Nearly a thousand employees have now joined the action [originally lodged in 2015 by three female workers based at a Sainsbury’s in Shrewsbury and one in Fareham, Hampshire]... 17,000 Asda workers [...] are [also] claiming equal pay for jobs of equal worth to those carried out by men. The Asda women [...] represent the largest corporate equal pay claim yet seen in this country, and could prove so expensive to Walmart (which owns Asda) that the multinational has adopted a tactic of appealing against every one of their female employees’ legal wins to date...

Sainsbury’s told the Guardian it intends to robustly defend its position. “We do not agree that roles in our stores are the same as roles in our depots, and the working environments are very different. Salaries in both are entirely informed by the role they carry out, not their gender.” ...

[T]o succeed, an equal pay claim must prove that jobs are of equal worth, even if a role is not identical... To determine equal worth, an independent assessment is carried out to evaluate the skills, responsibilities and demands required in jobs carried out predominantly by women against those required for jobs done predominantly by men. 

This debate is playing out in organisations across the country – particularly as we head towards the April deadline for companies employing more than 250 people to disclose their own gender pay gap.