New Year's Resolution - The Excessively Paid

By Deborah Hargreaves, Founding Director of the High Pay Centre

Highly paid bosses' New Year's resolution should be to give up their bonuses and award their workforce a pay rise instead. 

A chief executive of a big company earns on average £4.8 million or 185 times average wages, and some bankers are on even more than that. Surely, they can't spend all that?

It's about time the rest of us got a pay rise. While top bosses have seen their pay  treble in the past 10 years, average earnings have increased by 51 per cent -  barely keeping up with price rises which are up 45 per cent. If the minimum wage had risen as fast as executive pay, it would now be £19 instead of £6.19.

Our business leaders are very competitive people. But could we turn their boast around? Let's make it not about "mine is bigger than yours", but "I've given up more than you!" Let's see them contributing a bit to the general good by foregoing a couple of million and turning that into a top-up for the lowest paid.

In the long run it would help their businesses by putting a bit of spending power into the pockets of those who are likely to spend it. It would help boost demand for their goods and get the economy off the ground again.