), or
• Work which is different but which is of equal value in terms of the demands is makes on the jobholders (known as ‘work of equal value’).

I think that the brick wall you are hitting your head against is the fact that in this instance,men and women employed in the same job are paid the same. Different jobs attract different pay rates.

Most would see this as evidence both of market forces and equal pay. The only people truly qualified to judge if these pay grades are equitable are those with extensive experience doing those jobs. Not some government wonk or some employment lawyer making a mint out of a made up issue.

You obviously know best, why don’t you offer your services to Asda and Sainsbury’s, bound to win their appeals with your help.

Now now Nick, no need to get nowty.

Sarky, dear boy. Sarky!

1 and 2 clearly don't apply and I struggle to see how 2 ever would.  

Why are people assuming shop floor staff are sitting on the tills? Only a minority of people work on the tills (probably even less than when i worked there now with self service tills).

The majority of shop floor staff are likely to be shelf stackers, don't know exactly what the warehouse staff do but can see how it could be broadly comparable work.

I’m assuming a typo, 3 very clearly does and if you were to read any of this information I have supplied you might understand.

Sorry I meant 3, yes.  I did scan it.  Assuming we are speaking English there is no way that a check out assistant and warehouse worker are "equal value in terms of the demands is makes on the jobholders "

I'd say there is absolutely no way you can say that. It seems that a court will decide, in fact, two already have, they decided that they could.

Well that's just nuts.  As above, I have worked on a  checkout and although not as warehouse hand, in similar environments and there is no meaningful comparison.  They are totally different jobs with totally different demands.

Not if you read a few job evaluation schemes. I've been through it and it's a pain in the arse, but it is perfectly possible to compare different jobs. I could provide examples of hundreds of different jobs being compared. Things like cleaners, librarians, bin 'men', social workers, handy 'men', highways officers, etc. In my case jobs were awarded points against 13 criteria (those set out in the link I posted earlier), the score then equated to one of 12 pay bands.

Just because job evaluation schemes exist doesn't mean they have any validity in measuring one jobs value against another. Measuring one jobs difficulty, unpleasantness or social value is hideously complicated and best left to the market to decide.

What are job evaluation schemes for anyway? If they're to try and impose some sort of justice into the job market then how about comparing a banker with a surgeon or a train driver with a maths teacher? Or is justice in the job market only to be sort after on spurious gender grounds?

I am not sure you get it, if the job markets were perfectly competitive there wouldn’t be any gender pay gap.

Rom, men and women working in a Tesco warehouse get paid the same. Men and women working a Tesco till get paid the same.

I use to sit on job matching panels for the staffside when I worked in the NHS. Yes it was tedious at times but it was honest and it worked. 

That is fine, but nobody said otherwise. You are completely missing the point.

The claim being made is that Tesco pays jobs traditionally taken by women, less than jobs traditionally taken up by men, for no good reason.It remains to be seen whether this can be demonstrated in court.

You claim that it doesn’t matter because markets set wages. I am saying that the job market have a degree of inelasticity, they are not perfectly competitive, therefore this argument is invalid.

I'm not missing the point. I'm making the point that to say warehouse workers are paid more than shop floor workers because of gender bias is not a proven argument.

Exactly, FOR NO GOOD REASON. Do you think Tesco senior management would risk pissing off the women who control most of the funds spent in their stores just because they feel some sort of gender solidarity with the lads in the warehouse ?

Nobody said it’s proven, I am trying to tell you it is exactly what the lawyers bringing the case will attempt to prove. 

I don’t really see why you have a problem with that, it is their right to do so.

Irrelevant to the situation. You still don’t get it it seems.

No, I don't get it. People, regardless of gender, get paid different rates for different jobs. In many cases, perhaps even most cases, unfairly so. I don't see this changing any time soon.

I can't see how Tesco can possibly profit from maintaining unfair gender bias (and profit is entirely what they are in business for). I can see how a multitude of lawyers can profit from arguing the point.

You have no place here with your sensible observations, based on real life experience of the subject.

Tesco benefit from maintaining lower rates for traditional female dominated roles, if that is what they have done.

Hasn't stopped you!

Indeed you don’t get it. Nobody said different roles should be paid the same. We are simply saying the difference in pay between roles shouldn’t be based on the predominant gender in those roles. 

That is presumably what the lawyers will seek to prove, that Tesco, for no good business reason, systematically underpaid roles predominantly taken by women.

I am not too sure why you think this is a problem, if it turns out they are full of shit they’ll presumably lose their case, if they aren’t, then those impacted will be able to get redress.

Nobody said they are profiting from it. They may well be losing out from it. Corporations are increasingly finding out that they can make significant savings and increase productivity by closing their gender gap.

But in some companies cultural change can be slow and difficult, especially when the boardroom is the usual boys club...

Inorder to maximise profits a business will pay the lowest wage rate they can get away with. Tesco's tills aren't going unstaffed so they must be paying a rate acceptable to their target workforce. 

This leaves you with the argument that Tesco are artificially inflating the wages paid to warehouse staff (male and female). Why would they do this?

Edit: I'm all for gender equality but this is the crux of my argument. If there is no rational reason why a business would behave in this manner then there is no rational reason why they would. 

There are lots of rational, cash related reasons, why people would seek to manufacture such cases.

Good question, it’s clear that they do pay more than the market rate, I don’t know the answer. Maybe they have more responsibility than your average warehouse worker. Perhaps they should do a job evaluation and find out.

Unless you had noticed, businesses are run by humans, and humans don’t always behave rationally, and they are subject to all sorts of biases.

The fact that you are so quick to dismiss a legal challenge without even waiting for the outcome or even the full facts to be known is in fact quite revealing of such bias !

If businesses were all perfectly rational that would be fantastic but it just isn’t the case.

What do you think happens to businesses that persistently act against their economic interests, especially if those actions are to the detriment of the gender that make up the majority of their customer base?

The big supermarkets operate in a ferociously competitive arena. Any mistakes will be punished by the markets. 

Oh and Rom, those fallible, irrational humans are also rather heavily involved in the courts you're trusting to deliver redress and any decisions they make are based on a very few, not the masses that form the market.

Presumably they end up not performing as well as others business who do.

It may well be the case. But if you think we live in a world of perfect markets where the bad and the mediocre get eliminated instantly, you’re frankly a lore more naive than I thought !

Yes, but I trust them more than you. Not the least because they will have the facts, and you don’t. 

Blimey everyone - this all kicked off a bit!

It’s almost as if you are ignoring the fact that two of their direct competitors have already been judged to be doing exactly the same.

I love all the willy waving about how many warehouses or tills 'I've' worked in/on.  Hilarious!

Clearly, no one does or have recently worked on Tesco's premises, so they've absolutely no idea about this case.

—-> this

Maybe JE schemes are better than nothing but they are only slightly less arbitrary than doing it off the top of your head. 

Yeah, well, Mrs Stichtplate was catching up on Emmerdale and I'm bored with my book.

IF implemented well, I think they can be quite good. Certainly better than the judgement of people who don’t seem to understand that jobs can be different and comparable.

Absolutely everything under the sun can be different and comparable. I simply have more faith in market forces combined with minimum wage  and equal pay legislation than I do in JE schemes.

JE is an integral part of Equal Pay legislation, so I’m struggling a bit with your last claim.

Fair point. Was simply referring to equal pay legislation in the more widely understood form of equal pay for any gender doing the same job.

Unequal Pay. Gotcha!

I wonder whether this lawyer would he happy to use JE to compare her pay to that of the workers that she is representing

I can speak for the lawyers, but I would happily.

*can’t*