Asda’s legal fight over shop assistant wages shows that the gender pay gap is alive and kicking

Boxes can be moved by anyone with half a brain and strength, but serving people requires a high level of people skills and multi-tasking. Something women tend to be good at

Asda is embroiled in a legal battle over staff pay disparity

How we shop is changing fast. The rapid rise of online purchasing has forced major retailers to radically rethink and focus on what they can offer consumers that’s different to their competitors. Value for money and choice are important, but personal service has become the key to persuading customers to choose one store over another. John Lewis – that favourite high street brand – has responded to the changing environment by announcing they will be offering the services of plumbers, electricians and decorators online along with all their normal household supplies.

Customers will also be able to spend a night sleeping in selected stores, so they can test out a new mattress before purchasing it. In 2017, this is the kind of gold card service the new marketplace demands. As for major food retailers, their battle is on two fronts – online and a price war with discounters like Aldi and Lidl. In that environment, in-store shoppers can afford to be pretty picky.

The people who represent the major food retailers – Waitrose, Sainsbury, Tesco, or Asda – are the people (generally women) we encounter at the checkout. I’ve noticed that in recent months, staff have been asking how my day has been “so far”, patiently trying to engage me in small talk, at which (I admit) I am pretty feeble. Not only are hard-working cashiers required to put through items at a ridiculous rate (I know, because my sister used to work on the check out at J Sainsbury for many years) per minute, and pack my bag, they are now being told to “chat” and woo shoppers in order to seduce us so we won’t be unfaithful at Lidl and co.

Surely the people who deal with shoppers at the coal face of retail ought to be earning the same as those in the backrooms and warehouses, because they carry the responsibility of selling us the experience of one store over another. But those in the boardroom beg to differ.

Asda are fighting a pay claim from 15,000 store workers (mostly women) who are seeking to be paid the same as the workers in the warehouses (mostly men). The store workers earn between £1 and £3 an hour less than the warehouse workers – but why? Humping boxes around is a skill that will inevitably be replaced by robots, whereas in modern retail, human interaction is key to survival – shop floor staff, chatty cashiers and knowledgeable help desk personnel who find the missing items on your shopping list from chutney to red rice.

Asda have lost the latest round in this protracted battle for equal pay – on every single one of the ten challenges their lawyers had constructed – but they are seeking leave to appeal. In the meantime, J Sainsbury are facing a similar action, brought by hundreds of their shop floor staff. Asda claim that if they lose this action (the workers are supported by their union, GMB), they will have to pay claims dating from 2002, which could cost up to £100m. They claim that men and women doing the same kind of work in the same location already get paid the same hourly rate.

But that’s not the point – the differing rates between shop floor and warehouse highlight the different values that the board of Asda place on workers. Boxes can be moved by anyone with half a brain and strength, but serving people requires a high level of people skills and multi-tasking. Something women tend to be good at.

The gender pay gap in Britain remains stubbornly high – in 2016, the difference in average remuneration between male and female full time workers was 9.4 per cent – hardly an improvement on the 10.5 per cent gap recorded five years earlier. From last April, employers with more than 250 staff have had to file returns listing what men and women get paid in four main categories – but will it make any difference? At least the UK has taken one timid step towards gender equality – unlike the USA, where the self-styled “champion of working women” Ivanka Trump has just supported her father’s decision to stop companies collecting the same kind of data.

The Obama regime had required companies employing more than 100 people to submit statistics listing workers by ethnicity, gender and pay. Now, that is not going to happen: despite the fact women make up almost half of the US labour force, earning on average 18 per cent less than men. Black women earn 63 per cent of what white men earn, and Latinos 57 per cent. Ivanka once said that women “deserve equal pay for equal work”, but how that gap is closed remains a task that it will take more than mission statements to achieve.

In the meantime, I suggest you shop where the staff receive the right remuneration, which will always be a fraction of what those in the boardroom award themselves.