Equal Pay Claims Against Morrisons Supermarket Chain

Business ethics and social responsibility 1
Business ethics and social responsibility
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Business ethics and social responsibility 2
Article: Supermarket chain stores Morrisons facing equal pay claims worth 1 billion pounds.
Introduction
The ethical issue in the article is equal pay where women are being paid less compared to
male employees within the organization. The organization affected by the ethical issue is a
supermarket chain store known as Morrisons (George and Davey, 2018). In the article, female
employees have been complaining about not being given equal treatment in regards to pay and
compensation. They discovered that their employer was paying the male employees a high pay
compared to them irrespective of working equally within the same department. The female
employees were being represented by a law firm where their investigations proved that female
employees were not being paid in which the total value of the arrears was valued at $ 1.30
billion. This is a clear indication that most of the female employees were not being paid.
However, the supermarket denied those claims (George and Davey, 2018). Through their
spokesperson, the supermarket was not aware of any legal proceeding taking place in court about
claims of equal between the female and male employees. The organization asked the law firm to
carry out a payment audit to validate those claims. This could provide evidence of the ongoing
claims about female employees not being equally compensated as the male employees.
According to the article, an agreement is yet to be established to prove that the females were
being paid unequally. However, from the evidence collected, there is proof that the female
employees were being paid unequally compared to their male employees.
Main argument in the article
The article is about a supermarket chain known as Morrisons which was faced with an
equal pay claim valued at $1.30 billion. The law firm that was seeking for compensation was

Business ethics and social responsibility 3
Leigh Day. The organization was sued for not paying women the same amount as the male
employees within the organization. It was discovered that women were being paid less amount of
money (George and Davey, 2018). According to the law firm, there were more than 80,000 staffs
who were eligible for the compensation. Following the claim, the supermarket was asked to carry
out an internal equal pay audit to authenticate the claims that were being raised by the
employees. The supermarket’s spokesman denied the claims that there were no ongoing court
proceedings about the pay policies that were raised in court by the female employees.
Key ethical issue
The key ethical issue being raised in the article is equal pay. The organization failed to
pay female employees the exact amount of male as their male counterpart in the workplace. In
any organization, employees have the right to equal pay (Cachat‐Rosset, Carillo and Klarsfeld,
2017, p.57). Gender should not be an issue causing indifference in pay when all employees are
performing the same amount of work load. With this kind of ethical issue, female employees will
not be willing to work in such an environment. Additionally, from the article, the reputation of
the organization may be destroyed hence reducing the rate at which customers buy products.
Being a supermarket, it may experience a low turnover of employees. This may be translated to
reduced organizational performance.
The second ethical issue that is being raised from the article is transparency. This is
exhibited from withheld in information from employees. Lack of transparency made the female
employees realize that they were being paid a different amount of salary compared to the male
employees within the organization. Lack of transparency within an organization may lead to
numerous organizational challenges such as reduced job satisfaction and engagement from
employees (Arulrajah, 2017, pg. 419). Within the organization, without transparency there may