The Court of Justice of the EU noted in a judgment delivered on Thursday 3 June (case C-624/19), that Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) could be invoked for pay differentials between women and men working for the same undertaking and performing “work of equal value”.
It was ruling on a dispute between a group of about 6,000 current or former employees and Tesco Stores in the UK. The employees sued Tesco Stores Group in Watford Employment Tribunal in the UK in 2018, claiming that women and men had not been given equal pay for work of equal value, breaching national regulations and Article 157of the TFEU.
Tesco Stores had argued that Article 157 of the TFEU had no direct effect, as the dispute was about “work of equal value”, not exactly the same work. On the other hand, it considered that it was not the “sole source” of the unequal treatment, i.e. that the employees were not in the same establishments, which would make Article 157 inapplicable.
The CJEU notes that Article 157 of the TFEU states that work of equal value must be remunerated equally. “This article imposes, in a clear and precise manner, an obligation of result and is imperative with regard to both ‘the same work’ and ‘work of the same value’”, it states in the judgment.
Finally, it also notes that these remuneration conditions are attributed to a single source: Tesco Stores. It therefore holds that workers’ pay can be compared and is subject to Article 157 of the TFEU, even though the employees work in different establishments.
See the CJEU judgment: https://bit.ly/3uOLPQE (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)