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P.ublished 4th January 2024
business
Soaring CEO Pay TUC & IEA Comment
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Commenting on today’s (Thursday) publication of High Pay Centre analysis, which shows that this year FTSE100 CEOs will have already earned the annual average wage by today,
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said:
“The Conservatives are presiding over – and enabling - obscene levels of pay inequality.
“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.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. 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.
“Under the Tories it is one rule for the super-wealthy and one rule for everybody else.”
“The Conservatives are presiding over – and enabling - obscene levels of pay inequality.
“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.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. 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.
“Under the Tories it is one rule for the super-wealthy and one rule for everybody else.”
FTSE CEO pay increased by £500,000 (16%) last year.
According to the latest OBR forecasts – published after the Autumn Statement - real wages won’t even recover to their 2008 value until 2028.
Professor Len Shackleton, Editorial and Research Fellow at the free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:
“Cracking down on CEO pay would undermine British competitiveness and burden all of us with higher tax bills without even benefitting workers.
“The difference between top CEOs and average pay is an obvious feature of a free society where high pay is usually, though admittedly not always, associated with greater responsibilities. A CEO can make, or break, a company and therefore it’s unsurprising they are paid generously.
“UK FTSE-100 CEOs are paid roughly in line with their counterparts in other European countries such as Germany and France, though considerably less than equivalents in the USA. In relative terms their pay has not increased significantly in recent years.
“Top earners pay stonking amounts in taxes: the top one per cent of all earners in this country pay almost 30 per cent of income tax. If we somehow stopped these people earning large amounts, many of them would leave the country and we would all have to pay higher taxes to compensate. If FTSE-100 CEO pay was redistributed to workers, it would mean just around £200 a year extra before tax for a company employing 20,000 people.”
“Cracking down on CEO pay would undermine British competitiveness and burden all of us with higher tax bills without even benefitting workers.
“The difference between top CEOs and average pay is an obvious feature of a free society where high pay is usually, though admittedly not always, associated with greater responsibilities. A CEO can make, or break, a company and therefore it’s unsurprising they are paid generously.
“UK FTSE-100 CEOs are paid roughly in line with their counterparts in other European countries such as Germany and France, though considerably less than equivalents in the USA. In relative terms their pay has not increased significantly in recent years.
“Top earners pay stonking amounts in taxes: the top one per cent of all earners in this country pay almost 30 per cent of income tax. If we somehow stopped these people earning large amounts, many of them would leave the country and we would all have to pay higher taxes to compensate. If FTSE-100 CEO pay was redistributed to workers, it would mean just around £200 a year extra before tax for a company employing 20,000 people.”