MEALY-MOUTHED ministers’ pledges to tackle the obscenity of bosses’ multimillion-pound pay packages were shown to be worthless by new research yesterday.
The High Pay Centre found that chief executives’ salaries at the first 67 FTSE100 companies to report under the government’s new rules last year averaged £4.5 million.
The figure is £200,000 higher than the most recent previous estimate, which was recorded in 2012.
BT chief executive Gavin Patterson stands to receive £7m annually over the next five years.
The lavish rewards are in stark contrast to the wages of workers whose efforts create the vast profits being handed out.
BT for example has flatly refused a request from union CWU for a 3 per cent pay rise. BT proposed a below-inflation 2 per cent.
High Pay Centre director Deborah Hargreaves said the continuing high level of executive pay “show that the new regulations are not enough to bring top pay back to a level that is sensible, fair or proportionate.
In 1999 pay for top bosses was 60 times the average British worker. Today it is 160 times.
“All workers should share in a company’s success — our economy cannot succeed in the long-term if a tiny group at the top pull further and further away from everybody else,” said Ms Hargreaves.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Chief executives’ pay has continued to race away at a time when the wages of their workforces are barely keeping up with the cost of living.”
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