Top court rejects Tesco appeal in ‘equal pay’ case

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. Tesco is one of several UK supermarkets caught in a legal battle over allegations that it underpays its store workers, mainly women, compared with distribution centre workers, who are mostly men. The case, launched in 2018 by claimant-focused law firms Harcus Parker and Leigh Day, now involves thousands of retail employees in separate cases against Asda, Next, Sainsbury s, Morrisons, and the Co-Op. It is reportedly worth a potential £4bn. In the case against Tesco, the claims were divided into three stages, but the back-and-forth stems from the Employment Tribunal deciding to use generic training documents, rather than individual daily duties, to define work at the hearings. Tesco appealed through multiple courts to stop the Tribunal from using this definition. Both the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal partially al