Brickbat: Equal Pay for Unequal Work

An employment tribunal in the United Kingdom has ruled that the Next clothing chain should not pay its retail workers, who are mostly female, less than its predominantly-male warehouse workers. This opens the door to store workers receiving more than £30 million ($39.43 million) in back pay. Next's lawyers noted that pay for warehouse workers is greater than for retail workers in the economy as a whole. But the tribunal said that did not justify the company paying different rates. It acknowledged that the pay difference was not due to any "direct discrimination" or even to the "conscious or subconscious influence of gender." But it said that the company's "business need was not sufficiently great as to overcome the discriminatory effect of lower basic pay."