Bosses earn average annual salary in under three days

'Fat Cat Wednesday' - take the wealth off the 1%

'The subsidised mineowner - poor beggar!' Cartoon from a 1925 trade union magazine, photo Wikimedia (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)

Carl Harper, Peterborough Socialist Party

Top bosses had earnt more than the Ł28,200 median salary by around midday on 4 January - 'Fat Cat Wednesday'.

According to the figures from High Pay Centre, the average FTSE 100 chief executive now earns more than Ł1,000 an hour. These bosses now typically earn 129 times more than their average employee.

Figures for 2015 showed that average annual pay for a FTSE 100 boss was Ł5.5 million, or 401 times that of a minimum wage worker.

The Fat Cat Wednesday calculation is based on bosses starting back at work after Christmas on 2 January, based on median FTSE 100 chief executive pay of Ł4 million in 2015.

The hourly pay rate of Ł1,009 is calculated based on bosses working 12 hours a day, including three out of every four weekends, and taking fewer than ten days' holiday a year.

Undoubtedly some bosses do work extreme hours. But so do many nurses in our struggling NHS, doing far more useful work for a tiny fraction of the pay.

And the gulf in pay is undoubtedly larger. Official pay figures downplay the army of workers in insecure, precarious work, since the average is based on those who have been in their job for at least a year.

Frances O'Grady, leader of the Trade Union Congress, apparently responded by calling for Theresa May to honour her promise to put workers on boards. How about building for coordinated strikes against austerity?

And why just token workers on boards? Why shouldn't workers own and control the lot?

As long as super-rich minority owns and controls the top corporations, they'll use them for private profit. Nationalise them under the democratic control and management of workers, so the working class can plan what we make to meet the needs of all!

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