A report released last Friday by Income Data Services shows that salaries, bonuses and benefits of Directors at Britain’s top businesses have risen by 49% in the last year. The BBC have stated that “this takes the average pay for a director of a FTSE 100 company to just short of 2.7 million pounds”. At a time when Middle Income earners are being squeezed and those on lower pay are just being battered, it is little wonder that comments like “obscene” and “outrageous” appear in many newspaper reports.
Many of the executives of these top companies sit on each other’s board of directors – little wonder that they all reward themselves massive pay increases. They probably think it’s quite normal. One is only left to wonder how they are allowed to do this. Many company shares are trading lower than in recent years, with no dividend; just what are these Directors doing to earn these rewards? Many Pension Funds are large shareholders and they are suffering from the current economic climate, why can’t they influence Directors pay?
At a time of increasing prices on food and energy, shrinking household budgets, it doesn’t feel fair – does it?
It sounds a bit hollow when we are told by Cameron, Osborne and Clegg “We are all in this together!”
llr George Crane
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