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James Tilley
Unit 14 – Aspects of Employment Law
D1 – Evaluate the extent to which a selected business organisaton
has adapted its working arrangements to accommodate legislaton
relatng to rights and responsibilites of employees and employerse
When businesses are running, they must make sure that they follow relevant legislaton as well as
the morals of their customers.
One instance of a large company being forced to change its working arrangements to accommodate
employment legislaton is Sainsburys.
Sainsburys has had a number of complaints regarding them not stcking to the rules of the Equality
Act 2010. More specifcally, workers are complaining that store workers are paid less than
warehouse workers, which they believe is down to store workers being generally more women,
whereas warehouse roles are generally flled by males.
The government recently forced all companies with more than 250 employers to publish informaton
comparing the pay for both men and women, therefore, to follow these new laws, Sainsburys had to
follow and report on the work pay which was received, and whether men were paid more than
women or not. This was introduced to help to identfy businesses which pay women signifcantly less
than men, and if the informaton was not produced by the deadline, the Equality and Human Rights
Commission could take them to court to provide this informaton, as it is required by law.
Consequently, for the worker, they can now see the roles which are generally available to more men
and women, via a quartle. t also includes whether women generally are paid less than men both
mean hourly as well as median hourly. The document also shows whether a man or woman receives
more bonus pay, alongside the diference in the bonus pay.
This legal requirement will also have positve consequences on Sainsburys as they will be able to
identfy how they rank against their compettors in regards to equal pay.
For example, women at Sainsburys received 14.8% lower wage mean hourly than their male
counterpart, whereas they received 12.5% less mean hourly at Asda and 11.5% less mean hourly at
Tesco. Therefore, for a company such as Tesco, women will be more keen to work at this store due
to them being more equal than at Sainsburys, where women are paid over 3% mean hourly less than
women at Tesco.
Since this announcement, Sainsburys have received public backlash from wide ranges of groups
against this pay gap between men and women. This has severely afected the image of Sainsburys as
a more inclusive supermarket. Furthermore, this has led to a number of lawsuits against the
supermarket giant, with all female workers in positons where women are paid more than men
having the possibility of 6 years pay if it is proved that there has been unequal pay in the company,
which would be devastatng for Sainsburys. One reason the gap in the pay is present between both
genders is due to the diference in pay in shop foors, which is predominantly stafed by women, and
the pay in distributon centres, which is mostly flled with male staf. The issue when deciding how
much to pay workers is the diference in the actual job, for example, as a shop foor job is seen as
more glamorous, more workers would apply for this over a distributon worker, therefore,
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