Chief Executives' Pay, Freebies
The bosses of Britain's biggest companies will have made more money in 2024 by lunchtime today than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year, according to analysis of vast pay gaps amid strike action and the cost of living crisis.
The High Pay Centre, a think-tank that campaigns for fairer pay for workers, said that by 1pm on the third working day of the year, a FTSE 100 chief executive will have been paid more on a hourly basis than a UK worker's annual salary of £34,963, based on median average remuneration figures for both groups.
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| Industry and Greed George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) Photo Credit: Watts Gallery - Artists' Village [CC BY-NC-SA] |
"While working people have been forced to suffer the longest wage squeeze in modern history, City bosses have been allowed to pocket bumper rises and bankers have been given unlimited bonuses."
Nowak blamed politicians for allowing the gap between bosses' and workers' pay to increase.
"The Conservatives are enabling obscene levels of pay inequality... We need an economy that rewards work - not just wealth. That means putting workers on company boards to inject some much-needed common sense into boardrooms. It means taxing wealth fairly. And it means a government that is willing to work with unions and employers to drive up living standards for all."
The average pay of CEOs has increased by 9.5% since March 2023, while workers' median pay has increased by 6%. The average pay of FTSE 100 CEOs dropped slightly during the pandemic, but has since increased by about a quarter.
Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre, said:
"Lobbyists for big business and the financial services industry spent much of 2023 arguing that top earners in Britain aren't paid enough. They think economic success is created by a tiny number of people at the top and everybody else has very little to contribute."...
(Rupert Neate, The Guardian, 2024)
So can we expect any difference from the Labour party as regards pay inequality? Hope for the best and prepare for the worst!
"We'll need to clean up politics..." he [Sir Keith Starmer,] told a pre-Christmas audience in Milton Keynes, "no more kickbacks for colleagues, no more revolving doors between government and the companies they regulate... a total crackdown on cronyism".
Before committing to being purer than the driven snow, perhaps the Labour leader should look at his own recent register of interests. This, as the Eye has shown before, is not free of cosy arrangements with backers.
Entries for the last year show sundry supporters providing Sir Keith with: 18 free tickets to six premier league football games; four tickets to Capital Radio's Jingle Bell ball; four tickets to a Coldplay concert (plus £937 hotel stays paid for by Hut Group founder Matthew Goulding); and a private box for four at the Derby. Then there was a £4,500 holiday home freebie in Wales for a week. And as the Tory experience at which he points the finger shows, people have a habit of remembering the favours they've done for those in power.
As for the revolving door, Starmer's distaste has not stopped him enlisting the advisory services of possibly the greatest beneficiary of the practice: one T. Blair. Last month, the FT [Financial Times] reported that the ex-PM's office would earn $140m this year from advising governments from the Gulf to Africa, many of which he'd done deals with during his prime ministership, not least in the later years when he clearly had one eye on the future.
(Private Eye, No 1614, 2024)
As I say: Hope for the best and prepare for the worst!
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