Embarrassment for Tories as minimum wage would be £26,000 if it matched executive pay rises
Chief executives of FTSE 100 companies receive on average 94 times more than the average employee [Image: Alamy Stock Photo].
Activate recently tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/ActivateBritain/status/948548100821528579
No, it doesn’t seem fair – mostly because decades of dull-headed neoliberalism has set rises in basic pay so far behind executive salaries.
If basic pay had been in step with executive pay, the minimum wage would be £26,000 – more than is paid to nurses, paramedics, doctors, firefighters and police officers.
Only train drivers are paid more. Activate has tried to claim this is because they work for a privatised industry, but it seems this is the more likely explanation:
They're all at it. Tory Department of Third Rate Memes inadvertently illustrating the power of a militant trade union. https://t.co/pJAMNBmtRp
— Dan Walsh (@DanWalsh23) January 3, 2018
Exactly. More power to the RMT!
And well done to Activate, for highlighting the shocking way bosses have exploited their workers and added the pay employees deserve to their own already-inflated salaries.
The disparity in pay between those at the top and bottom of the earnings ladder is revealed by analysis showing the national minimum wage would be £5.24 an hour higher if it had risen at the same rate as a FTSE 100 chief executive’s pay over the last two decades.
With 2018 marking the 20th anniversary of legislation that heralded the minimum wage, research by the GMB union underscores by just how much the statutory pay floor has failed to keep pace with executive earnings.
It shows that if increases in the national minimum wage had kept pace with a chief executive it would be £12.74 an hour compared with £7.50 now for those 25 years and older. For a worker aged over 25 on 40 hours per week this would equate to £26,000 a year compared with the £14,664 they are currently paid.
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It never ceases to amaze me that the emergency services get crap pay for all the hard work they do and get praised by PM… next