Supermarket giant Asda continues to deprive its female workers of equal pay for equivalent work, despite a court ruling back in October 2016 in the workers’ favour and a string of failed appeals on the part of the company.
Asda’s divisive policy of paying (predominantly female) shop workers less than (predominantly male) warehouse workers, despite the court ruling that stacking shelves and working on checkouts is comparable with warehouse work, is in clear breach of equality.
Similar legal cases are being pursued relating to other big supermarket chains – namely, Tesco, Sainsburys and Morrisons, which between them employ over 30,000 shop workers.
The attempted merger of Asda and Sainsburys, which would turn the Big Four into the even Bigger Three, is being played out against a background of cut-throat competition in the retail trade. Given the present high level of retail overcapacity, bosses are inevitably seeking to drive down wages and (through automated checkouts) staffing levels.
To achieve this, they will try every dirty trick in the book to try and divide workers, including challenging equal rights in the workplace.
Workers must resolutely unite against all such attempts to make them pay for the crisis of capitalism.
