Labour’s ‘equal pay’ push will be catastrophic for the working class

Beware a prime minister in search of a legacy. Fresh off imposing a social-media ban on British teenagers, Keir Starmer appears determined to inflict another dreadful parting gift on the nation.

This week, the Labour government announced plans to end ‘pay discrimination’ by ensuring all work that is of ‘equal value’ receives equal pay. On the surface, this might sound harmless or even progressive. In practice, it is anything but.

Listening to equalities minister Seema Malhotra announcing the reforms, you might get the impression that workplace discrimination in 21st-century Britain is on a par with segregation in 19th-century Mississippi. Apparently, racist employers – both in the public and private sectors – are paying some people less, purely on the basis of their skin colour or because they have a disability.

If you’d not heard before that such evil practices were happening in the UK, that’s because they are not. Indeed, it has long been illegal to pay people differently on the basis of race, sex, disability or any other protected characteristic. Certainly, any major employer would risk catastrophic fines and penalties if it were found guilty of racial discrimination. Nevertheless, to combat this allegedly rampant unfairness, the government has floated the idea of creating an Equal Pay Regulation and Enforcement Unit and expanding ‘equal pay’ rules that currently apply to sex to cover ‘race and disability’, too.

A clue as to what this really means is buried in a consultation document, published on Tuesday. New legislation, it says, will ‘enable claims for pay discrimination where work is not materially similar but is “rated as equivalent” or of “equal value”, for race and disability’. The jargon can’t disguise what is very bad news indeed.

We need only look at the unhappy state of affairs at Birmingham City Council to see how damaging the equal-pay regime has already been when applied only to sex. In 2012, 175 workers – predominantly women – took the council to court over claims that they were being paid less than male employees. The basis of this claim was that female-dominated jobs, like cleaners, were paid less than male-dominated jobs, like refuse workers. They didn’t argue the work was actually the same, only that it was of ‘equal value’, and that they had therefore been subjected to sex-based discrimination. The Supreme Court, citing the Equality Act 2010, agreed with the claimants. This landed Birmingham with a £750million bill.

Finally, unable to cover the costs of the payouts, Birmingham declared bankruptcy in 2023. One of the most notorious consequences of this was the rolling bin strikes, which began last year and are still ongoing. For months on end, hundreds of tonnes of rubbish were left uncollected to rot on the streets of the UK’s second city.

The concept of ‘equivalent work’ could soon do to Brighton and Coventry what it has done to Birmingham. As of December 2025, the GMB union claimed it had won over £1 billion on behalf of its members from settling equal-pay cases with six local councils, including Glasgow, Leeds and Sheffield.

The private sector is not immune, either. Leigh Day, the same law firm that successfully bankrupted Birmingham, was also partly successful in suing Asda and is now taking legal action against Tesco. In both cases, the supermarket giants stood accused of illegally paying warehouse workers (mainly men) more than workers stacking shelves or working at checkouts (mainly women). Asda could be forced to pay £1.2 billion should the equal-pay claims succeed fully, while Tesco could be on the hook for as much as £4 billion.

It ought to go without saying that neither Birmingham nor Tesco is alleged to have paid men more than women for performing the same work. What they have done is pay higher wages for certain jobs that are less desirable and more demanding. Refuse work and warehouse work both require employees to work unsociable hours – often very early in the morning or through the night – and are more physically intensive. The fact that more men have taken up these posts than women is not a sign of sexism or discrimination. It merely reflects those employees’ choices and personal circumstances.

You might now be thinking, why should I shed a tear for Tesco or Asda, or for Birmingham’s bureaucrats? But it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that these equal-pay claims quickly rebound on workers. Birmingham’s refuse workers, for instance, were forced to take a pay cut, partly to ‘equalise’ their pay with female staff and to cover the staggering costs of the backpay from the successful equal-pay claims. This then prompted them to go on strike, causing the entire city to suffer. The refuse workers clearly felt their reduced pay package no longer reflected the value of their work.

Expanding these equal-pay provisions to race and disability would undoubtedly lead to an explosion in employment-tribunal claims. Worse, it could set off a bomb under the economy, as firms go bust and councils declare themselves bankrupt. And it could even prove damaging to race relations, encouraging employees to view themselves as members of competing identity blocs, rather than as workers with shared interests.

Keir Starmer, whether he cares or not, is playing with fire with this parting equal-pay shot. It marks yet another contribution to the disastrous legacy of this most useless of prime ministers.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.