Tesco lost its Court of Appeal challenge on 12 May 2026 over how tribunals should assess the work of shop assistants and warehouse operatives in its long-running equal pay case, a ruling that keeps one of Britain’s biggest retail wage disputes moving forward. The judgment dismissed Tesco’s bid to stop an Employment Tribunal relying on the company’s own training materials and operational documents when deciding what the jobs actually required.
The case is part of a major equal value claim brought by store workers who say their roles are of equal worth to higher-paid jobs in Tesco’s distribution centres. Leigh Day is acting for more than 16,000 Tesco shop workers, and the judgment means the tribunal’s approach to comparing Tesco customer assistants and distribution centre workers will stand as the litigation continues.
The appeal turned on a narrow but important point: whether the tribunal could use Tesco’s internal materials as evidence of the duties staff were expected to perform. Tesco argued that those documents should not be used in that way. The Court of Appeal disagreed, saying tribunals can rely on such materials unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. It also accepted that Tesco operates in a highly regulated environment and has a strong business need for customer assistant and warehouse operative roles to be performed consistently across its stores and depots.
The court went further and said that in large-scale equal pay litigation, tribunals may in appropriate cases take a more generic approach to assessing jobs rather than forcing every claim through an overly individualised fact-finding exercise. For claimants and their lawyers, that point matters because the size of the Tesco case has made it one of the most complex equal pay disputes in the retail sector.
Leigh Day said the ruling could help reduce delay and complexity in mass equal pay claims against major employers. Kiran Daurka said the Court of Appeal had recognised the importance of removing unnecessary hurdles that prevent everyday people from accessing justice in complex equal pay litigation. She said the judgment was a welcome clarification that tribunals can take a practical and proportionate approach in large-scale cases involving sophisticated respondents like Tesco and other large retailers.
Daurka also said the firm’s clients have always maintained that these cases should focus on the reality of the work being done, not on artificial barriers that make equal pay claims impossible to pursue. She said the ruling would help future claims progress in a more streamlined and accessible way.
The judgment comes alongside a separate Employment Tribunal hearing in which Tesco is trying to justify paying predominantly female store workers less than predominantly male distribution centre workers. Leigh Day argues Tesco cannot lawfully rely on market rates to explain the pay gap, putting the company under pressure on a separate front even as it defended this appeal.
For Tesco, the ruling is not the end of the dispute, but it removes one of the legal barriers in the company’s path. The battle now moves back to the underlying question at the heart of the case: whether the work done by shop workers and warehouse staff is, in law, worth the same.
