Morrisons faces Valentine's Day equal pay claim. A case of 'love me love equality'?

Law firm Roscoe Reid has filed suit against the number four supermarket chain. All the big four face claims, with solicitor Leigh Day clocking up 35,000 to date. The bill, if they win, could be enormous

More shop workers at Morrisons have filed equal pay claim against the supermarket group (PA)

The equal pay claims lodged against Britain’s big supermarkets represent a time bomb quietly ticking in the corner of the room that everyone in the City of London tries their best to ignore. You won't often find these cases mentioned in analysts notes, for example.

Law firm Roscoe Reid upped the ante this morning, becoming the latest to lodge a claim against Morrisons. Doing it on Valentine’s Day was a nice touch, I have to admit. Those involved could very well say love me, love equality. That applies to male shop workers too. They stand to benefit if the law firm wins.

Leigh Day, which has been at the forefront of the battle, hit Morrisons at the end of last year and has 35,000 claims (and counting) against all of the big four supermarkets, of which its battle with Asda is the furthest advanced and perhaps the most famous.

The claims focus on the fact that the primarily female workforce in stores were paid less than the primarily male workforce in distribution centres for what they argue is equal work. The workers maintain that this was not only unfair, it was also discriminatory and thus unlawful.

The omens for the industry haven’t looked good.

Equal pay cases have three main stages. The first question that has to be answered in this one is whether the roles under consideration are comparable. Just last month the Court of Appeal upheld an Employment Tribunal ruling that the shop workers were entitled to compare themselves to distribution centre workers.

The other questions are whether the roles are of equal value if they’re found to be comparable, and if they are of equal vale, whether there is reason other than sex discrimination that means they should not be paid equally.

Asda’s argument, and that of the other supermarket, rest upon what they say are the demands of the jobs in stores and the jobs in distribution centres. They are, they maintain, “very different”.

They also argue that they hire from different parts of the labour market to fill them.

Leigh Day called upon Asda to settle immediately the Appeal Court ruling was handed down, as you might expect.

But given the sums at stake, the supermarkets are almost bound to take the case right to the end, disappointing though that may be. The legal costs through doing that will be high. But they represent a pinprick compared to the potential bill they face through a definitive loss.

Leigh Day reckons that could run to as much as £8bn because a lot of claimants would be owed a lot of back pay.

By way of an illustration, Tesco has yet to report its full year results, but it made about £1.6bn last time around before one off ‘exceptional’ items.

There’s still, it should be stressed, a long way to go. And each of the respective cases have different wrinkles. But if the supermarkets ultimately lose, their workers’ claims would represent the mother of all exceptional items. You can bet the City will wake up then. So will other employers. So will executives, who could never be said to be under paid. Good.