Equal pay claims can grind on for years before resolution. However, the ground has shifted since the Court of Appeal (CoA) took Tesco’s own operating and training manual as the definitive source on employee roles rather than any granular analysis of their activity.

This claim began in 2018 when almost 60,000 Tesco store workers, primarily women, argued that their roles held equal value to those of their male counterparts in higher-paid distribution centre jobs. This pay dispute pivoted unexpectedly when the Tribunal issued its Judgement 1 in July 2023. Instead of parsing thousands of individual instances, it ruled that Tesco’s own weighty corporate manuals were the definitive evidence of role requirements. Tesco fought this argument vigorously, appealing for a rehearing that would have delayed the outcome by a further three years. However, the Tribunal held its ground, issuing a 619-page Judgement 2 in July 2024, appending a further 750 training documents.

The CoA delivered a resounding vindication for the claimants on four of five grounds in relation to Sections 64 and 65 of the Equality Act 2010, which define "relevant types of work" and establish that such work is deemed to be of "equal value" if it demands similar levels of effort, skill, and decision-making. Ultimately, this ruling effectively defines a ‘role’ as what the employer requires the employee to do – roles that are exhaustively detailed within Tesco’s voluminous training manuals.

This ruling is clear and constitutes a significant strategic advantage for litigants in equal pay claims, in effect shifting the body of evidence from invasive, second-by-second monitoring of employees’ daily activities to the blueprints of the company’s own operational handbooks and mandatory training manuals. The devil, it appears, lies in the detail, and these weighty tomes form the very rope by which employers effectively hang themselves. Indeed, such exhaustive detail can be leveraged to demonstrate the true complexity, effort, and skill a prescribed role actually requires.

By validating the use of extant corporate manuals to establish the baseline requirements of a position, the CoA has effectively streamlined the fact-gathering phase of equal pay litigation, and employers can no longer easily escape liability under a ‘Section 69 material factor defence’ by simply downplaying the everyday realities of female-dominated roles if their own written guidance suggests otherwise. So, if an employer demands exhaustive operational perfection on paper, then the law will hold them accountable when structuring employee pay. Employers should take care not to be caught in flagrant self-contradiction by their own documentation.