New equal pay claim lodged against Morrisons

Morrisons could be facing a £100m bill as a law firm has said “thousands of its employees” have brought legal proceedings against the supermarket in an equal pay claim.

The news comes just two weeks after Asda lost its appeal over an equal pay ruling where 30,000 of its shop floor staff – most of whom are women – argued they should be paid equally to their mostly male colleagues in the distribution centres for their work of equal value.

Law firm Roscoe Reid is working in partnership with workers’ rights specialists Pay Justice and said it has recorded over 5,000 expressions of interest from current and former employees of Morrisons.

Morrisons employs more than 130,000 people and the average total claim value per person is estimated at around £15,000. In a statement to Retail Sector, a spokeswoman said the list of claimants was “significantly smaller” than the law firm stated and said it would be “defending this claim”.

Ellie Pinnells, lawyer at RoscoeReid said: “There is a clear case that female roles have been underpaid for a long time and employees are very likely to win their equal pay cases. Asda has tried to fight every point, but has had a string of defeats in the court. Let’s hope Morrisons takes a different approach and a tries to puts an end to decade long unfair pay on their shop floors.”

A Morrisons spokeswoman added: “We are perplexed that this law firm is talking about ‘thousands’ of claimants as they have written to us recently with a significantly smaller list of claimants. We believe we pay our colleagues fairly and equally for the job that they do, irrespective of their gender, and we will be defending this claim.”