Health and beauty giant Boots may be forced to pay compensation to some long-term employees after an employment tribunal ruled that it acted unlawfully when it cut Sunday pay rates by a quarter last year.

The Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA) Union, which has been taking legal action for 19 claimants and represented one Boots employee in a test case in April, reported yesterday (May 1) that the judge had concluded premium Sunday rates were part of employees' contractual payments and not discretionary.

Employees involved in the case could now expect their double rates on Sundays to be restored and compensation for any losses, the PDA Union said. The union also pledged to push Boots for a response on its position on other affected employees not part of the claim.

Boots was "disappointed" with the tribunal's decision against what the PDA Union called an erosion of "fundamental contractual staff rights"

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Boots told C+D it was "disappointed" with the tribunal's decision and said 99.4 per cent of its colleagues had accepted the review of its premium rates and reward package in April last year. "This review was in line with the marketplace and included both a reduction in certain premium payments from double time to time-and-a-half, as well as a company-wide increase in base pay," a company spokesperson said. "We have also introduced a new bonus for store colleagues who offer exemplary customer care."

But PDA Union general secretary John Murphy said the ruling could force Boots to reappraise "not only its policy of eroding fundamental contractual staff rights, but also the way it deals with similar issues in future".

The union claimed that it was initially approached by more than 70 Boots employees over the cuts to Sunday rates, but said Boots had refused its request to log a group grievance. It said the tribunal judge had been "surprised" to hear Boots company managers "lacked any authority" to hear individual grievances on company policy.

"We believe that they [Boots] adopted a divide-and-conquer approach by requiring all of the pharmacists involved to have to attend an individual grievance meeting and a further appeal," Mr Murphy said.

The PDA Union renewed its calls for Boots to give it official recognition after claiming the company's own union, the Boots Pharmacists' Association (BPA), had not challenged the Sunday pay cuts. The union pledged to seek independent arbitration on Boots' decision not to formally recognise it last month.

The row had previously stirred up controversy on the C+D website, as readers were divided over the issue of premium Sunday rates. While some argued that pharmacists had done well to receive double-time rates "for as long as they did" others responded that employers could not claim Sundays were "just another day". Join the debate on C+D's message board