An employee bringing an equal pay claim must use comparators in the same employment as them. However, where an employer has more than one division and employees in different divisions are employed on different employment contracts, finding a comparator is not so straightforward.
In White v Burton Foods Ltd, a female employee employed as a manager at one site brought an equal pay claim using managers at other sites as comparators. The comparators were all in the same category in the company hierarchy. The employee argued that the employment of the comparators was broadly similar and so were valid comparators.
Although the sites were all owned by Burton Foods Ltd, there had been no harmonisation of terms and conditions of employment across the sites. There was no overall company handbook and holiday pay, notice pay provisions, disciplinary and grievance procedures and collective bargaining arrangements differed from site to site.
Therefore the equal pay claim failed because the comparators were not in the same employment. The Employment Tribunal decision was upheld by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
Equal pay claims are complex because of the need to find a comparator in a broadly similar job employed under the same terms and conditions of the employee bringing the claim. An earlier decision, City of Edinburgh v Wilkinson & others, confirmed that clerical employees can use manual employees as comparators even when they are employed at different sites where they have the same employer and one universal staff handbook and terms and conditions.
If you think you have an equal pay or sexual discrimination claim, contact Ashley Hunt, Vaishali Thakerar or Carrie-Ann Randall on 0116 212 1000 now or complete one of the on-line forms.
