The failure of leading fashion and homeware retailer Next to defend a case of sex discrimination brought by several thousand former and current employees struck a chord with me, but not for the most obvious reasons. As a co-founder of Women in Logistics and a committed feminist, I would always naturally support workers who have been directly discriminated against simply on the basis of their gender. In this case however, the tribunal accepted that the discrepancy in pay at Next was not due to ‘direct discrimination’, nor was it actually based on gender, but on job roles. Warehouse operators at Next were paid more than their colleagues who worked in stores as sales staff. The complainants argued successfully that as most warehouse operatives were male compared to sales staff being predominantly female, this constituted indirect sex discrimination.
It is worth mentioning that Next says it will appeal the decision, so it is possible that the Employment Appeal Tribunal may take a different view. But at this stage, the findings highlight two important points – two perpetual myths about our industry. The first is the widely-held belief that warehouse workers are amongst the most lowly-paid employees in any business. This was patently not true in the Next scenario, nor, I suspect, in many other companies. Logistics is a good career choice and one which should be seriously considered by girls and boys alike.
The second contradiction is that warehouse work is often dominated by men. In the case of Next workers, while it was true that more warehouse workers were male and sales staff were predominantly female, the split within the warehouse workforce was much closer than you might expect. Over the period in question, 77.5 per cent of ‘retail consultants’ at Next were female, but just 52.75 per cent of warehouse operators were male. In other words, almost half the warehouse workers at Next were women.
Traditionally, warehouse operatives undertook ‘heavy work’ lifting and stacking, but in modern warehousing this is no longer the case. Automation and robotics have removed much of the repetitive and labour-intensive work in warehouses from human beings, so that the claim of retail workers that their job involved a similar level of lifting and stacking activity is probably accurate.
In short, women are equally as capable as men when it comes to managing operations, programming, operating and maintaining automated equipment, or indeed, driving forklift trucks. And with the advent of AI in warehousing, the tasks undertaken by human workers of either gender are set to change again.
Our new Warehouse Manager CPC has been popular among women as well as men, which is encouraging. It just goes to show that the previously male-dominated world of warehousing is making way for equality.
Clare Bottle
UKWA, CEO
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