About 60,000 current and former Tesco store workers in the United Kingdom, most of them women, are pursuing equal pay claims reported to be worth around £4 billion against the supermarket. The Court of Appeal upheld the tribunal's job-comparison method in May 2026 and a ruling on Tesco's defence is expected in autumn 2026; there is no claim form, and no U.S. equivalent.
Claims Only · Nothing Decided, Nothing to Claim
This article describes UK employment tribunal claims that have not been decided. Tesco has not been found liable, no tribunal has held that the jobs are of equal value, no money has been awarded, and there is nothing to claim. Tesco denies that the pay difference was because of sex. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is This About?
Tesco store staff in Britain say they are owed back pay because their work is of equal value to the work done by colleagues in Tesco's distribution centres, who are paid more. Most of the store claimants are women; most distribution centre staff are men. The claims were started in the employment tribunal in 2018 under the equal value route in section 65(6) of the Equality Act 2010, and Tesco told the Court of Appeal there are now nearly 60,000 claimants, roughly 34,000 of them in the group covered by the current appeals. Tesco denies the difference had anything to do with sex.On May 12, 2026, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Tesco Stores Limited v. Ms K Element and others, neutral citation [2026] EWCA Civ 580, and dismissed almost all of Tesco's appeal. The case never reached the question of who should win. It was about method: whether the employment tribunal was allowed to decide what these jobs involve by working primarily from Tesco's own training manuals rather than from the parties' witness evidence about what individual staff did day to day.
What the Court of Appeal Decided
Equal value claims run in stages. At a stage 2 hearing, the tribunal fixes the facts about what each job actually involves; independent experts then take those facts and assess whether the jobs are of equal value. Tesco's stage 2 hearing took 36 days across March to May 2023, after which the tribunal told the parties it did not accept the way either side had presented the case and would instead work from Tesco's training documents. It went on to refer to or incorporate roughly 750 of them, running to about 19,000 pages.Tesco argued that this misread the statute — that "work" means what an employee does day to day, not what a manual says the employer wants done. The Court of Appeal called that a false dichotomy. Work, it held, is the product of the wage/work bargain: what the employer pays the employee to do. An employee cannot change their own job by doing it differently unless the employer agrees. On these particular facts, with manuals the tribunal found so detailed and prescriptive that they set out how every aspect of the job was to be done, the documents were a legitimate and more objective starting point than witness statements drafted for the litigation. The tribunal had also said the documents could be displaced by cogent evidence to the contrary, so it had not treated them as decisive.
Tesco won on one narrow ground. The tribunal had, at a few points, made findings that contradicted facts the parties had already agreed. The rules give the tribunal power to determine facts the parties cannot agree — not to reopen the ones they can — so that part of the appeal was allowed. The court also held that an appellant challenging individual factual determinations has to identify each one in its grounds of appeal rather than attack them in a general way.
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Who Is Involved and What They Say They Are Owed
The claimants are current and former Tesco customer assistants and other store staff; their chosen comparators are distribution centre workers such as warehouse operatives. Six sample claimants and eight comparators are being used to work through the equal value questions on behalf of the wider group. Two groups of solicitors act for the claimants, Leigh Day and Harcus Parker; Leigh Day has said it represents around 17,000 current and former Tesco staff and has estimated the litigation's value at about £4 billion. Reported hourly gaps between store and distribution roles run to as much as £5.50, and successful equal pay claims in Britain can reach back up to six years.Tesco's answer at the tribunal is what UK law calls a material factor defence: that the pay difference was set by market conditions and operational need rather than sex. In written argument reported from the Reading hearing, Tesco described the difference as reflecting the commercial and operational judgements a business of its size had to make to stay viable and competitive. None of that has been ruled on.
