NICKNAMED “Fat Cat Friday”, January 3 was the date by which the average CEO of a FTSE 100 company pockets the equivalent yearly take-home pay of a typical full-time worker in the UK.
Executives are earning 133 times more than the average worker, at a rate of around £1,020 per hour or £3.9 million annually. That’s up 11% compared to a year earlier.
It means they would only have to clock in for 29 hours in 2019 to earn the £29,574 median salary of British staff. It’s sickening. Three days into the year and the fat cats have already made what average workers will earn all year. It’s not fair, it makes no sense in how we value people’s contribution to society and it makes no sense for the economy.
READ MORE: UK business bosses paid 133-times more than average worker
Too much wealth is being hoarded at the top by too many people who hide their money in offshore accounts and don’t contribute to society. Corporate remuneration committees, which decide executive pay levels within each company, should abandon the idea of a "superstar" business leader when business is a collective endeavour and reward should be shared more fairly.
This imbalance does nothing to help heal the many social and economic divides facing the country. Ideally we should have a maximum wage law or a progressive tax system which makes excessive wages impossible and so frees up billions of pounds for society.
B McKenna
Dumbarton
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