fat cats purring
As the cuts kick-in, costs continue to rise and we all trudge inevitably towards the accepted global recession you’d be justified in thinking all our collective belts are being tightened but you’d be wrong as, one group is fast flourishing in the current financial crisis. It’s been reported that the directors of our big companies, our FTSE and Times rated organisations are indeed making hay whilst the sun doesn’t shine and executive pay has soared by 49% with the directors of those FTSE 100 companies taking home, on average, £2.7m.
Laughing off any condemnation of them being a band of elite greedy pigs and consistently ignoring any call for pay restraint or reform, the argument used to justify their excess is becoming increasing shrill. Public ‘servants’ justify their position with an irrelevant comparison to the private sector and UK directors claim a similar comparison with their counterparts on the global and international stage. My retort is the same for both – if you want it, go to it, public to private and national to international. Not many appear keen to do so.
Supporters of the free-market use the case of Sir Terry Leahy, the boss of Tesco, who received in excess of £12m in his pay packet last year. They ask what good would it do to reduce his salary to ‘only’ £500k and redistribute the rest to the 260,000 UK employees as it constitutes a mere £3.68 a month. OK, £40 a year ain’t going to make a great deal of difference financially but what of the moral consequence and the impact that such a message to both the staff and the country at large. Only when such actions are spoken about and put into practice can it truly be said that we’re all in this together.
