LONDON (Reuters) - More than 3,500 current and former shop workers at British retailer Next have won a six-year legal fight for equal pay, lawyers representing the claimants said on Tuesday.

An Employment Tribunal ruled that Next had failed to show that paying its sales consultants, who are overwhelmingly women, lower pay rates than its warehouse workers was not sex discrimination, said Leigh Day, the law firm representing workers.

Workers in the claim would be entitled to back pay for up to six years before they brought the action and for the time since, a total estimated to be more than 30 million pounds ($39.6 million), it said.

Leigh Day said the ruling would be a "huge encouragement" for 112,000 staff it was representing in similar cases at companies like Asda, Tesco ( TSCDF ), Sainsbury's ( JSNSF ), Morrisons and Co-op, although each would be decided on its own facts.

A tribunal in Leeds, northern England, had ruled in 2023 that the work done by the women in Next stores was equal to the work in the warehouse in terms of the demands involved.

Helen Scarsbrook, one of the three lead claimants, said: "It has been a long six years battling for the equal pay we all felt we rightly deserved but today we can say we won."

Leigh Day partner Elizabeth George said the claim was exactly the type of discrimination that equal pay legislation was intended to address.

"When you have female dominated jobs being paid less than male dominated jobs and the work is equal, employers cannot pay women less simply by pointing to the market and saying - it is the going rate for the jobs," she said. 

The tribunal found that Next could have afforded to pay a higher rate but chose not to and that the reason for that was purely financial, she said.

Next said the tribunal had rejected the majority of the claims, including all claims of direct discrimination and bonus pay.

"In respect of the specific terms in which the Claim succeeded, it is our intention to Appeal," it said in a statement.

"This is the first equal pay group action in the private sector to reach a decision at Tribunal level and raises a number of important points of legal principle." 

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