All in it together, eh Gideon? FTSE fat cats see pay rocket 50 per cent

As millions suffer the squeeze in Austerity Britain, the pay of FTSE 100 directors rose 50 per cent in the last year, a sickening new report reveals today.

The extraordinary rise takes the average pay of a FTSE director to nearly £2.7 million.

Bonus payments for directors soared nearly a quarter, up from a mere £737,000 to £906,000. The figures have been described as “obscene” by Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite.

He said:

“The Government should strongly consider giving shareholders greater legal powers to question and curb these excessive remuneration packages.

“Institutional shareholders need to exercise much greater scrutiny and control of directors’ pay and bonuses.

“It’s obscene and it shows that the City has learnt nothing during the financial troubles of the last four years.”

With TUC boss Brendan Barber adding:

“Top directors have used tough business conditions to impose real wage cuts, which have hit people’s living standards and the wider economy, but have shown no such restraint with their own pay.

“Reform should start with employee representation on remuneration committees, which would give directors a much-needed sense of reality.”

As James Moore, writing in the Independent, put it:

“One group seemingly immune to the impact of inflation, unemployment, economic stagnation and all the other woes afflicting this country is the men (it’s usually men) who sit around the boardroom tables of Britain’s biggest public companies.”

Those who have the most are getting more, as the poorest in our society suffer and suffer and suffer under George Osborne’s cuts. This report is just the latest proof that we aren’t “all in it together”; if ever the protesters camped outside St Paul’s needed more motivation to continue their fight for fairness this is it.

We cannot go on like this.

See also:

• Top five reasons why you can’t protest (according to the right) – Alex Hern, October 26th 2011

• Outrage at 733 per cent rise in energy companies’ profits – Shamik Das, October 14th 2011

• Exclusive: 98 of the FTSE 100 companies are addicted to tax havens – Asha Tharoor, October 11th 2011

• FTSE suffers worst quarterly fall since 2002 as fears rise of “Great Stagnation” – Shamik Das, September 30th 2011

• Has the coalition lost the plot on growth? – Shamik Das, July 28th 2011