Wage equality, the EU Court agrees to workers: it can always be invoked

You can always ask for equal wages between men and women, even with different jobs. This was established by the Court of Justice of the European Union. “The principle of equal pay for male and female workers enshrined in EU law can be directly invoked, for” same work “as for a”work of equal value“, In disputes between private individuals”.

6000 employees of the British supermarket chain appealed to the EU Court of Justice, Tesco, in a lawsuit brought precisely to claim equal wages.

The workers had started the cause why the company had treated store employees differently, who are mainly women, and those in the distribution who are mainly men. Instead, according to the workers who appealed, everyone should have been treated equally, the entire staff should have had the same salary. The workers stressed the equal value of their employment with respect to that of men and the right to “compare their work with that of those workers, even if carried out in different establishments”.

They are right according to the cut. “The principle of equal pay for male and female workers for equal work or work of equal value, contemplated in Article 157 TFEU, constitutes one of the fundamental principles of the Union,” says the ruling.

The conditions of remuneration can, in this case, be traced back to a single source. In this affair is Tesco. The European Court therefore says that the workers are right to appeal and they can do so before national courts which will then have to rule on the case. The other courts will do so and will have to do so with European guidelines: equal wages must be valid for jobs of “equal value”, therefore also speaking of non-identical tasks, and the worker can directly ask for the alleged discrimination to be verified in court.