What Happens Next
The material factor hearing ran in Reading from May 1 to June 10, 2026, and a ruling is expected in autumn 2026. That ruling will not end the case either way. If Tesco's defence fails, the equal value exercise still has to finish: the Employment Appeal Tribunal's disposal order requires the parties to turn the tribunal's findings into a usable set of determinations, work that was paused until the Court of Appeal ruled, and only then can the independent experts report. The Court of Appeal itself noted that a final decision is still a long way off — the claims are already eight years old.Tesco is not the only supermarket facing this. Parallel claims are running against Morrisons, Asda staff have already had some of their jobs rated as of equal value to distribution roles, Next lost a comparable store-versus-warehouse case, and in July 2026 a further multi-billion-pound claim was launched against Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. Sir Nicholas Underhill used part of his judgment to criticise what he called a culture of hyper-granular argument in these cases, warning that drafting job descriptions down to individual adjectives makes objective evaluation harder, not easier.
What It Means for U.S. Readers
Nothing to file, and no American version of this case. UK equal value claims are individually issued employment tribunal claims — workers sign up through a solicitor rather than being swept into a certified class — and they run under the Equality Act 2010, which has no U.S. counterpart. American pay claims are brought under the federal Equal Pay Act, Title VII, or state statutes, and comparisons are generally confined to substantially equal jobs at the same establishment rather than the cross-site comparison at the centre of the Tesco claims.U.S. pay litigation that is claimable tends to look quite different, and it does exist: open wage and hour class actions over unpaid overtime and missed breaks, and the Washington pay transparency settlements over job postings that left the wage range out. For a plain explanation of the step this Tesco ruling turned on, see our glossary entry on class certification — the closest U.S. analogue to the gatekeeping stages a UK group claim passes through.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I file a claim in the Tesco equal pay case?
Not in the United States. These are UK employment tribunal claims brought by current and former Tesco store staff in Britain, and each claimant is individually represented by a UK law firm rather than added automatically the way a U.S. class action works. There is no settlement, no fund, no claim form and no administrator. Anyone outside the UK is not covered.
What did the Court of Appeal decide in the Tesco equal pay case?
On May 12, 2026, in Tesco Stores Limited v. Ms K Element and others, [2026] EWCA Civ 580, the Court of Appeal dismissed almost all of Tesco's appeal. It held that the employment tribunal was entitled to treat Tesco's own training manuals as the starting point for working out what store and warehouse staff were required to do. Tesco won on one narrow ground: the tribunal had no power to make findings that contradicted facts the parties had already agreed.
Who is bringing the Tesco equal pay claims?
Current and former Tesco store staff in the UK, mostly women, who say their work is of equal value to the work done by mostly male colleagues in Tesco distribution centres. Tesco has said there are now nearly 60,000 claimants; about 34,000 are in the group covered by the Court of Appeal ruling. They are represented by two groups of solicitors, Leigh Day and Harcus Parker.
How much is the Tesco equal pay claim worth?
The Court of Appeal recorded that the claims have been said to be worth several billions of pounds. Leigh Day has publicly estimated the value at around £4 billion. Nothing has been awarded, and the figures reflect what claimants are seeking rather than any sum a tribunal has ordered Tesco to pay.
What happens next in the Tesco equal pay case?
A hearing on Tesco's material factor defence — its explanation for why store and distribution pay differed, and why it says the difference was not because of sex — ran in Reading from May 1 to June 10, 2026. A ruling is expected in autumn 2026. Even a ruling against Tesco would not end the case: the independent experts still have to value the jobs before any money is decided.
Does the Tesco equal pay ruling apply to U.S. workers?
No. The case turns on sections 64 and 65 of the UK Equality Act 2010 and on the equal value procedure used by British employment tribunals, neither of which exists in U.S. law. U.S. pay claims run under the federal Equal Pay Act, Title VII and state equal pay statutes, and are usually brought as class or collective actions in court.
Sources
- Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — approved judgment, Tesco Stores Limited v. Ms K Element and others, [2026] EWCA Civ 580, handed down May 12, 2026 (Courts and Tribunals Judiciary).
- Employment Appeal Tribunal — [2025] EAT 45 (HHJ Tayler) and [2025] EAT 112 (Mrs Justice Stacey), the decisions under appeal.
- Leigh Day — press release on the Court of Appeal outcome and the firm's claimant numbers and valuation.
- Personnel Today and Retail Gazette — reporting on the May 2026 judgment.
- Grocery Gazette — reporting on the Reading material factor hearing and the expected timing of a ruling.
