The sad fact of the matter is that retail has relied on underpaid women for far too long
One of the worst jobs I’ve had was working on the shop floor of a well-known department store in London. As well as putting up with archaic rules forcing women to wear high heels, tight skirts and a full face of make-up (policies which have since been scrapped), the job was hard and monotonous.
“Smiles were made for sales,” a room full of women were told in one bizarre training session. The only reason I stuck it out was because it was better paid than other retail jobs and completely flexible. Everyone I worked with (all women) felt the same. So I empathise with the thousands of shop floor staff who joined retail for perks such as flexibility but are now fed up being underpaid and undervalued.
Department stores “once provided invaluable opportunities for ambitious women,” author Julie Satow wrote in her book When Women Ran Fifth Avenue. But that was a different era, when a retail job felt more stable, there weren’t many alternatives for someone seeking flexibility and there was less violence against staff.
A study by trade union GMB found earlier this year that Asda workers have been attacked with syringes and chased by customers.
Delivery drivers said they have been chased by people in cars and confronted by customers in the nude, while store workers had watermelons and joints of gammon thrown at them.
The rise of shoplifting has led to an increase of attacks on staff, who faced 1,300 cases of violence and abuse every day over the year to August 2023, according to the British Retail Consortium, compared with about 870 the previous year. That’s equivalent to 54 cases of violence or abuse towards retail staff across the country every hour, or almost one episode of aggression every minute of the day.
Like many female-dominated industries, retail has relied on the cheap labour of women for too long and many have had enough. The issue will be brought into sharp focus today as 60,000 Asda shop workers take their equal pay case to the employment tribunal in what will be the biggest private sector equal pay claim ever. At the centre of the case is a claim that shop workers should be paid the same as warehouse staff, an argument which Next store staff made successfully last month. Next plans to appeal the ruling. There are more than 112,000 store staff across not only Asda but also Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Co-op who have filed similar claims.
Women’s work has always been undervalued, although the tribunal acknowledged in the Next case that this was about cutting costs rather than any sex discrimination.
The Next ruling certainly has its flaws – surely just because someone is underpaid, it doesn’t mean they should earn exactly the same as a colleague in a completely different job? Aside from the skills being different, the draw of a shop floor job is flexibility and location – attracting carers, students and working parents who want to work part-time and close to home.
Flexibility and location is why I put up with working in a shop many years before I could begin to appreciate how vital a flexible job like that might be for a parent. That doesn’t justify poor pay.
The country’s (mostly female) store staff have realised that they’ve been short-changed and overlooked. The demise of the high street, as well as the rapid expansion of flexible working in other industries, means a retail job no longer carries the appeal it once did.
For those early in their careers with caring responsibilities, a part-time job in a physical store is no longer the obvious choice. Those who have been stacking shelves for decades are likely to be wondering why they haven’t spoken up before. Retailers have to up their game. The industry is already under pressure to treat female workers in factories better, with investors and customers boycotting fast-fashion brands which sell dirt-cheap clothes made by exploited workers overseas.
The Government has been urged to block a proposed listing by fast-fashion brand Shein due to allegations around its labour practices. The vast majority of garment workers (about 80pc) are women, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign, which argues that employers take advantage of cultural stereotypes that portray women as passive and flexible. Women who adhere to these stereotypes and so don’t speak out or have time to look for a job elsewhere are the “ideal employees in management’s eyes,” the organisation says.
Women’s work is considered less valuable everywhere. Even Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman said this year that if her name was Oliver she’d be paid a “f—k lot more than I am” – but jobs which are flexible can be more easily exploited. Fed up after Covid and amid a rise in violence, shop workers have found their voice.