Bosses have already made more money this year than you will by the end of December

A protester in a fat cat suit stands outside RBS in London in 2012 [Image: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP].

This is another perennial story, like the annual protest against rail fare increases.

As far as This Writer can tell, it is taking company executives less time to reach the national average every year – and let’s not forget that, if you take the top 10 per cent of salaries out of that average, you get an average of round £12-13,000, which is much closer to what most people are likely to get.

So company executives probably made (we can’t say “earned”) more than you and me by lunchtime on January 3, bearing in mind that January 1 was a bank holiday (and a Sunday).

We know that executive pay is not linked to company performance – bosses have awarded themselves 30 per cent rises while at firms whose profits have increased by only one per cent or thereabouts.

One argument is that they reward themselves according to their company’s share price on the stock market – but of course they never take an equivalent pay cut when those prices fall.

And employees never see such extravagant increases – they only do the work.

Theresa May promised to “reform capitalism” with an idea to bring employees onto the remuneration committees of these big firms – but backed down after she became prime minister; she didn’t need to keep her promises now that she had what she wanted.

So the outlook for the rest of us is bleak while the so-called “fat cats” have all the fun.

That’s our medicine for the sickness a quarter of us suffered at the ballot box in May 2015: You vote Conservative, you get shafted.

The UK’s top bosses will have made more money by lunchtime on Wednesday than the typical UK worker will earn all year, according to an analysis that exposes the gulf between executives and the rest of the workforce.

On “Fat Cat Wednesday” campaigners say that public anger with elites will intensify unless action is taken to tackle excess among executives at a time when pressures on household budgets are rising.

The High Pay Centre calculated that the average FTSE 100 boss now earns more than £1,000 an hour, meaning they will pass the UK average salary of £28,200 by around midday on Wednesday. The thinktank said that after enjoying rapid earnings growth in recent years, leading bosses now typically earn 129 times more than their employees.

Source: UK bosses make more in two and a half days than workers earn all year | Money | The Guardian

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One Comment

  1. Barry Davies January 4, 2017 at 6:38 pm - Reply

    They always claim that it is these peoples hard work that makes companies profitable, but if they take a day off does anyone notice as much as someone on the shop floor taking a day off? It’s those doing the heavy lifting that make the money for the greedy boss’ not the other way round.

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