The High Pay Centre called for further measures to be taken, such as representation for workers on company remuneration committees that set executive pay, and publication of the pay gap between the highest and median earner within a firm.
High Pay Centre director Stefan Stern said: “Fat Cat Tuesday again highlights the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the UK.
“We are not all in this together, it seems. Over-payment at the top is fuelling distrust of business, at a time when business needs to demonstrate that it is part of the solution to harsh times and squeezed incomes, and is promoting a recovery in which all employees can benefit.”
“Unfair”, “over-payment”…..listen sunshine, is it your money being paid to these people?
No, It isn’t?
Then what the fuck’s it got to do with you?
Eloquently put here
http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html
“You can’t end economic inequality without preventing people from getting rich,…”
“…I know the rich aren’t all getting richer simply from some sinister new system for transferring wealth to them from everyone else.”
High pay in business is a problem for these people, but high pay in media, sport, entertainment etc much less so, if at all. Funny dat.
“We are not all in this together” quite right, some of us actually have to work for a living.
It’s the clarion call to mediocrity.
I’d say the high pay centre and quangos are ‘overpaid’. By about the amount they all get paid.
I wonder how much this guy gets paid ?
He’s devised a system that suits him. His ‘median’ is probably quite high as its a bureaucracy, so he can push his own salary up ; whereas someone like (say) Tesco has a lot of people on lower salaries.
He is actually right ; the FTSE100 most senior are paid too much ; but for the wrong reasons
It’s an interesting shift of definitions, isn’t it.
“Fat Cat” Tuesday. Right, so the bastards …
Okay, that’s appalling. I mean, I was one rung down from being “a company executive” for a major company a decade or so ago and got nothing like that. So there are lots of people being appallingly overpaid.
Oh, right – not “company executives”, “FTSE100 CEOs”. Ah, a tiny little bit of the original set.
Person who does different job to me is paid different rate = ‘unfairness’..?
Stefan Stern’s CV
Terribly good public school (KCS Wimbledon, the same one as Mumford & Sons)
Oxford
BBC
FT
LabourList etc.
Cass Business School (where the LHTD is a 20% professor)
Quango
Brutal understanding of life at the industrial sharp end, there, and a career littered with successful risk taking
People who get paid out of the public purse for doing a bit of shouty-shouty complain that people who run large private sector enterprises get paid too much.
As for the trustee who was a man at the Beeb telling us that private sector company directors get paid too much, Jeez, just don’t let me start…
as an aside, the Murphmeister is 1/5th of a professor of political economy. I suggest we take 20% of the 27 letters making up that title (let’s be generous and say 20% of 27 is five to the nearest integer) and use that to describe him. I suggest
PRofessor of politICal eConomy
or PRICC for short
Define “unfair”.
Jim did four days’ work last week, I only did two days’ work, Jim got paid twice as much as me, UNFAIR UNFAIR!!!
Jim installed a system-wide software deployment, I changed a plug, Jim got paid more than me, UNFAIR UNFAIR!!!!!
@jgh – A is bigger than B. I think that A should not be as much bigger than B than it is. This is therefore unfair. QED and any counterargument you could provide will be no more than neoliberal sophistry
@ Flatcap Army
KCS Wimbledon “terribly good Public School”? Not among the major Public Schools as I remember them.
@john77 – it’s technically independent rather than public, but it’s one of the 12 in the Eton Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_Group
@ Flatcap Army
That group contains several top schools but far from all of them, some just below the peak and a couple of middle-class ones.
KCS has clearly moved up since my day.
Stopping exec. compensation committees being a select club that don’t seem to hold executives to account isn’t a bad idea, along with retention of bonus and clawback if the longer term impact isn’t so good and the golden parachute schemes. Then again we do have the MPs pay review scheme which is such a shining beacon of fairness and restraint in these troubled times.
The usual definition of ‘overpaid’ seems to be 10% higher than the income of a pair of journalists at a tolerably well-regarded media outlet.