Category: UK Employment Rights

Asda workers will demonstrate in Brighton on Monday as their landmark equal pay claim begins.

More than 60,000 Asda workers take their case to the Employment Tribunal today [Monday] in what is thought to be the largest ever private sector equal pay claim.

Asda staff will be at the TUC congress, where delegates will debate GMB’s motion on equal pay for Asda workers.

The case, expected to last three months, centres on the fact the predominantly female retail workforce is paid up to £2.50 per hour less than the predominantly male warehouse workforce.

Claimants will argue retail work is of equal value to the company as warehouse work.

The case is the latest step in a ten-year fight for equal pay by Asda retail workers – following four separate court battles, in 2021 they won in the Supreme Court, giving them the right to bring today’s case to the tribunal.

If successful, the bill for Asda could run into billions of pounds

Nadine Houghton, GMB National Officer, said: 
“Asda workers are making history. The result of this hearing will call time on the retailers undervaluing their predominantly women shop floor workers.  

“The entire retail sector has been built on the structural undervaluing of women’s work – but GMB members are changing this. 

“When the court finds shop floor work is of equal value to warehouse work it will be time for ASDA’s majority owners – TDR Capital – to get round the table and begin settlement talks to resolve the sex discrimination in ASDA’s pay structure.  

“The new owners have loaded billions of pounds of debt on to ASDA’s balance sheet – yet last year they reported a pre-tax profit of 180 million pounds.  

“TDR Capital was founded by now billionaire, Manjit Dale – there is enough money to pay these women what they are owed.” 

By Adrian Weir, Campaign For Trade Union Freedom

We now have a Labour Government that has promised to legislate to improve trade union and workers’ rights within 100 days of taking office. The movement will therefore be looking forward to the publication of the Employment Rights Bill in October.

It’s clear that Labour will repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. Not only were the railway workers able to face down the employers when threatened with a work notice being issued under the terms of the Act but most serious commentators realised that the Act would have been unworkable, so much so that Labour was able to dismiss it as a “gimmick.”

Labour also says that no further action is necessary after the High Court struck down the previous government’s attempt to change the law that would have allowed employers to use agency labour as strike breakers when confronted with industrial action by their workforce.

It is understood that Labour will also repeal the Trade Union Act, 2016. This was the law that introduced, among other things, thresholds for ballots for industrial action, super thresholds in “important public services,” increased notice to be given to the employer of industrial action and the creation of “picket supervisors.”

In a partisan move, it also changed the way that unions’ political funds were collected from an “opt out” system to a more difficult to achieve “opt in” system. It is not clear that this provision will be included in the repeal of the 2016 Act.

The repeal of the 2023 and 2016 Act will go some way to meeting the objectives set out in Labour’s plan to make work pay – delivering a new deal for working people, that latest version of New Deal for Working People originally published in 2021.

Labour is seeking to promote workers’ voice at work; it believes that strong unions and collective bargaining are key to delivering a strong economy and raising wages and that collective bargaining is important in dealing with insecurity, inequality, discrimination and enforcement of rights.

The anti-union laws dating from the Thatcher and Major period of course aimed to do the opposite, to limit workers’ voice and most clearly to limit unions’ rights to organise, rights to bargain collectively and rights to strike.

This of course was an essential part of the neo-liberal project of restoring to the 1% that which they had lost in the years of social democratic advance and strong trade unions in the post war period. The 1970s were the most equal on record in terms of income distribution, all of which has been turned around in the 40 plus years of neo-liberalism.

The 1970s were also the high point in the coverage of collective bargaining in Britain. It has been shown that the decline in the coverage of union led collective bargaining is causally related to the decline in the wages and salaries share of national income.

It will be a measure of how far the newly minted Labour Government intends to break with neo-liberalism – for such a break will be needed to raise the general level of wages and salaries – by how far, it at all, it intends to repeal the Thatcher era laws. The last Labour Government declined to tackle this issue; in fact Tony Blair celebrated the fact that Britain had the most restrictive laws on trade unions rights.

Repeal will be necessary if, for example, there is to be a serious effort to stop a repetition of the fire and replace of workers seen at P&O Ferries in 2022. To have meaningfully damaged the employer, who was dispensing with the existing labour force, other groups of workers, dockers for example, would have to have been mobilised to take action, say by refusing to moor P&O Ferries’ ships. Workers at chandleries and food and drink suppliers, could have been mobilised to take solidarity action in support of the sacked seafarers – all such action would have been, and remains, unlawful.

More generally, repeal of the Thatcher era laws will be necessary if there is to be a restoration of union led collective bargaining. To have a meaningful right to collective bargaining there must be a corresponding meaningful right to strike.

Rights to organise, to bargain collectively and to strike are set out in any number of international statutes that the UK Government has ratified but have been universally ignored in the neo-liberal period.

The 2021 version of New Deal for Working People set out that UK industrial action law would comply with international obligations, which includes solidarity action. This commitment does not appear in the current version although it has not been repudiated by responsible Government ministers.

If the Government wants to reap the benefits that it acknowledges collective bargaining brings it will have to look beyond repeal of the 2023 and 2016 Acts and take a wider view of necessary and vital changes to industrial relations law in Britain.

These issues and more will be discussed on the fringe at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton at the Institute of Employment Rights in partnership with the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom fringe on Sunday 8th September at 6:00 pm (or close of Congress) at Brighton i360, BN1 2LN and at the Sussex Morning Star Supporters’ Group on Tuesday 10th September at 2:30 pm in Wagner Hall, BN1 2RU.

See you there.

This blog was first published on Labour Outlook, September 2nd.